The Current Status Analysis And Improvement Strategy On Public Environmental Awareness In The Western Area Of China

China western area is the source of Yangtze and Yellow river, and the protection area to the ecological environment of eastern area. The change of ecological environment in western area will impact the continuous growth of China economy and society stability. But the environment issues in western area are getting worse, threatening the whole nation' s ecological environment. To resolve the environmental issues, the author suggests, the root way is to strengthen the public environmental awareness(PEA), to strongly engage the continuous growth awareness in public life' s major rhythm. This is the hope.Regarding the PEA, there is no clear and unified definition yet. In this paper, the environmental awareness definition and it' s basic content are discussed. The environmental awareness consists of three parts, the knowledge of environment, the willing to protect environment and predicated action of environment protection.Based on the definition of environmental awareness, it is investigated in the form of questionnaire in Guangzhou, Gansu and Guangxi province which are in the scope of western development project. The environmental awareness survey is also carried out in three eastern provinces, Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Shandong. The result of analysis and comparison between eastern and western province PEA shows the followings,The average level of western PEA is at low degree, which is at shallow level of environmental awareness; The level of PEA in rural area is much lower than that in urban area; The development trend of PEA in western area is that the environmental knowledge level is increased faster comparatively with the social development, but the development of willingand predicated action to protect environment is delayed. If no action is taken immediately to improve the PEA in western area, the correlation of knowledge, willing and action of environment protection will become weak. The facts that impact the PEA in western area are the speed of economic development, the reorganization of current environmental situation and the relation between human and nature, the degree of education, age and occupation. It is also fund that gender difference does not lead to obvious difference of environmental awareness.The result of analysis indicates that there is big room to improve for the PEA in western to meet the target of western development project. To improve the PEA in western is a combined systemized project, which needs whole society provocatively participation and support. To realize the goal of improving the PEA in western area, the primary task is to strongly develop the junior and middle school education and to tightly follow the continuous growth strategy, other tasks are to construct a complete system by strengthening the willing to protect environment through environmental knowledge promotion, education in different level of group, making the action of environment protection into public life behavior through legal system construction, providing a strong society atmosphere of environment protection via the provocation of excellent Chinese traditional culture and the construction of culture environment.