Educating our Youth on Conserving our Planet

All over Africa there are schemes of education for school children to value their local wildlife as their greatest natural asset for the future of their countries. The same is true for island worlds such as the Fijis or Hawaii, where land grabbing developers had threatened the delicate fresh water cycles of the islands through deforestation and coastal over development.

Education also provides the key to issues such as over-fishing and by-catch. Where local fisheries were introduced to better, sustainable fishing methods, their livelihoods were protected for the future and their income increased through improved efficiency.

Environmental Pressure Groups

Joining a local group of one of the major environmental pressure groups can be a great way to receiving further education. Volunteers are usually teamed up with an experienced member of the organisation and they will guide the new recruit into environmental projects of their own. As well as being able to apply many of the eco-friendly subjects learned, recruits find that their social life improves. There are many conservation groups running local programmes both for adults and for kids, on pretty much anything from bat conservation projects to pressure groups preventing councils from reserving land for the exclusive use of supermarket development.

Listening Skills

Having a chat with grandparents and taking their advice on environmentally friendly ways of planting in our gardens is another source of education open to many people. Our grandparents are a “mend and make do” generation devoted to recycling and avoiding waste. We can learn a lot about crop rotation in our gardens or recycling clothes.

Our grandparents had to live through one or even two world wars and had to learn the hard way what education on waste reduction and recycling really means. It’s a survival guide. As precious resources become scarcer, we have to know how to better conserve the ones we’ve got left and how to use them more effectively. Our grandparents recycled most of their clothes, mending or taking them apart to make new garments for future use.

Where people have learned how to make things out of old clothes, they’ve found new hobbies opening up as well as new business opportunities presenting themselves. Making bags out of old clothes has become a successful business venture for a number of people. Clothes swapping parties are another result of education on recycling.

Learning by Example

Indigenous peoples are a great source of knowledge and many countries are beginning to recognise that the knowledge built up over thousands of years is one of our most valuable resources. In the USA Native Americans are participating in a global education program by downloading their knowledge on native plants and there uses in medicine onto the internet.

The Environmental Education and Training Unit at the United Nations is using this knowledge and other sources to produce learning support and educational material, making available things like training manuals, starter packs, posters, resource kits, newsletters and compendiums.

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