Abstract:
Education for Sustainable Development aims at empowering individuals to make informed decisions for environmental integrity, social justice, and economic viability for both present and future generation. Education is a source of knowledge, skills and positive attitudes that lead to behaviour change to solve societal problems hence the type of knowledge acquired is essential.The universe is currently facing a lot of environmental problems such as global warming, drought, acid rain, ozone layer depletion, water pollution, climate change and many more which affect living things and nature. Environmental sustainability - protecting environmental resources such as water, land, forests and biodiversity among others- is yet to be realized. Human beings need a healthy productive life without undermining the environmental needs of present and future generations hence there is need for Environmental Education which should provide information to individuals, and communities, in transitioning to a society that is knowledgeable of the environment and its associated problems, aware of the solutions to these problems, and motivated to solve them. Globally, Education and training ought to empower people to conserve the environment for sustainable development. The paper discusses the need for a unified approach to Environmental Education targeting a large number of citizens to achieve the goal of using the preventive approach to protect the environment by educating learners and all citizens to move from nature appreciation and awareness to education for an ecologically sustainable future. It is vital for environmental education to be one of the contexts of integration in English Language Teaching and English Language Teacher Education.
