Environmental Awareness and Environmental Education

Most international environmental declarations and conventions contain a demand for reinforcing the environmental awareness of the population and taking measures concerning environmental education. These processes are perceived as important societal prerequisites for changing patterns of production and consumption, and thus promoting environmentally sound lifestyles, on a long-term basis (Box 1). Several chapters of AGENDA 21, for example, demand promotion of individual and collective modes of behavior that are suitable for ensuring a process of sustainable development. This ambitious task of extensively altering environmentally harmful behavior and of promoting environmentally sound modes of behavior can only be tackled successfully if the citizens of a country and of all nations attach high priority to questions of environmental protection. Only when the necessity of sustainable development is implanted firmly in the consciousness of people with their various roles and positions in society can strategies for changing behavior become effective.