Environmental Literacy among College Students

Abstract

Environmental degradation has become a serious source of concern for contemporary society, giving rise to efforts in the way of advocacies, conferences and awareness campaigns at different levels. It has been widely acknowledged that environmental literacy, which is an outcome of environmental education, can provide a strong foundation for future environmental responsiveness, as well as help in the transition towards more sustainable societies and healthy living. The present study carried out among 280 college students including 145 males and 135 females in the age group 17-30 years to assess the levels of environmental knowledge and attitudes. A structured questionnaire was used to gather the information using interview technique as data collection tool. Almost 40% of the subjects were unaware about the environment, while less than half of the respondents were unwilling to protect endangered species, unwilling to change their lifestyle for protecting environment, unconcerned by other's land use, and consider runoff of water and global warming as exaggeration. The overall awareness was about 61.5%, while the attitude towards environmental protection was further lower at 50%. Thus, to conclude there is a need for environmental literacy initiatives at the university level to generate a better appreciation, involvement, and the optimistic ideas necessary to contribute to the quality of our environment.

Keywords: College students; environmental education; sustainable environment.