Environmental Safety Culture as the Foundation of Human Environmental Education

Note — This publication examines the potential for transforming the conditions and processes of environmental education that evolved traditionally during the 1990s and 2000s, building on the values, principles, and requirements of environmental safety culture as an integral part of overall safety culture, as well as applying global safety culture best practices, tools, and methods accumulated in the nuclear energy sector, including the experience of the IAEA, WANO, and Rosatom State Corporation.

Definitions

Environmental education is a purposeful, continuous pedagogical process of shaping environmental values, attitudes, behavioral norms, and conscious personal responsibility for the state and protection of the environment (hereinafter — environmental protection), ensuring the priority of environmental safety in both commercial and organizational decision-making as well as in everyday human health and life safety (hereinafter — life safety). The substance of safe environmental education unfolds through related concepts, values, principles, and requirements of environmental safety culture (hereinafter — ESC), alongside socially oriented environmental ethics.

Environmental safety culture (ESC) is the set of characteristics and attributes of environmental and conservation activities within organizations and the behavior of individuals and/or teams which establishes that environmental safety issues, as an overriding priority, receive the attention warranted by their significance for safety, accompanied by unconditional compliance with statutory and regulatory requirements needed to guarantee environmental safety across any activity, including safe sustainable development.

Sustainable development is balanced development ensuring environmental, social, and economic stability, meeting the needs of the present generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs while maintaining a balance among environmental (E), social (S), and governance (G) aspects (collectively — ESG); it is an approach to business and any human activity that combines profit growth with responsibility toward society and the environment, without harming nature. This approach accounts for three core dimensions: economic efficiency, social well-being, and environmental safety. Safe sustainable development within an organization is supported, among other things, by building, advancing, and sustaining a strong ESC. The environmental pillar of sustainable development encompasses rational resource use, pollution prevention, ecosystem conservation, and emissions and waste reduction (in line with the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development (Rio '92), ISO 26000, and the sustainable development ESG frameworks of the Government of the Russian Federation).

Note — International sustainable development goals in business are upheld by environmentally responsible companies that embed sustainability principles and pursue three groups of business objectives (ESG):

• Environmental (E). For example, carbon footprint reduction, energy efficiency, and waste management;
• Social (S). Fostering corporate culture and inclusivity, supporting local communities and teams, and ensuring occupational health and safety;
• Economic (G). Fair, responsible corporate governance and investment, long-term financial stability, and sustainable, safe supply chains.

Key Characteristics of Environmental Education

1. Continuity — begins in early childhood and continues across every stage of life: school, university, professional career, everyday life, and family.
2. Values-driven foundation — builds not merely knowledge about nature, but enduring models of safe environmental thinking, behavior, and environmental safety culture.
3. Personal responsibility — cultivates awareness that every individual affects the state of the environment at work, at home, during leisure, and across digital or in-person media spaces, depending on the maturity and state of environmental safety culture.
4. Environmental ethics — fosters a harmonious, balanced relationship with nature and ecology, replacing an antisocial, consumerist mindset focused solely on unchecked resource extraction and personal gratification at the expense of nature as well as an environmentally conscious society and state.
5. Alignment with safe sustainable development — addresses the interests not only of current generations, but also of future ones, supporting the national ESG goals adopted by the state.

Connection to Environmental Safety Culture

Environmental education is the foundation upon which ESC is built, developed, and sustained. Without environmental education and genuine acceptance of environmental protection values and goals, ESC remains a collection of formal principles and rules lacking authentic human commitment or awareness of why ESC is vital for life safety. Environmental education serves as the cornerstone of safe sustainable development toward achieving the national ESG agenda adopted by the Government of the Russian Federation.

