Renowned Japanese physicist Prof Dr Takaya Kawabe visited Al Israa Independent Primary Girls School on Thursday to introduce “Kids’ ISO 14000 Programme” — the most effective environmental education programme today.
The school showed much interest in implementing the programme, which focuses on raising the environmental awareness of children around 10 years of age and empowering them to think as to how and what to do to reduce energy consumption. The school is keen on implementing it by the next academic year.
Dr Kawabe, who is working in the fields of plasma physics and nuclear fusion research, created the programme together with Miyuki Koyama under the Japanese non-profit, non-governmental organisation ArTech, which operates the programme.
The significance of the programme lies in the fact that “environmental education of children and young peoples is now one of the keys to the solution of global environmental problems and for achieving sustainable development,” according to Dr Kawabe.
Young people participating in the programme learn to apply the Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA) cycle at the heart of the ISO 14000 environmental management system standards.
They do so by implementing PDCA in their own homes to measure things such as water and energy consumption, set targets to reduce the negative impact of it, achieve concrete results and compare them with the target and draw lessons from the experience in order to make further improvements.
Children thus learn by experience that they can reduce their negative environmental impact and improve their environmental performance.
The programme has been successful not only in Japan but also in countries such as Australia, South Korea, France, Kuwait and the United States. Through UNESCO, ISO and other bodies it is expanding in the world and ArTech has been receiving requests of its implementation from more than 50 countries.
Dr Kawabe also visited some other institutions, including the Supreme Education Council, Qatar University and the Japan School of Doha, to introduce the programme.
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