Research On Environmental Education And The Legislation Of China

Since enter twenty-first Century, with the fast development of environmentalproblems, environmental education has become a global concern. The famous Frenchthinker Jean-Jacques Rousseau once pointed out: Education career is the first one inall the beneficial human business. In order to solve environmental issues,environmental education is the necessary means to improve people’s livingenvironment quality. It refers that people could understand the environmental problemsand obtain the related skills by the means of educating, then changing the people’sideas and behavior norms so as to control the current environmental issues effectively.In1990s, along with the idea of sustainable development win support among thepeople, environmental education changed from natural education that emphasized theharmony between man and nature at first to sustainable development education,therefore people continuously improve the environmental awareness. At present, theinternational community generally considered: Pay attention to environmentalawareness, change environmental idea and develop the environmental education arethe key of environmental protection cause. Environmental education is the only waywhich must be passed to realize sustainable development, environmental educationlegalization process is necessary to bring up the agenda.Strengthen the environmental protection, take the education as a core, and dependon legal system safeguard. Since the middle of the20th century, the countries of theworld, especially the developed countries have made deep and extensive research inthe theory and practice of environmental education. The United States, Japan, Brazil,Korea, Philippines and Taiwan region in China has been developed specialenvironmental education law successively. Comparatively, China is still at the initialstage and has not made much progress. About environmental education laws and regulations scattered in various legal documents, lacking of system and operation.Nowadays, in the situation of domestic and international environmental protection,China should formulate specialized environmental education law in order to guaranteeand promote the smooth development of the environmental education. The people’sRepublic of China Environmental Education Law must be based on our nationalconditions, and critically draw lessons from other countries’ advanced experience ofenvironmental education legislation.