Lack of Awareness

lack of awareness

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Taking the example of the endangered Philippine crocodile, many locals in the Philippines view crocodiles as a threat to livestock and children and are unaware of legislation protecting the species in the wild. As a result, people hunt these crocodiles down and use destructive fishing habits that further threaten the population of these species. (Van der Ploeg, Cauillan-Cureg, Van Weerd & Persoon, 2011)

According to Galang (2004), the majority of the Philippine population have minimal or no knowledge of the Philippine biodiversity. This lack of awareness inevitably leads to a lack of concern about the environmental crisis in the Philippines on the locals’ part. Also, since the majority of the Philippine media is not attracted to this issue of conservation, this further exacerbates the problem of the lack of knowledge that the locals are experiencing regarding this problem. As Galang (2004) puts it, the Filipinos are more aware of the biodiversity loss in Western countries than in their own country and hence suffer from ‘scientific imperialism’.

A lack of awareness that the country is in urgent need of a reversal of environmental practices may also mean that the people are not aware of what practices to adopt to promote more environmentally-friendly behavior. Indeed, this leads to even more environmental degradation and government authorities should step in to provide adequate environmental education to reverse this trend of a lack of awareness in Filipinos.