The essence of environmental education and its place in the educational process are directly tied to building, developing, and maintaining an adequate level of ESC among people, complementing the foundations of socially oriented environmental ethics. Environmental education is purposeful values formation through pedagogical processes that instill lasting, environmentally safe values, attitudes, motivations, and behavioral patterns in people of all ages—ensuring responsible, conscious, and safe interaction with the natural environment not merely in compliance with legislation, but also in response to emerging challenges, risks, and hazards that demand rapid improvement, risk management, and nonconformity prevention. Environmental education involves translating environmentally safe values into everyday practice by acquiring durable skills for synergistic coexistence in the surrounding world—both for every individual and, ultimately, for society and humanity as a whole—reliably securing safe sustainable development and the long-term success of human civilization for current and future generations through the preservation of wild nature and natural resources on Earth for years to come.

Unlike environmental training (imparting knowledge, practical skills, and readiness for independent action) and environmental development (unlocking personal leadership potential and environmental competencies), environmental education primarily shapes a person's core values, sense of meaning, and foundational culture of safe thinking and behavior. It builds socially oriented environmental ethics, environmentally safe convictions, and an emotional and cultural zero tolerance toward environmental violations—including personal accountability for the state of the environment affected both by enterprises (in pursuit of business goals) and by individuals (in daily life).

Thus, the overarching goal of environmental education is for society and national leaders to replace an antisocial, consumerist attitude toward nature and its resources with a conscious paradigm of environmentally safe, harmonious, and balanced interaction between people, businesses, society, and the state on one side, and a safe, healthy environment on the other.

Place of Environmental Education in the Educational Process

The educational process traditionally comprises three interconnected components:

1. Training and instruction — building knowledge, skills, readiness for independent action, and specialized competencies.
2. Values-based education — shaping core values, beliefs, attitudes, and behavioral norms.
3. Personal development — unlocking intellectual, creative, and personal potential.

Environmental education permeates all three components, yet holds a distinctive place within the values-shaping pillar as a core driver that cultivates safe environmental thinking and behavior, transforming hazardous environmental attitudes into safe ones. It is delivered continuously and consistently, starting in preschool and continuing through school, university, and the workplace:

• Preschool and school years — foundational environmental ethics and primary values are instilled through visual learning, play, adult role modeling, and environmentally oriented emotional intelligence skills.
• University years — lasting convictions and professional environmental competencies are developed within Life Safety courses and/or related environmental safety curricula.
• Corporate employees and public officials — both ESC and environmental management systems are built, advanced, and maintained through safety briefings, mentoring, regulatory frameworks, internal corporate standards, professional upskilling, and engaging not only designated personnel, but all caring individuals who actively participate in conservation initiatives and environmental missions.

Connection to Environmental Safety Culture

Environmental education is the bedrock of ESC. Without it, safety culture remains purely formal, where rules are followed only under supervision, pressure, or compulsion rather than out of conviction or a desire to continuously improve environmental protection. It is values-based education that moves a person from the pathological (first) or reactive (second) maturity level under the Hudson model to the systematic (calculative), proactive, and ultimately generative maturity levels, where prioritizing environmental safety becomes an internal value rather than an external mandate. Environmental education is not an add-on to training, but its core meaning when shaping a safe relationship with nature and ecology. It is what sustains environmentally safe thinking and behavior over the long term.

Core Approaches to Environmental Education

Environmental education is viewed as a continuous, systematic pedagogical process of shaping values, attitudes, and behavioral models dedicated to prioritizing environmental safety and sustainable development, including in the interests of future generations. It spans every age group—from preschoolers to working professionals as well as non-working citizens such as retirees—and is implemented through several key approaches.

1. Values-Driven Approach

At the heart of this approach lies cultivating a conscious, responsible, and environmentally safe attitude toward nature as a core value—rather than a checklist of rules or volumes of opaque, multi-page regulatory decrees and orders. The values-driven approach entails:

• Shifting from a consumerist mindset to a paradigm of harmonious, balanced, and environmentally safe interaction between humans and the environment for both living and future generations, grounded in preserving nature and natural resources over the long term.
• Nurturing safe environmental ethics from early childhood into old age (using age-appropriate tools, methods, and best practices proven through positive experience and human factors management, particularly environmentally oriented emotional intelligence skills).
• Personal role modeling by adults at home and/or managers at work as a primary leadership tool for engaging people in environmental safety.

