KARACHI, April 13: The federal ministry of environment and the ministry of education have jointly started implementation of a Rs26 million environmental education promotion project at school and college level.

The objective of the project is to integrate environmental concepts in the formal education system at primary, middle, secondary and higher secondary levels throughout all districts in Pakistan.

It aims to address the lack of environmental awareness in Pakistan, which has been termed one of the key contributing factors to rapid degradation of environment and the ensuing poverty.

The project will target more than 200,000 educational institutions and 26 million students throughout Pakistan and will introduce core environment subjects as part of the syllabus from grade I to XII. The project will bring attitudinal and behavioural changes within young people in support of conservation and sustainable development.

The project was developed under the UNDP and donor funded National Environmental Action Plan-Support Programme, which is being implemented by the ministry of environment to facilitate the implementation of the national environmental action plan.

The project is expected to contribute to promotion of a sustainable development in Pakistan through increasing the knowledge base of students about the environmental challenges and the development of skills of students to address the environmental challenges.

The project is a major step towards realization of environmental education related objectives of the national conservation strategy, which emphases the need for making efforts, both to strengthen and reinforce the educational curricula at all levels so as to develop educated believers and practitioners of sustainable development and environmental protection.

The main components of the four-year project, which is being funded by the Swiss Agency for Development Cooperation (SDC) in Pakistan, include situation analysis of the current state of environmental education in the curricula/textbooks at primary, middle, secondary and higher secondary levels. -PPI