Building Libraries for The Promotion of Environmental Education

The environment has been erroneously perceived as a god’s-given resource to be explored and exploited for production of goods and services necessary for the satisfaction of human needs and comfort. This perception inspired man to engage in breath-taking explorations into the huge vaults of the heavens with ozone layer depletion, green house effect as consequences resulting to global warming, climate change, loss of biodiversity on one hand and pollution, deforestation, flooding, draught, famine, flood, extreme weather events on the other hand, as global catastrophic threats to human kind. These problems have become a major concern of the international community who has called for a new type of education for a better understanding of the complexity of the problems of the environment as well as for effective management of environmental resources. This type of education is referred to as environmental education. This paper explored the library as a medium for the dissemination of knowledge of the environment and its problems. It explored various ways through which knowledge of environmental problems and their prevention is promoted through the instrumentality of the library. It concludes that library as a reservoir of knowledge should be equipped with materials containing information on environmental problems and as well as be made accessible to all humans in every part of the globe.