Introduction of the national symbol of environmental education: During the recent decades, the emergence and increase of various environmental crises have raised increasing concerns about humanity’s survival. The role of environmental education is very important in terms of institutionalizing environmental beliefs, understanding environmental values, and providing cultural infrastructure to realize the principle of prevention. Promoting environmental literacy among the masses of people changes their attitude towards the environment and improves their relationship with it.
If people feel a moral and conscientious duty to preserve the environment, they will more actively participate and cooperate with events planned to protect the environment; Therefore, the purpose of environmental education is to create sensitivity, commitment, and responsibility in people towards physical, economic, biological, social, political events and changes and how they impact the inhabited biosphere.
Because environmental learning and teaching are lifelong needs for all groups in society, they should be pursued in the framework of mass environmental education. The universality of education infers both teaching and learning processes, and all the bodies and institutions in the country which are involved in the educational system in any scope and limits are responsible for preserving the environment according to the international and national upstream documents such as the Constitution of the Islamic Republic and the resolution of the Supreme Council for Environmental Protection in 1995.
Therefore, universities and scientific and research centers, by playing their educational and research role which is influencing people’s environmental thinking and beliefs can influence not only the awareness of society and determine the most important issues in the topics of protecting the environment, but also the definition and explanation of ethical approaches which also can be effective in the mission of protecting the environment, and for this reason, universities and scientific and research centers will not be able to fulfill their mission towards protecting the environment without addressing such topics.
In our country, during the last two decades’ environmental education has entered a new era in which recognizing and planning for this mass education was started by the Environmental Education Department of Payame Noor University in the middle of the 1380s (2000-2001) and appropriate activities have been gradually formed in the country’s scientific sphere. It is considered a turning point in introducing a new discourse in this field of study.
Introducing environmental education as a field of study has provided the opportunity for this department to accept master’s degree students for the first time in the country since 2007, which then was followed by some other universities, and accepting students at the doctorate level (as the only university providing doctoral-level studies in this field) since 2013, training hundreds of scholars and students. At the same time, other activities were created to develop the studies further such as obtaining permission for the Quarterly Journal of Environmental Education and Sustainable Development, the UNESCO Chair in Environmental Education and the Environment and Sustainable Development Research Institute within the university, and holding events such as 5 national conferences, 6 specialized exhibitions, numerous competitions, the publication of dozens of scientific and specialized books and articles, and hundreds of other events in this field; Such actions have propelled this interdisciplinary field to stabilize its position day by day in the country’s scientific sphere.
Following these activities and holding of the first national festival of environmental education on 6 February 2018 and to introduce this field as much as possible and invite everyone to participate in its cause, the UNESCO chair in environmental education unveiled the national symbol of environmental education with the presence of esteemed researchers and experts in this field. In choosing this symbol, an effort has been made to convey the spirit governing environmental education to the audience with the hope and expectation that this national symbol will be a connecting point for the unity and synergy of all who are interested in the topics of teaching and learning in the field of environment and the sustainable development of the Islamic homeland.