Towards Sustainable Development in Nigeria

The Imperativeness of Environmental Education

Abstract

It is common knowledge within the development circle that development involves a physical reality and a state of mind. Through development process, the interactions between social, economic and institutional processes must be continually sustained to meet up with increasing future demands in terms of population growth and continuous use of natural, human and material resources. A clear understanding of the above assertion describes sustainable development and the road map to this understanding is offered by environmental education. Environmental education has become inevitable in Nigeria, if actually our country wants to achieve sustainable development. This paper, via conceptual analysis presented the imperativeness of environmental education towards attaining sustainable development in Nigeria. The paper concludes that environmental education is directed at creating awareness and understanding about environmental issues that leads to responsible individual and group actions; it also focuses on processes that promote critical thinking, problem solving, and effective decision-making skills in line with environmental issues and recommended among many that; a coherent and coordinated framework on environmental education is therefore urgently required in Nigeria to accelerate the widescale incorporation of environmental education into education strategies at all levels.