Importance Of Environmental Awareness Essay

Introduction
1.1 Environment
The term ‘Environmental awareness has become a very important term as it not only implies having knowledge about the environment, but also our moral values and necessary education to solve environment related problems. Having Environmental awareness is the responsibility of every citizen. Today environmental degradation is a matter of grave concern. In the name of development, we have consumed our natural resources ruthlessly and polluted our atmosphere. Scarcity of water, increasing levels of wastes, air pollution, and global warming are some common issue of which pose a great threat to the environment. The speed with which we are consuming our natural resources and polluting our environment is really a matter

This shows that environmental awareness has a great effect on developing environmental attitudes which cultivate environmentally friendly behaviours among people proving advantage of widespread environmental awareness is its contributions to public support for government action in environmental policy and management. The main tool for creating environmental awareness at macro level is by far, the media. The mass media that can be used for the study of environmental consciousness are newspaper, radio and television programs which are widely and frequently used. Recently, different countries have started to strive for environmental development, protection and sustainable use of environmental resources by establishing environmental agencies, but actions are still not compatible with the magnitude of the environmental challenges. Environmental awareness needs a political answer. This is an emergency and emergency situations need emergency actions (UNEP

The media greatly shape what the general population thinks about the environment. The media plays a great role in creating awareness (McQuail 1994). Undoubtedly the flow of environmental awareness and information through the media is greater and faster than it was, say, in the 1960s when the term "environmental awareness" was coined and the environment first became a subject of media coverage (Young 1990) and this coverage grew to an initial peak around 1970s following a decline in environmental coverage in the mid-1980s (Merriam & Makower, 1988), there had been a relatively dramatic increase in media interest in the coverage of environment during the late 1990s (Love, 1990, Starke, 1990, Stocking & Leonard 1990). It is observed that mass media, and TV in particular plays an important role in relation to public awareness and serve as a primary source of information for environmental issues. (Murch, 1971, Atwater et al., 1985 & Wilkins, 1987). The role of media in the development of environmental issues for public concern is a perspective which goes beyond ignoring the contribution of agenda setting, public opinion, and mass media research approaches in the study of mass media and environmental issues. (Anderson, Hansen 1991). These different approaches capable of explaining why media concern about environmental issues fades in and out of