Climate change and sustainable development perceptions of university students in Lahore, Pakistan

Abstract

The main aim of this study is to assess university students’ perceptions of climate change (CC) and sustainable development (SD). It also reviews existing curricula of various degree programs and obtains students’ opinion on how to integrate these concepts into the curricula and improve teaching methods and students’ learning. In total, 400 students from two of the oldest and renowned public sector higher education institutions (HEIs) in Lahore, Pakistan participated in this study. The results revealed that students have better perceptions of CC than of SD even though very few degree programs cover these concepts in their curriculum. Generally, the students perceived that human beings’ interference with the natural settings through their development actions is the main reason for climate change. They prefer environmental protection over economic growth. It is concluded that the integration of courses on CC and SD and promoting action-oriented case study research in the curriculum of the degree programs being offered by the HEIs can help improve learning. Hence, the HEIs of developing countries with similar socio-economic contexts need to do more to train our future generation of professionals to facilitate achieving the goal of sustainable development.

Keywords:

• Climate change education
• higher education institutions
• students’ perceptions
• sustainable development

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the undergraduate students at the University of Engineering and Technology (UET) and the University of Punjab who shared their learning experiences and perceptions of climate change and sustainable development. This paper is based on a postgraduate research thesis done at the Department of City and Regional Planning, UET, Lahore (Nawaz, 2019).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.