Environmental Literacy of Senior Students in the Agricultural Colleges of Ethiopia

Abstract

The agriculture led development policy of the current Government of Ethiopia has raised new hopes and also new environmental concerns. Whether or not the implementation of programs aimed at boosting agricultural productivity to ensure food security is to be environment-friendly, depends a great deal on the level of environmental literacy of policy makers, agricultural resource managers and experts. In view of the fact that they will be the future policy makers, agricultural resource managers and experts, and that they form a convenience sample, a questionnaire survey was conducted on 335 senior students in four agricultural colleges of Ethiopia (Haromaya University, Debub University, Jimma University, and Mekele University) in the year 2002, to measure their level of environmental literacy. A questionnaire comprising of 105 questions was distributed. The three components of environmental literacy-knowledge, attitude and behavior-were measured by the students‟ response to the following groups of questions: ability to define key environmental concepts and identify key national and global environmental problems to measure knowledge; population-environment concerns, relationships between selected agricultural techniques/practices and the environment and the role of government in environmental protection to measure attitudes; and environment related habits/actions and willingness to bear the cost of environmental protection to measure behavior. The analysis of the results of the survey revealed reasonably higher levels in most of the items used to measure the components of environmental literacy. Overall, the students have shown fairly high level of environmental literacy, which can be considered instrumental in the shaping of a sustainable agricultural future for Ethiopia.