Source: East Spring Secondary School
Environmental education possibly has the ability to affect different individuals and provide an opportunity to promote good human-environmental relationship. The goal of environmental education is to develop a world population that is aware of, and concerned about, the environment and its associated problems, and which has the knowledge, skills, attitudes, motivations, and commitment to work individually and collectively toward solutions of current problems and the prevention of new ones (Clayton, S. & Myers, G., 2009)
Hence, Environmental education can be used to help change the behaviour of the people towards the destruction of the Sun bear’s habitat and consuming the Sun bear’s parts by making people more aware of the situation and changing their attitudes. Formal school systems can instil that harming the environment and the wildlife is bad and can have adverse effects. The students should be provided with more detailed information on the consequences of non-environmentally friendly practices and having excursions in the programs will be effective in educating them. On the informal level, the public can be educated using various mediums, like zoos, nature centres, community programs and projects, and the media. For this approach, media will be very effective in our IT savvy world of today and hence, it’s usage should be maximised for environmental education.
Source: Rainforest Alliance
For the case of the sun bear, schools can bring the students to the zoo to learn more about the Sun bear and at the same time observe more about the sun bear at a closer distance. Rainforest trails should also be visited as deforestation is one of the main reasons for the endangerment of the sun bear. Schools should educate the students on how much harm can deforestation do, not only to the sun bears, but to the other species within the rainforests. Furthermore, the students can do some volunteer work within the rainforest trails by doing things like picking up litters. This approach helps to make students more informed and aware of the situation at hand and at the same time, change their attitudes towards deforestation. Informally, people can learn more and be informed about the problems faced by the Sun bear population through media since one of the problem the sun bear faces is being neglected due to the lack of information on it. People can be encouraged to do community work through their community like the students and work on community projects with their community. This will then meet the aim of environmental education and possibly help create more awareness about the declining sun bear population.