Environmental Education and Its Effects on Environmental Sustainability
Joan Nyika, Fredrick Madaraka Mwema
Abstract
Environmental education (EE) for sustainable development remains a valuable subject of contemporary society, which is characterized with environmental issues such as climate change, pollution, loss of biodiversity, and resource degradation. The delivery of EE is based on the North American Association for environmental education values of knowledge, dispositions, competencies, and responsible behavior towards the environment. EE is a transformative tool to learners since it prepares learners with skills, attitudes, knowledge, and values to resolve environmental problems. It promotes environmental activism and action-oriented resolution of environmental issues. The full benefits of EE are challenged by limited human capacity, questionable professionalism, limited resources, and poor transformation of knowledge to practice. These challenges however can be alleviated through community engagement in formulating EE programs, multidisciplinary engagements, and research on EE delivery and quality.