Environmental Education in Context: An Overview and Some Observations

This book presents an international perspective on the development and implementation of environmental education (EE). We are living at a time when environmental issues are receiving unprecedented attention. Much of this focus is on climate change, largely as a result of the Kyoto Protocol of2005, the Stern Report, presented to the UK government in 2006, which predicted dire economic consequences of global warming, and the release of Al Gore's movie An Inconvenient Truth, which made this issue accessible to the general public. As Skamp, Boyes, and Stanisstreet (2007) argue, reducing greenhouse gas emissions and addressing other problems associated with the environment is a government, corporate, and community responsibility, as well as an individual responsibility. But key to effecting change is an informed citizenry, because awareness of an environmental issue is a precondition of taking environmental action (Jensen, 2002). Consequently, effective EE-both formal and non-formal-is seen as a vital component of the fight against environmental degradation globally.