'Green champions' for government ministries

A new environmental education research centre, aimed at fostering awareness of the environment, organising training courses in environment education and training environment research consultants, was opened yesterday.

Paul Pace, the centre's director, said the aims of the Centre for Environmental Education and Research (Ceer) will be, among other things, to coordinate a national strategy on environmental education, both on a formal level and on an informal level.

"Besides enabling Maltese and foreigners to carry out research in the environmental field thanks to the arrangement it has made with six other universities in Europe, the centre will also take care of public information programmes linked to governmental and non-governmental institutions," Dr Pace said.

He said the centre has already had a number of requests from students who want to take up a post-graduate or doctoral degree in environmental education, which will also be possible through distance learning.

"The present trend is that both private industry and even governments are moving towards adopting environmentally friendly strategies. This makes environmental research and ethics even more important," Dr Pace said.

He said the aims of environmental education were to increase awareness about the economic, political, social and ecological dimensions of the environment and to provide opportunities for the Maltese to have access to information and learn about the environment.

The centre, which was jointly set up by the Ministry for Rural Affairs and the Environment, the University of Malta, the Education Ministry and the Malta Environment and Planning Authority, was officially opened at the Council Room of the university with the signing of a memorandum of understanding. It will be financed by all parties.

Based at the ex-primary school in Fawwara, limits of Siggiewi, it will form part of the university's Faculty of Education.

Giving an example of how the government intended to utilise the centre, Environment Minister George Pullicino said it had decided to set up a post of "green champion" in all its ministries, to be trained by the centre.

These people will have a duty to create awareness of the need to maintain a good environment in ministries, to carry out environmental audits and to see, for example, how waste could be reduced.

The centre will also cater for requests by local industry to have such champions. Private industry introduced such posts long ago and, with the increasing demand to implement environmentally friendly strategies, the demand for such posts was likely to increase, Mr Pullicino said.

Education Minister Louis Galea said the centre was another positive step towards strengthening the country's human resources and to create training facilities that meet the demands of a stringent and competitive market.