2. Systematic (Integrative) Approach

Environmental education is embedded into the broader education system while integrating foundational environmental values, principles, and safety culture requirements. Safe environmental education does not exist in isolation from ESC. Achieving this requires:

• Integrating ESC values, principles, and requirements into Life Safety curricula, natural sciences, continuing professional development courses, and related programs.
• Establishing alignment with environmental management systems (such as ISO 14001) and/or sector-specific operational frameworks, for example based on IAEA principles in the nuclear energy sector.
• Embedding a safe environmental dimension across every layer of organizational culture—from corporate strategy and executive objectives down to the daily mindset and behavior of every frontline employee to uphold the priority of environmental safety.

3. Competency-Based Approach

The goal is not merely to transfer environmental safety knowledge and skills, but to build durable, safe environmental competencies—specifically:

• Developing a clear understanding of the severity and likelihood of environmental risks and operational aspects without harming nature or depleting natural resources (for instance, through systematic risk management aligned with ISO 31001 and ISO 14001).
• Building foundational critical thinking and decision-making skills in favor of environmental protection and ecology, grounded in ESC as well as environmental outreach and training.
• Teaching people how to identify environmental nonconformities and issues, report them transparently, and manage them safely through environmentally focused safety management systems.

4. Action-Oriented Approach

Shaping values through hands-on practice, personal participation, and environmentally oriented emotional intelligence rather than passive absorption of information—specifically:

• Active learning methods: case studies, business simulations and quizzes, environmental projects, field observations, and more.
• Participation in environmental volunteering, conservation drives, and dedicated green teams.
• Forming an enduring habit of safe environmental thinking and behavior as an everyday norm (reinforcing safe conditioned responses that support both automatic habits and critical thinking through repeated environmentally safe actions, initiatives, and communications).

5. Outreach Approach

Extending the values, principles, and requirements of environmental culture beyond educational institutions and industrial sites—for example, to local communities near high-hazard facilities, as well as environmentally focused NGOs, public authorities, and online communities. This approach can be delivered through:

• Public awareness campaigns via community venues, media outlets, public events, social networks, blog posts, and other digital publications and public appeals.
• Engaging enterprise employees—including contractors operating at high-hazard facilities, along with their families and close circles—in upholding environmental safety through their own initiative and resources.
• Building a network of environmental safety leaders, a peer support community, and a unified conservation driving force through civic organizations, environmental competency centers, online communities, and social media.

6. Leadership Approach

Environmental education cannot succeed without visible safety commitment from senior management and safety leaders. To unite and engage leaders in advancing environmental safety and sustainable development:

• Organizational executives demonstrate personal commitment to the values, principles, and requirements of environmental safety and nature conservation.
• Educator-leaders and scholars at academic institutions initiate curriculum updates that integrate foundational ESC values, principles, and requirements alongside pressing challenges in environmental ethics.
• Open, honest feedback and reduced power distance on all pressing environmental protection issues are actively cultivated across every hierarchical level in companies, government bodies, and society.

Conclusion

All six approaches to environmental education are interconnected and mutually reinforcing. They deliver the greatest impact when applied holistically—addressing values, knowledge, skills, hands-on practice, and leadership simultaneously while embedding core environmental safety principles and requirements. It is this comprehensive approach to environmental education that gives individuals and organizations the foundation for a resilient ESC.

Environmental education as a system is a purposeful, continuous, and managed pedagogical process that builds a systematic, environmentally safe attitude toward nature, safe environmental thinking, and lasting patterns of responsible behavior toward the environment. Environmentally safe systematic governance is grounded in applicable standards and statutory regulations defining mandatory environmental principles and requirements—as well as procedures for applying them safely in corporate and community conservation efforts—in line with both national laws and international conventions, while responding to emerging societal challenges and expectations.

