An Assessment of Environmental Awareness in Selected Areas of Jos North Local Government Area of Plateau State

ABSTRACT

Environmental awareness is understanding the fragility of our environment, its susceptibility to the devastating impact of human activities and the how to protect and preserve it. The research work assessed the Environmental Awareness in selected areas of Jos North Local Government area of Plateau State as its objective. The survey covered a sample population of 300 drawn from the three selected areas namely; Terminus (CBD), Faringada/University of Jos and Tudun Wada areas. The studied variables included the demographic characteristics of respondents including their ages, sex, educational attainment, family size, types of energy sources for home and industrial use, environment predispositions, knowledge of localised and general environmental facts and issues. The result showed that of the respondents, 42.86% are secondary school students, 68.22% have attained tertiary level of education, 46.72% comply with views on proper waste disposal, 38.66% dump waste into the stream, 35.37% and 27.95% of households use electricity from the mains and kerosene for cooking while 4.80% and 13.68% reported their planting and felling trees respectively. The results further showed that of the respondents, 61.57% do not ride bicycle, 99.56% use some form of renewable energy, 61.28% crave green life style while 67.62% and 1.75% rely on electricity from the mains and on solar panel as primary source of energy generation. The null hypotheses I, II and III were rejected at 0.0005 (p<.05), degrees of freedom = 3,3 and 1, p-values = 48.023, 190.614 and 24.563 with respondents of tertiary level education having the highest number for knowledge of environmental awareness, age range of 36 – 55 years having the highest number of environmentally friendly life style and who received enlightenment on environmental issues through informal education higher than those who received enlightenment through formal education respectively.

Keywords: Assessment, Environmental, Awareness, Energy, Climate, Population

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