Historical Perspective of environment education and its objectives in Pakistan

Environmental degradation and poverty are mainly attributed to lack of environmental awareness and education. This prompted the government to develop the National Conservation Strategy (1992) and National Environmental Policy (2005). Conservatively, environmental degradation costs Pakistan annually 6% of its GDP or US$ 6 billion. For implementing this plan, about 20 universities are offering undergraduate post-graduate and doctoral programs in Environmental Science, Engineering and Education. However, keeping in view the enormous demand, the numbers environmental experts produced are extremely small. As against the minimum requirement of about 13,000 environmental experts to fill the void in the country, the institutions are producing about 300 experts annually. Environmental education will have a domino effect in pursuing and implementing sustainable development, which demands judicious use and conservation of resources, institutional strengthening, integration of environmentally friendly cost-effective country based technology, as well as priority setting with pro-development and pro-poverty alleviation strategies and continuously striving for excellence for the collective good of Pakistan. (author)