Perceptions and attitudes

Abstract

People have always cared about the environment, though their perceptions of environmental issues and their attitudes have evolved over the centuries. In the earlier part of this century environmentalism was essentially synonymous with wildlife conservation and considered to be the domain of a prescient, and often privileged, few. Since the 1960s environmentalism has become a movement with widespread popular support and an extensive range of interests. The United Nations Conference on the Human Environment convened in Stockholm in 1972 was a turning point in the history of environmental awareness. Growing public pressure, backed by scientific findings in the late 1960s and early 1970s on the impacts of pollutants and environmental degradation, stimulated the necessary political will. The debate that took place in the early 1970s, based essentially on air and water pollution in the North, brought home the fact that environmental degradation is caused not only by industrialization but by poverty and lack of development. The environmental movement has since become concerned with all aspects of the natural environment: land, water, minerals, living organisms, life processes, the atmosphere, climate, polar ice-caps, remote ocean deeps, and even outer space.