Closing the Gap Between Urban Planning and Urban Ecology: A South African Perspective

Ecological considerations should be an integral part of the decision-making processes of urban planners. Specifically, ecological aspects used in urban ecology, such as green infrastructure and ecosystem services, are substantiated by literature as strategies for improving quality of life, human health, and well-being. Studies dealing with such concepts in the Global South recently gained interest; however, these lack empirical evidence on the integration thereof in mainstream South African urban planning practice. This article conducts a preliminary investigation into the knowledge of ecological aspects of a sample of South African urban planners and their willingness to implement ecological aspects in urban planning practice. The new environmental paradigm scale is employed to determine the environmental worldview (ecocentric or anthropocentric) among respondent and how this relates to their knowledge of ecological aspects. The initial research sample consisted of a total of 283 questionnaires distributed. Although findings of this article are based on a low response rate (15%) of 42 documented responses, it did not affect the validity of the data collected in this context. The initial findings indicated that the environmental worldview of the sample of planners is only one factor influencing their perspective on incorporating ecological considerations. Low to moderate knowledge and awareness regarding ecological aspects such as ecosystem services, green infrastructure, and multi-functionality are argued to be main factors preventing integration in urban planning practice. Findings emphasize the need for context-based implementation strategies and broad recommendations are made for the planning profession as a point of departure to introduce or ingrain ecological considerations.

Sustainability Education and Environmental Worldviews: Shifting a Paradigm

Higher education institutions are tasked with education for sustainable development, of which the environment is a central pillar. Understanding the demographic factors that influence the establishment of environmental worldviews allows educators to better contextualize sustainability content and discussion. Identifying pedagogies capable of creating learning spaces within which worldviews can shift offers similar opportunities. Using a quasi-experimental design and model building, this study identifies important social psychological antecedents of environmental beliefs, assesses the effectiveness of outbound mobility pedagogy at changing those beliefs and identifies important predictors of the nature and magnitude of those changes. Sustainable outbound mobility courses were effective at increasing environmental worldview compared to a control group. At program commencement, political orientation and business majors were negatively associated with environmental worldview, while female gender was the reverse. For sustainability education courses, only gender was retained as a significant predictor of the nature and change of environmental worldview by the course’s end. These results suggest that the factors associated with environmental worldview upon commencement of a course do not necessarily predict the malleability of that worldview in higher education students.

Motorsport Event Attendees: Who are They, What is Their Environmental Worldview, And How Does It Relate to Trip Spending?

The relationship between economics and sustainability within the event industry is becoming increasingly important. Events with a reputation of not being sustainable (i.e., motorsport events) are chronically underserved in the literature. This research incorporated the revised New Ecological Paradigm (NEP) as a theoretical foundation to assess sustainability attitudes of motor racing event attendees at a series of major racing events in Monterey County, California (USA). The NEP assessment created the basis for examining relationships between sustainability attitudes and motorsport event patrons' characteristics including demographic information, tourist patrons' total trip spending, and per-day spending. Interestingly, patrons attending these traditionally nonenvironmentally sustainable events were found to have similar NEP scores to other event and nonevent research. Sustainability attitudes were not significantly different based on demographic variables, including age and income. However, an inverse relationship was found between environmental attitudes and spending. Tourist patrons with a less sustainable environmental worldview spent more per day and more per trip than those with a more sustainable environmental worldview. These surprising results provide a basis for industry and academic discourse within event management, sustainability, and marketing.

“Green neology” and its role in environmental education (a media discourse approach)

The article covers the problem of ecological neologisms which mostly appear in the present-day media discourse space and actively function there by making a significant impact on people’s environmental worldview. Moreover, the research also raises the problem of neologisms as an effective educational instrument for raising human ecological awareness. A comparative analysis of the most popular neologisms circulated in the Russian, British and American media discourse space is introduced in the study. Finally, it is suggested that green neology in its close correlation with media ecology provide a foundation for building and developing a new ecosystemic society with more sustainable ideology towards the future of the planet.

Environmental Worldview: A Case Study of Young People from Kosovo

Understanding attitudes towards the environment is important because they often determine behaviour that either increases or decreases environmental quality. In this article we investigate the environmental worldview of the young people from Kosovo. The New Revised Environmental Paradigm Scale or New Ecological Paradigm Scale, known as NEP Scale (Dunlap et al., 2000) was used. The study involved 330 young people age 18-20. 150 young people are from secondary schools, and other (180) are from some different faculties at the State University in Mitrovica. The mean score for the full NEP scale in this study was 3.48, which indicates a low endorsement of the NEP among the sample of Kosovo young people. The averages of the sub-dimensions varied between 3.08 (“Limits to growth”) and 3.73 (“Eco-crisis”). Like as others non-industrialized societies, young people from Kosovo tend to believe in the profound connection between humanity and nature, or there are no clear differences between pro-NEP and pro-DSP views. This study confirms the thesis that environmental worldviews differ across cultures. The mean value of the NEP Scale can be feasibly associated with various variables concerning general environmental attitudes. In order to discover the factors that create a pro-ecological orientation of young people in this country, additional researches are needed.

Kelayakan Modul Pencemaran Lingkungan Berbasis Environmental Worldview dan Environmental Attitudes

<p class="Abstrak"><strong>Abstract:</strong> This type of research was quantitative descriptive. This research is aimed at determining feasible of the module of environmental pollution based on environmental worldview and environmental attitudes consist of test for content validity by an expert lecturer in environmental science, module design validity by an expert lecturer in module design, practicality by a teacher at SMAN 1 Lembar, and legibility by 20 students at SMAN 1 Lembar. The method used was questionnaires and analyzed by percentage. The test result showed the module was very feasibly with had an average of 94.6% and concluded that the module feasible to used in learning.</p><strong>Abstrak:</strong> Jenis penelitian ini yaitu deskriptif kuantitatif. Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk menentukan kelayakan modul pencemaran lingkungan berbasis <em>environmental worldview </em>and<em> environmental attitudes</em> yang terdiri dari uji validitas isi oleh dosen ahli di bidang ilmu lingkungan, validitas desain modul oleh dosen ahli modul, kepraktisan oleh guru di SMAN 1 Lembar, dan keterbacaan oleh 20 siswa di SMAN 1 Lembar. Metode yang digunakan yaitu kuesioner dan dianalisis dengan persentase. Hasil tes menunjukkan modul sangat layak dengan rerata 94,6% dan disimpulkan bahwa modul layak digunakan dalam pembelajaran.