About ENV-ETHICS Project

There has been an increasing interest in behavioral components of environmental problems in recent years since human action is the critical element in environmental degradation. It has also been agreed upon and declared by United Nations' "Climate Change Report" that, this global problem is mostly caused by anthropogenic sources. Among the complex and delicate relations that concern the environment, in terms of implementation of ethics and virtuous life styles for pollution control, waste reduction and management, deterioration of natural resources and decrease in biodiversity, new instruments -in addition to existing traditional ways of transfer of knowledge- can help to promote "environmental protection" and "sustainability". That is; environmental ethics is needed to guide human-beings in making sound judgements and decisions and taking appropriate actions. However, it may not be developed and internalized by individuals by themselves. Knowledge alone does not ensure one's motivation to act; value/belief system is the key in determining any action whether positive or negative with respect to environmental conservation. Therefore, the need to achieve the development of environmental ethics and adoption of new behaviours could be supported by many initiatives based on different instruments, for example communicative tools dealing with information, education and training. New environmental policies and strategies, in fact, together with the launch of new fashions and habits referring to the analysis, appreciations and diffusion of ‘best practices' could be enlarged by means of innovative instruments such as e-learning, vocational training, interactive web-sites, CD-ROMs for people involved in decision making but also for environmental experts employed in public/governmental organisations, SMEs, municipalities, research institutes and universities; trainers/educators from environmental monitoring and environmental health field and enterprises with the aim to promote more environmental awareness and to change their attitudes towards environmentally sensitive behaviors in all EU countries.

This need of harmonizing environmental knowledge with ethical values and thus achievement of the behavioral change and internalization of ethical values refers some recent efforts and experiences that are promoted by the European Union. Sixth Environmental Action Program of the European Community entitled "Environment 2010: Our Future, our choice", proposes five priority avenues of strategic action; one of them is empowering people as private citizens and helping them to change behavior by giving people the information they need to make environment friendly choices. In addition to Sixth Environmental Action Programme, Arhus Convention (which is in force since 30 October 2001) based on the premise that greater public awareness of and involvement in environmental matters will improve environmental protection. And a very recent document, Annual Policy Strategy for 2008 (21.02.2007) stresses on renewed Lisbon Strategy for growth and jobs as a major vehicle for promoting a more prosperous, environmentally responsible European Union. There is a need to increase public sensitivity to environment and development problems and involvement in their solutions and foster a sense of personal environmental responsibility and greater motivation and commitment towards environmentally sensitive behaviours. "Therefore ENV-ETHICS Project will try to train the target group; decision makers and environmental experts/executives/staff working in municipalities and public/governmental organisations as much as possible both on ethical values to increase environmental awareness and technical points of pollution control to have a clean and healthy environment by applying the main principles of European Environmental Policy and Integrated Pollution Prevention and Control: IPPC Directive 96/61/EC of 24 September 1996". The technical environmental pollution control part of the training was prepared based on the above mentioned Directive by one of our partner's previous project numbered (RO/02/B/F/PP-141004).

Along this line, aims and objectives of the project are summarized as;

• To develop specific vocational training tools, especially development of relevant and innovative e-learning content, in the field of "Environmental Pollution Control" harmonized with "Environmental Ethical" values which will be based upon the main principles of European Environmental Policy and Sixth Environmental Action Plan and renewed Lisbon Strategy, as a major vehicle for promoting environmentally responsible European Union. It is evident that, there is a lack of specific vocational training in the field of environmental ethics for the target groups especially for decision-makers and experts in this field. Technological assistance must be supplied to inform the people about the importance of acting in an environmentally friendly way (that is; obeying unwritten rules) and latest policies (that is obeying written rules) in order to have a better and cleaner environment.
• To design the final products in a way to help to facilitate efficient environmental pollution control by increasing the environmental awareness of individuals in Europe and provide educational information about specific cases, best practices, new technologies and current relevant EU legislation in the environmental pollution and ethic field. Blended learning methodology (face-to-face & e-learning) will be helpful for everyone to have a chance to learn about how to measure environmental pollution and protection measures; by training-courses target groups will achieve at least four desirable outcomes: increased ethical sensitivity in addition to environmental pollution knowledge, increased knowledge of standards of conduct, improved ethical judgement for environmental controversies and improved ethical will-power; project web-site will support knowledge and information in the communities.
• Certification will be given at the end of these vocational training courses which will have validity from VET Organisations and these will be helpful to the users in their employment and business.
• The focus of the project will be a successful valorisation of the project among the users.

Our project will change the target groups' perception of environment and attitudes improving their skills and competences by the products of our Project. By the e-learning method, they will have the chance to be trained very easily and they will access the content of the project from everywhere so this will improve the quality and access to continuing vocational training. For the big cities and for the small towns, this project will be accessible for everyone through e-learning. E-learning and the other products (CD-Rom, book, web-site, vocational-training-courses) will cover the latest policies, principles & techniques and will train and show technical guidance to decision makers/ executives/ staff. These training-tools in our project are the best way and most technological form of transferring the knowledge and new technologies/ directives/ methods/ principles among the people. Apart from this, there is a vast need of vocational training tools in integrating technical knowledge of environmental pollution into environmental ethics. The decision makers and staff dealing with environmental pollution have no source to learn the new implementations of the integrated modules and they don't have environmental awareness. But if the quality of vocational educational training systems and practices are developed according to ethical vales and practical methods, it will be much easier to train people and have the more clean and healthy environment. Our training-tools will be designed to be practical and will cover the different environmental ethical cases from each partner country.

