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CHAPTER 4. PUBLIC AWARENESS AND ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION

4.2. Environmental Public Awareness

4.2.1. Tools of Public Awareness Development

The main tools of public environmental awareness development are: Environmental Education and Public Communication.

Effective Environmental Education and Communication activities (EE&C):

• are made available to the widest possible audience, pupils, and students in formal education and training institutions, individuals in key positions (from decision-makers and opinion leaders to people degrading the environment), out-of-school youth, urban and rural dwellers, staff of governmental and non-governmental institutions and organizations,
• are built on past accomplishments, and benefit from lessons learned,
• take advantage of existing opportunities, e.g., people's special interests, indigenous knowledge, and traditional practices.

A good participatory approach uses planning and implementation of EE&C activities. It helps ensure relevancy, and creates a sense of ownership by stakeholders, which is essential for sustainability. It also ensures that the views and rights of women and other groups are taken into consideration;

Research studies are implemented to identify the characteristics and needs of different target audiences in order to select appropriate communication channels and materials;

EE&C activities are designed to make maximum use of existing facilities, resources and infrastructure. For example: colleges, in collaboration with other institutions, could mount short vacation courses to build a capacity for EE&C;

EE&C programmes are value-driven and designed to assist the acquisition of knowledge, skills, and attitudes which are necessary to solve actual environmental problems;

EE&C activities for non-formal and formal EE complement and supplement one another, and are jointly planned for maximum impact;

Constant positive interaction with the rural and urban environment should be promoted, and active community participation in solving environmental problems by identifying environmentally-friendly alternatives is the basis for EE&C;

All EE&C activities are designed to be sustainable, even in the case where assistance is required to initiate them;

Monitoring and evaluation should be an integral part of EE&C activities in order to ensure real progress and success.

Environmental education is thoroughly discussed in Section 4.4 of this chapter. The issue of mass communication is discussed below.

Mass Communication

Any action to promote public involvement in a given decision-making process requires undertaking mass communication, which is the process of contacts with the public opinion. Public opinion reflects the awareness of the environment of particular community members. The process of creating the public opinion is presented in Figure 4.1.

Figure 4.1. The process of public opinion creation.

(continued)

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