Written by Sustainability…environmental education with a thousand health

Written by Sustainability…environmental education with a thousand health

The more I thought carefully about environmental education, the more I found that throughout my work in the public and political sphere I did not find a topic worthy of note and attention such as the topic of raising new generations on foundations that address the challenges of the environment and preserve its resources. At first glance, the reader thinks that it is an educational topic in one word, but I look at it as a topic with deep dimensions, dimensions that include many state institutions, as well as members of society, whether family, school, or friends. All of this presents a broad vision for the concept of environmental education.

Hence, I confirm that confining environmental education to educational institutions is a vision that largely overlooks the essence and reality of the matter. This is because environmental education is a general approach to all of life, and is based on a simple equation, which is that environmental education is the balance of life and its path to comprehensive sustainability in all fields. This requires appropriate laws and legislation, and education capable of bridging the gap between the environment and the minds of current and subsequent generations.

If I wanted to put all of this in one word, it would be “the people,” based on the fact that most of our environmental problems stem from urban decline, as a result of population increase. Therefore, environmental education is the closest way to returning things to normal, through the cooperation of all components of society.

Popular Law

If we had a quick look at the conferences and agreements, we would have discovered that there is a long history of the environmental education process, where the world said what it said and explained the stages of its emergence decades ago; From theEarth Summitin the nineties, through the United Nations conferences, and even the Arab seminars and conferences – all of them sought to define the relationship between the environment and societal systems; So that all of this would be a popular law.

I chose to express it with the phrase “popular law” instead of the phrase – which is also a valid phrase – universal law; Because the environment is a collective concern and a common future, in which no country has independence over another, as the peoples of the world should be one people whose homeland is the entire earth. We must all struggle against environmental and climate changes, so that we do not stray from the ride of civilization and the caravan of progress.

So, we are faced with an inevitable result, which is the inevitability of environmental education, taking into account its concepts – as I mentioned previously – from a broad perspective. If the severe environmental crisis that the planet is going through now is a major problem, the major problem is not in confronting it on the general level in a way that lacks comprehensive visions, but rather in making a decisive and serious decision to transform human life, ideas, and ambitions towards a new format and method.

Environmental Education Strategy

Let me say that the environment is a very complex topic with many branches, which is what made me stress the need for its treatment to be deeper than educational treatment. Therefore, our popular/global treatment must be based on effective strategies that put the environmental problem in its proper place.

Therefore, integrating the concepts of environmental education into sectors and institutions of society requires collective behavior based on scientific objectivity, which is planned consciously and consciously, and we have a good example in Egypt; Our beloved country, which supported those concepts and that approach within a framework of comprehensiveness, and in accordance with the goals ofsustainable development regionally and globally.

Enhancing environmental awareness came participatory between the government and civil society institutions, which reflects the first foundations of environmental education, which are development partnerships. I do not claim that the Egyptian experience has reached its end, as it still has a long way to go. However, it is a promising experience and a step on the sustainable path, where environmental education is science, behavior, and decision.