Decision makers must know at least the basic facts about ecology and the environmental pollution as well as the threats concerning our habitat in general. Such knowledge should throw light on the misconceptions that may have been the root cause of their apparent lack of concern for the environmental cause and aim to achieve a paradigm shift among them that would mean basic value and behavioral changes. The paradigm shift should enable them to have new perceptions based on biological and holistic worldview rather than inorganic and mechanistic perspectives. This will be achieved thru vocational training of decision makers. Similarly environmental staff/experts should be convinced about, why natural protection is important. Therefore in addition to refreshment of their technical knowledge on environmental issues, they should be trained on ethical aspects of environment. That is; they should learn why they monitoring pollution and why the nature worthy to be protected.

Many of the studies over the past decades have revealed that the environmental programs and projects (e.g., waste management and resource recycling, energy-efficient use, water resource conservation, pollution control, park and wildlife management, wilderness preservation, and biodiversity) have made considerable progress, but there are still many unresolved concerns. Furthermore, in reviewing a number of the contemporary studies, it is suggested that some of the early notions and theoretical perspectives for environmental issues are outdated; in order to seek potential solutions to these problems new knowledge and scientific information should be encouraged. Along this line, the project aims the development of a new training module on environmental ethics which will provide a framework for analysing and evaluating the beliefs and values that underlie environmental controversies that embody ethical dilemmas. Teaching ethics will increase ethical sensibility and ethical will-power (that is, greater ability to act ethically/more environmental friendly) and thus help to guide the complex decisions that members of target groups facing. They should be challenged to learn skills of critical thinking, writing, speaking and action through the integrated study of technical skills and environmental ethics. That is they will learn how to weigh the needs of modern life with the reality of its impact on the natural world. The project will introduce an original contribution to introducing case studies into training modules. The cases from different countries will help us to emphasize different perceptions of the environment and different strategies that different cultures have employed to resolve ethical dilemmas. Each case somewhat different, having its own facts, uncertainties and circumstances. This will help us to widen the horizon of decision-makers and environmental experts/staff working for the local authorities and governmental organizations that are very effective in shaping environmental policies in Turkey as in other countries.

This project will be the first in terms of development of the modularised system integrating and harmonizing technical aspects of environmental knowledge (by using products of previous projects) with ethical background (by using the product of ENV-ETHICS) in vocational training in Turkey and in Europe. ENV-ETHICS Project will develop ethical background to the previous projects that have been chosen as the transfer of innovation projects.Thus; this new module will be harmonized and integrated with the products of completed LdV Pilot Projects namely; MEPC-Training Module for Environmental Pollution Control (RO/02/B/F/PP-141004). Because, the project wants moreover, to inform members of the target groups on the measures adopted by the European Union to deal with environmental pollution problems such as air and water pollution, decrease in biodiversity which are given in the products of above mentioned projects.

This project will also lead a new approach which provides us to comprehend the difference between empirical and ethical thinking. These two kinds of thinking are thought to be the same thing. But the first kind of thinking - the empirical- is about how in fact we do live and act. The second kind of thinking - the ethical - is about how we should live and act. The people working in environmental pollution control field have no opportunity to take such training on the new and most recent technologies/methods/directives/principles of environmental issues combined with changing ethical values. Within this perspective, this project will be the avant-gardist for the subsequent projects leading to the quality assurance of the vocational training in Europe. Apart from this, there is a great lack of coordination of the environmental education policies on vocational training and no uniform regularity framework governing how it operates. As well as that, there is weakness in the way in which the legislative provisions are implemented. These are all because of the insufficient cooperation and collaboration with Europe. Thus this project will lead a new approach about the international standardisation of the vocational training programmes and will improve the quality of members of the target group.

The partnership is a very successful as it combines firstly vocational and technical schools, universities, research institutes from different countries of Europe. Those educational institutions will be responsible from the establishment of theoretical framework of the project. Secondly, a VET certified training centre experienced both in ICT and e-learning media; and an engineering company, which is highly experienced on the training of environmental experts and decision makers will be responsible for the development of basic tools and new training materials by using information obtained from educational institutions. And finally, Municipality and Ministry of Environment and Forestry, where most of the decision makers and environmental experts are working. This partnership will allow a large dissemination of ENV-ETHICS Project all around Europe. They are selected according to their experiences in environmental pollution control and environmental ethical issues and also their experiences in European Projects.

The tangible outcomes of the project will comprise of a textbook on environmental ethics (translated to all partners' own languages) containing theoretical aspects as well as case-based studies, a CD-ROM containing the developed teaching materials and a web-site in multiple languages, vocational training courses through blended-learning methodology. Certification will be given at the end of vocational training courses. The evaluation sessions at the end of the each course will be organized to test the success of the products and specifying the lacks.