Integrating Environmental Protection Education in the Curriculum: A Measure to Form Awareness of Environmental Protection for the Community

Abstract

The integration of environmental protection education into the curriculum is essential for promoting awareness of environmental protection in societies. Sustainable Development is of great importance and Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) is critical for raising the environmental awareness of all groups of people in society, especially the young. Hence, integrating ESD and environmental education into the design of public and university education programmes is very important. Environment Protection Education helps people in general and students in particular to establish behaviours that contribute to creating a greener habitat. For a long time, people have found many ways to overpower, impose and exploit natural resources to serve their own interests and benefits. People have exploited mineral resources, land, forests, creatures, energy, etc., to an excessive extent without caring for their resilience to serve social production and to satisfy their personal needs. While the world economy is developing strongly and gaining many achievements in science and technology, people are starting to realize that their own living environment is seriously polluted and devastated. In recent decades, negative weather phenomena and natural disasters have become increasingly intense with highly destructive power such as super typhoon Katrina (2004), Haiyan (2013), earthquakes – tsunamis (2004, 2011), floods, droughts and forest fires, which have threatened the existence of people and their livelihoods. Hence, it is time to take action to protect the environment, ecological diversity and the Earth if only to protect our own lives. Geographic science has shown that all components and landscapes of geographic shells follow certain development rules. In a unified and complete rule, all geographical components are interdependent, therefore a change of one component will lead to the change of other components. In environmental protection, we need to comply with the above rule; each positive action of individuals also brings significant effects for sustainable development and vice versa. Moreover, environmental issues and sustainable development are big and global issues that require the cooperation and efforts of all nations, communities and societies so that high efficiency can be achieved.