In Scotland we are, relatively speaking, among the world's more fortunate people. We live in a beautiful country well provided with natural resources. Most of us enjoy a degree of security that allows us to give some priority to the care of our surroundings and to our global responsibilities. More discussion and more thought are being given to our environment than ever before.
Yet we live in times of rapid change: changes in technology, in lifestyles, and in the dependence of different countries on each other. Our environment will not stand up to the pressures that are now being put on I by increasing human population and activity. We recognise that the most effective way to ensure its protection and enhancement in the long term is to bring about change in people's attitudes and behaviour towards it.
Education is an important influence on the way our behaviour develops. learning opportunities surround us almost all the time, not just in formal institutions but in our homes, our community, our work and our leisure, and we learn all our lives. When we talk, therefore, of a strategy for education about something as comprehensive as our environment we have to think of it in very wide terms.
We have to deal with many different aspects of our environment and behaviour towards it:
about day to day life in our own homes, what we bring in to them and what goes out;
about the planning and development of our neighbourhood, region and country;
about conditions at work and how our working practices and products impact on the environment;
about how other people behave when they enter our living and working space, whether as new occupants, developers of its resources, or holiday-makers exploiting it for recreation;
about the multiple environmental issues, from domestic to global, that are brought to us through press and television.
Our approach to all of these can benefit from education, whether formal or not, at all times in our lives. The issues closest to us are ones which we can do something about as individuals. The bigger ones may call for action by local or national government, or by business and other organisations in the private sector, which depend on our active support. So progress in these matters starts squarely with ourselves.
Obviously we are dealing with complex issues, not all of them fully understood, crossing the boundaries of many subject disciplines in both the sciences and the arts. Education in this field is therefore interdisciplinary and we try to look at whole systems rather than isolated parts. Clearly this is not a new "subject" for education but a pervasive approach to all of education.
In Scotland much is already happening. formal education offers a variety of experiences which contribute towards a more comprehensive environmental understanding. There are many organisations both public and private, outside the formal education sector, that provide excellent resources for both formal and informal education. For example, we can learn much from the way health education has established itself.
We believe that if present activities were drawn closer together by identifying common aims and by cooperating more closely in programmes which contribute to this common purpose, a great deal more might be accomplished for relatively little outlay.
Scotland provides particularly good opportunities for developing and implementing a strategy:
It is relatively small and compact, yet varied in its environment and human activity;
Its education system is separate from the rest of the UK; ministers for both education and the environment in Scotland work under the same roof, along with other related department;
Its other statutory and voluntary organisations with environmental concerns are also distinctively Scottish, and small enough for their office bearers and officials to know each other and their direct constituents well.
It is fitting that Scotland with its proud traditions of education should be among the first to respond to recommendations on education approved at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in June 1992.
In the report which follows we attempt to set out a structure for future development of environmental education in Scotland, across the broad front which we have defined:
We start by looking more closely at the connections between environment and education and the way these have developed in recent years;
We review the range of activities that are already going on in different sectors of society;
We attempt to assess what is now needed from the points of view of different learning contexts - home, community, recreation, school, post-school education, and work;
We set out some of the main considerations that should determine the structure of a strategy; and
We make recommendations on a series of action points which we consider should be taken up as parts of a strategy, by the Secretary of State and by organisations concerned.
At a time of economic difficulty we recognise the need to be realistic in the resource implications of our recommendations. We believe that mush can be achieved by redeploying and making mare effective use of the resources which are available. There will of course be extra costs - nothing worthwhile can be accomplished without paying for it somehow - but we are encouraged that the Right Hon. Malcolm Rifkind, then Secretary of State for Scotland, in a speech in 1989 to industrialists at Aviemore at an environmental conference, used this quotation in reference to the environment: "If you think education is expensive, try ignorance".