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connections between economic prosperity, benefits to society, environmental health, and our own well being. Ultimately, the collective wisdom of our citizens, gained through education, will be the most compelling and most successful strategy for environmental management.
There is now a wide appreciation of the damage being done to the environment through human activity. This damage is sometimes global, as in the case of the depletion of the ozone layer and of the increase in greenhouse gas emissions. Often the damage is regional, as with degradation of native forests, or the erosion of river catchments.
Often too, the damage is local. Pollution from motor vehicles, contamination of soil by chemicals, sewage discharges; these and hundreds of other human activities stress the environment.
Environmental Education, together with sound legislation, sustainable management, and responsible actions by individuals and communities, is an important component of an effective policy framework for protecting and managing the environment.
EE is a new focus for education. It is a way of helping individuals and societies to resolve fundamental issues relating to the current and future use of the world’s resources. However, simply raising awareness of these issues is insufficient to bring about change. Environmental Education must strongly promote the need for personal initiatives and social participation to achieve sustainability.
Gazetting something in the print media like a magazine or weekly newspaper is not a guarantee to the removal of ignorance of law. It requires the whole effort of the educators to bring the attention of the public and business community to enhance compliance.
EE is a force of socio-economic transformation that is critically important in ensuring a holistic environmental management and law enforcement. It is broad based and sensitive to cultural norms and values. It also engenders in people values, skills and attitudes consistent with sustainable environmental management.
It silences the dispute that people were not consulted in the formative stages of the Act by promoting critical reflection and an overt agenda for social change. Above all, contemporary environmental education motivates, equips and involves all key stakeholders in the generation and realisation of sustainable living processes.
EE challenges the traditional position that once law is gazetted; everyone is assumed to be aware of it and should comply. There is also merit in that the Gazette is by and largely available in urban areas and this development effectively excludes the rural populace who constitutes not only the bulk of the population but also the majority of the resource users.
The question which arise is that how can they be expected to know the statutory provisions. How and why can they be accused of not adhering to standards which they may not be aware?
This is the challenge of environmental education and educators. Thus environmental law enforcement is devoid without environmental education which avoids suspicion, tension and emotions.
Environmental education offers hope in the law enforcement cycle. Indeed, as Zimbabwe forges ahead in the United Nations Decade of Education for sustainable Development, there is need to identify and embrace EE methodologies and innovations which are exciting and stimulate communities to adopt sustainable lifestyles leading to societal transformation. As educators we reach out to specific stakeholders and share information on environmental law education and management.
We also deliver innovative EE information through various mechanisms that encompass song, art, drama, competitions and debates to capture the imagination, minds and thoughts of the youth who demographically constitute a larger proportion of the population in Zimbabwe. EE practitioners furthermore embark on systematic strategy of awareness enhancement which does not assume that society lacks prior knowledge (Indigenous Knowledge Systems).
EE as an environmental management tool is used to cover the inadequacies resulting from other environmental management options. Since it has large spatial and temporal influence, it reinforces laws once they have been gazetted. All this is achieved through participatory methodologies that are learner centred to obtain best returns. Active and passive participation of all stakeholders is also of great significance.
Some of the environmental education strategies used by EMA are: road shows, awareness campaigns, school talks, schools debate competitions, schools projects and clean up campaigns.
The Agency is therefore inviting all secondary and high schools to participate in the 2013 schools debate competition.
The topic reads: “The solution to waste management challenges lies in the privatisation of waste management services”.
Please talk to us we are ready to listen.
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