Facilitate learning about environment

It was in the M C Mehta vs Union of India case in 1991, the Supreme Court of India gave directions that environment should be taught as a compulsory subject at every level of education and that University Grants Commission should prescribe a course on environment a compulsory subject in college education.

After its directions in 1991, the Supreme Court exhorted multiple times to implement its directions, but its implementation remains uneven and inconsistent throughout the country.

In its judgement in 1991, the Supreme Court took cognizance of the rising population and pollution. Since 1991, the situation regarding pollution has worsened in India and has gone to such a level that it has become a public health emergency.

It is also important to look at India’s ranking in the Environmental Performance Index (EPI) released in 2018 by Yale University. Out of 180 countries ranked in the EPI, India stands at bottom 177th rank just above Burundi (180), Bangladesh (179) and Democratic Republic of Congo (178).

The report rightly comments that the low score of India demands national sustainability efforts on different fronts such as cleaning up the air and protecting biodiversity.

Similarly, the State of India’s Environment Report 2019 released by the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) talks about some alarming statistics. It says that 12.5% of all deaths are due to air pollution and over 1,00,000 children below the age of five die due to bad air in the country.

On this backdrop, the need for environmental awareness and education for all becomes more necessary than ever.

The role of schoolchildren and university students is significant because they, as future policymakers and professionals, can find sustainable solutions to overcome these issues.

The National Policy on Education of 1986 explicitly talks about “paramount need to create a consciousness of environment which must permeate all ages and all sections of society beginning with the child” and recommends integrating environmental consciousness into the entire educational process.

According to the 1986 policy, National Council for Educational Research and Training acknowledges that Environmental Studies has been inducted into primary, secondary and higher secondary stages.

However, even if the Environmental Studies has been included in the syllabus at the school level, the reality is that there is no ‘active learning’ taking place in the classrooms.

It is important that the schools and universities in the country implement the Supreme Court directions in letter and spirit.

The schools and universities should facilitate learning-by-doing for students by allowing/encouraging students to undertake practical projects to learn about the environment. The school and university administrators should also encourage teachers to undertake such projects with students. Schools and universities should seek the help of the organisations/experts working in this area such as the Centre for Environment Education (CEE) and CSE.

In this context, it will be pertinent to look at the Green School Project in the United Kingdom started by Henry Greenwood whose mission is “to enable young people to fulfil their potential by providing resources and support to schools to engage them in environmental projects, building their skills and aspirations while encouraging them, their community and wider society to live in a more sustainable way. One of the success stories of the Green School Project is at the Manchester Creative and Media Academy where the students had conducted an environmental audit of the school apart from other case studied mentioned on its website.

A similar initiative in India which needs to be highlighted is Green School Program by CSE.

The colleges and universities campuses should also play their part in adopting sustainable practices by auditing the campus buildings and infrastructure for its resource consumption.

Further, it is also important to note that the draft National Education Policy (NEP) 2019 will be a guiding document for the education in the country. Unlike the previous education policy, it does not make explicit reference to environment education/consciousness, though it talks about Sustainable Development Goal 4 and objective to align the education policy with it. It is important that NEP should take note of this omission and include a section on Environment Education with special emphasis on the role of schools and universities.

(The writer is a Senior Research Associate at the Jindal School of Government and Public Policy)