Environmental Education and Environmental Impact Assessment

Abstract

Environmental education is not a separate branch of science but a lifelong interdisciplinary field of study and a way of implementing the goals of environmental protection. It helps us to inculcate the necessary awareness, skills, attitudes, knowledge, and participatory potential in people so that they adjust their day-to-day activities in such a way that they never clash with the environment. Environmental Impact Assessment helps us to analyze both the positive and negative impacts of any proposed activity and the subjective reduction of their negative impacts with the purpose of identification, examination, assessment, and evaluation of the likely and probable impacts and, thereby, helps to work out remedial action plans to minimize the adverse impacts. It is an important management tool for ensuring the justified use of natural resources during developmental process by focusing on the problems, conflicts, or natural resource constraints that could affect the viability of a project. It also examines the implications of a project that might harm people, their homeland or their livelihoods, or other nearby developments. The chapter combines the considerations of how impacts from human activities can be predicted and assessed with the utility of these tools in decision-making, how environmental, economic and social concerns can be balanced, and the potential of the tool to enhance the “spirit of the age,” i.e., sustainable development.