Khaliy I.A. Towards an Environmentally Sustainable Society. In: Life Expectations of the People. Research Series on the Chinese Dream and China’s Development Path. ...

Abstract

Achieving the goal of a clean environment cannot happen spontaneously. A significant portion of environmental problems are not apparent from the start. Many important changes in the wildlife and urban environment are known only to specialists, and may remain invisible to the general population for a long time. Societal and individual attitudes toward wildlife and the immediate habitat also change repeatedly. For instance, during the period of industrialization in the West and Russia, the value of nature was denied, and environmental ideas were not supported by society. In the USSR in the 1930s, nature was only valued in a transformed form, and anthropocentric attitudes were promulgated by state ideology and promoted in the media, literature and films. In other words, extensive efforts were needed not just to create a clean environment, but to raise environmental concerns in the individual and public consciousness. This is how the environmental movement started. Since the 1970s, the government, and more specifically, the environmental authorities, started to engage in environmental education and awareness-building. However, the state was not permanently involved. Social and economic problems quite easily moved environmental concerns to the periphery of public consciousness, even when high levels of pollution and adverse changes in the environment became evident.