Let’s teach environmentalism in lower classes to build skills bank

Environmentalism should be introduced to learners in their formative stages of learning to acquaint them with the requisite, invaluable and novel skills.

That will also puts them at par with the rest of the globe as far as as sustainable development goals (SDGs) are concerned.

When young scholars conceive environmental concepts of global warming, greenhouse gases, biodiversity, Ozone layer depletion, air, water and soil pollution, it boosts their environmental knowledge.

It also enables them to appreciate the discipline and prepares them as future career conservationists.

Scholars who are exposed to environmentalism at the formative learning stages are bound to explore and appreciate the universally adopted efforts, challenges and opportunities in natural resource exploitation and sustenance as the global sources of both wealth and conflicts.

TERRITORIAL WARS

Droughts, resource-based conflicts, human-wildlife conflict, earthquakes, territorial wars, water pollution, aridity and desertification are some of the prime environmental concerns learners are poised to explore.

The amateur scholars, too, would have a grasp of information about minerals, solar power, arable lands, forest resources, water resources, historical sites, national parks and beauty sceneries as blessings from Mother Nature.

Introducing environmental literature in primary schools seeks to introduce concepts such as definition of environment, types of wastes and proper disposal mechanisms (reuse, reduce, recycle, soak pits, septic tanks and autoclave) as means of individual and communal environmental responsibility.

With proper legal frameworks, sufficiently trained instructors and an ideal learning milieu, young learners would be likely to appreciate sustainable resource utility, zero ecosystem degradation, natural resource conservation and the essence of environmental health support systems with respect to human, socioeconomic and political ideals as envisaged in the Constitution.

INTELLECTUAL IDEALS

By inculcating environmental disciplines in young learners, the institutions would produce a generation whose intellectual ideals are premised on rock-solid environmental foundation and activate the willful obeisance to the environmental statutes with lesser civil, moral or legal pressure.

Government institutions like Nema and other relevant organs should, therefore, explore the legal guidelines for curriculum development, implementation and monitoring — like the Environmental Management and Coordination Act (EMCA) 1999.

This would make it easier to execute national, regional or universal environmental policies to the citizens with near zero attrition.

NIMROD OBETTO, via email.