In the context of building, advancing, and sustaining ESC, systematic environmental education represents the values-shaping pillar of a broader, human-centric environmental learning system. Rather than merely imparting knowledge, skills, and operational autonomy, it drives deep cultural transformation by instilling new environmentally safe attitudes, values, and critical as well as automatic thinking skills—sustaining safe environmental behavior both during routine, comfortable operations and under high-stress conditions, hazardous incidents, or emergencies.

Goals of Systematic Environmental Education

1. Shaping a safe environmental worldview — conscious recognition of the inseparable interdependence among individuals, society, and nature; shifting from a consumerist view of the environment to harmonious, balanced interaction that actively supports the biosphere and restores natural ecosystems.
2. Advancing safe environmental ethics — cultivating personal accountability for environmental safety, zero tolerance toward environmental violations, and readiness to act to preserve nature and natural resources for future generations.
3. Building safe environmental thinking and behavior — including lasting everyday habits such as waste segregation, resource conservation, and compliance with environmental rules both at work and at home.
4. Supporting national ESG priorities — leveraging environmental education as a practical driver for safe sustainable development and advancing the environmental agenda of the Government of the Russian Federation and society.

Core Pillars of the Environmental Education System

The environmental education system addresses three interconnected dimensions of human psychophysiology:

1. Cognitive (knowledge-based), including:
   • Fundamentals of environmental safety and environmental protection.
   • Regulatory frameworks (such as Federal Law No. 7-FZ "On Environmental Protection", ISO 14001, and other environmental laws and standards).
   • Hazardous waste classifications and lifecycle management of waste and secondary resources (circular economy).
   • Environmental risks and operational aspects.
   • ESC principles and requirements integrated into environmental management systems (as well as other management frameworks that uphold environmental safety as a top priority).
2. Values and motivation (formative):
   • Building commitment to and awareness of environmental safety as a fundamental life safety value—establishing the prevailing conviction that safety takes precedence over short-term profit or any other commercial or organizational targets in the decisions and actions of managers and staff alike.
   • Developing environmentally safe moral maturity, accountability, and environmental ethics in support of environmental protection.
   • Engaging people in conservation initiatives, including through personal role modeling by leaders and mentors.
   • Public outreach, environmental volunteering, and grassroots advocacy—such as reshaping unsafe mass attitudes on social media and across online spaces into environmentally safe thinking and behavior.
3. Behavioral (practical):
   • Consistent habits for safely handling waste and resources, including recyclables and secondary materials.
   • Ability to spot environmental nonconformities, report them honestly, and manage them systematically while keeping environmental safety top of mind at work.
   • Applying ESC principles in everyday life—at work, at home, with family, during leisure, and in public spaces.

Role Within the Overall Educational Process

Environmental education is a cross-cutting, continuous function of modern education dedicated to upholding environmental safety:

• It begins in preschool, deepens progressively through school, vocational education and training (VET), and university, and continues among industrial employees as well as active retirees and community volunteers.
• It is integrated into academic subjects (above all Life Safety, ecology, and natural sciences), extracurricular activities, and community outreach.
• It complements training: whereas training imparts knowledge, qualifications, and technical competencies, values-based education shapes core values, attitudes, and principles—without which knowledge never translates into environmentally safe behavior.
• It continues inside organizations through corporate culture, safety briefings, self-assessments and/or independent assessments of ESC maturity, and visible environmental safety leadership from executives and committed employees alike.

Key principle for successfully applying environmental education tools, methods, and best practices: environmental education delivers real results only when applied systematically and tailored to the specific context and moment, operating continuously throughout a person's conscious life and reinforced by the personal example and active engagement of influential leaders who embody environmental safety knowledge, experience, and competence—from teachers in schools and universities to C-suite executives in industry, senior public officials, and civic leaders. Isolated, one-off campaigns lacking systematic follow-through and a solid values foundation will never build durable ESC thinking and behavior capable of shaping both current environmental safety performance and long-term sustainable development and conservation in the interests of national environmental security.