ENVIRONMENTAL
LITERACY FOR
ADMINISTRATORS AND
EDUCATORS
***
Author: Partha Das Sharma, E.mail: sharmapd1@gmail.com
Website: http://saferenvironment.wordpress.com
Environmental Issues
The Top Ten :
n How bad is the damage to ecosystems?
n Is the Earth overpopulated?
n Are we running out of Energy Resources?
Can we feed ourselves, sustainably?
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n
n What’s the “truth” about climate change?
n Why are we so wasteful?
n Are we poisoning our air?
n Ditto for our water
n Are we causing the extinction of species?
n What can you do to help?
A Conceptual Framework
q The ultimate goal of environmental
education is to produce individuals who
exhibit the “4 A’s.”
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Awareness
Appreciation
Advocacy
Activism
Founding Principles
n Everything is connected to everything else.
q We depend on the environment for all of our food, water, energy, shelter, and
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economic resources.
n There is no such thing as a free lunch.
q There is an environmental cost whenever we extract resources from the Earth.
n Our lives on Earth must be sustainable.
q We can’t spend Earth’s capital. We need to learn how to live only on the interest.
How bad is damage to ecosystems?
n Deforestation and other habitat destruction
is the number one human impact on the
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planet.
qReduces oxygen production by plants
qReduces available habitat for organisms
q Increases rates of erosion and soil damage
q Increases rates of extinction of species
Is the Earth overpopulated?
n The answer depends on how you define
overpopulated, but most scientists
believe that the Earth has reached or is
very near to the limit that is
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sustainable.
In other words, the impacts of a human population of 7 Billion or
more will harm the processes and resources of the planet to the
point where we will not be able to depend on them indefinitely.
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What can we learn from the graph?
n It