Environmental Education

Environmental Education- a leap towards Environmental Management The human impact on natural environment and everlasting loss of the bio wealth has posed serious threat to the very existence of mankind. Rapid rate of industrialization and urbanization and above all population growth have put great pressure on land use, water and vegetation resulting into degradation of environment through rapacious exploitation of natural resources, excessive pollution, deforestation, desertification, soil erosion, waste disposal, ozone layer depletion etc. The suicidal activities of man will endanger the life of the mankind and the entire earth. Therefore, environmental management is a growing urgency for conservation of resources and maintenance of the quality of the environment. Following are the main aspects of environmental management. ✔ Perception and awareness of environment. ✔ Environmental education ✔ Resource Management & assessment ✔ Environmental Impact Assessment. ✔ Control over environmental degradation and pollution. Being the most important aspect of Environmental managementEnvironmental education concentrates mainly on various aspects of environment and ecology. Environmental education is necessary because it will provide complete knowledge of environment and finally produce environment al oriented citizen. Environmental education leads to “UNDESD” which stands for United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development. The seed germinated in the world Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg in September 2002 and on 20th December’2002, the UN General Assembly earmarked the ten year period from 2005-2014 as the UNDESD with UNESCO as the lea agency to promote the decade. Education for sustainable Development is a dynamic Concept that utilizes all aspects of public awareness, education and training to enhance an understanding of the linkages among the issues of a sustainable development. Monitoring of the Environmental pollution and its associated aspects are essential for environmental Management. Monitoring simply refers to the checking of environment and pollution which requires trained personal. Moreover, environmental Mapping can provide a lot of information through Remote Sensing & GIS techniques.

Environmental Impact Assessment is a system that examines the environmental consequences to development actions. Environmental Impact Assessment is an aid to decision making, to the formulation of development action and an instrument for sustainable development. In fact nature has everything to meet our needs and not to satisfy our greed. Failure to consider this aspect has resulted in the threat to environment as a whole. Therefore, awareness of people, environmental education, management and conservation has now become a priority. Though human being is a major component of ecosystem, it cannot overlook the importance of natural resources at different levels. The web of life is so intricate that disturbance of one part of ecological community affect the smooth functioning of its components. By observing the growing urgency, and serious consequences it becomes very essential to pursue a further research in the subject, because nature has always provided the inspirational, aesthetic and educational need of human being and finally it give us the cultural identity.

Dhiraj Kumar Neog Reetuparna Barthakur