China Network October 9 (Reporter Zhang Yanling) Recently, the Ministry of Ecology and Environment issued "Ecological Environment and Health Literacy of China Citizens". The China Citizens’ Ecological Environment and Health Literacy released this time is a revision of the China Citizens’ Environmental and Health Literacy (Trial) released in 2013 by the Ministry of Ecology and Environment and organized by the Chinese Society of Environmental Sciences.
Why should it be revised?
Zhu Zhongjun, director of the Environmental Damage Appraisal and Evaluation Center of the Chinese Academy of Environmental Sciences, introduced that the revision changed "environment and health literacy" to "ecological environment and health literacy", aiming to make citizens realize the value of the ecological environment and its impact on health, understand the necessary knowledge of ecological environment protection and health risk prevention, practice a green and healthy lifestyle, and have certain action ability to protect the ecological environment and maintain their own health.
"The compilation team has organized dozens of experts to conduct special seminars. After extensive consultation, item-by-item review and expert argumentation, it took one year to complete the revision work." Zhu Zhongjun said.
The publication of "China Citizens’ Ecological Environment and Health Literacy" provides guidance for systematically popularizing relevant concepts, knowledge, behaviors and skills, guiding citizens to correctly understand the relationship between man and nature, establishing the concept that environment and health are closely related, and mobilizing public forces to protect the ecological environment and maintain their health. It is also an important basis for ecological environment departments, professional institutions, social institutions and mass media at all levels to publicize and educate the public and spread popular science.
In what areas are the revisions made?
Chen Yu, an engineer of the Chinese Society of Environmental Sciences, gave a detailed introduction to the revision. Chen Yu pointed out that "China Citizens’ Ecological Environment and Health Literacy" mainly integrates and reclassifies the overlapping contents in the 2013 edition, and further improves the logical relationship. Its connotation and overall framework are basically consistent with the 2013 edition, and finally 30 items are set up, including 7 "basic concepts", emphasizing correct cognition and scientific understanding of the relationship between environment and health, and highlighting the concept of prevention and sense of responsibility; There are also 13 "basic knowledge" that citizens should know, covering air, water, soil, ocean, biodiversity, climate change, radiation, noise and many other aspects; In addition, there are 10 basic behaviors and skills that citizens should perform, including green and healthy lifestyles and behaviors, as well as skills such as obtaining, understanding and applying relevant information, emergency response, supervision and rights protection.
Chen Yu pointed out that compared with the 2013 edition, in the "basic knowledge" section, concerns about marine environment, biodiversity protection and climate change have been added, and in the "basic behaviors and skills", the relevant contents of green and healthy lifestyles and behaviors have been expanded.
The level of residents’ environmental and health literacy is 12.5%
Chen Yu revealed that in 2018, the Ministry of Ecology and Environment organized and completed the "First Survey on Environment and Health Literacy of China Residents". The questionnaire survey was conducted among 42,015 permanent residents aged 15-69 from 90 counties (districts) and 180 villages (neighborhood committees) in 15 provinces (autonomous regions and municipalities) by multistage cluster random sampling, and 41,404 valid questionnaires were collected.
The survey results show that the overall level of environmental and health literacy of Chinese residents is 12.5% in 2018, which is equivalent to less than 13 out of every 100 people aged 15-69. There are obvious differences among different groups. The level of environmental and health literacy of urban residents is significantly higher than that of rural residents, which are 16.9% and 8.1% respectively. The literacy level of male residents is higher than that of female residents, accounting for 13.9% and 10.9% respectively. People aged 20-29 have the highest level of environmental and health literacy, accounting for 18.3%. In urban and rural areas, people of different sexes and different ages, the literacy level increases obviously with the increase of educational level, and the literacy level of people with junior college or above is the highest, accounting for 28.5%.
According to the survey, we should focus on the problem of "low level of scientific knowledge literacy" in the work of improving literacy level. The basic concepts, basic knowledge and basic skills of residents in China are 25.3%, 5.8% and 25.4% respectively, among which the basic knowledge literacy level is obviously short board, far lower than the basic concepts and basic skills, which also means that the problem of low scientific knowledge literacy level is particularly prominent.
Seven actions to improve public ecological environment and health literacy
It is urgent to improve citizens’ ecological environment and health literacy. Zhu Zhongjun said,Mobilizing the public is the most efficient. Protecting the ecological environment and maintaining health requires both the government’s attention and the personal efforts of every citizen, and mobilizing public forces is the most inclusive and effective measure.
In July 2019, the work of improving residents’ environment and health literacy was included in the Healthy Environment Promotion Action in Healthy China Action (2019-2030). According to the action goal, the level of ecological environment and health literacy of Chinese residents should reach 15% and above and 25% and above respectively in 2022 and 2030.
Zhu Zhongjun said that the survey results in 2018 showed that the overall level was 12.5%, and there was still a certain distance from the target.
He said that in the survey, the public’s correct answer rate to questions such as "a good environment is the foundation of survival and the guarantee of health" is high (close to 80%), but nearly 20% of the respondents can’t correctly understand the basic relationship between environment and health. "Everyone should have these most basic understandings, soThe popularization of basic ideas still needs to be strengthened.. "
Zhu Zhongjun emphasized that the dissemination of basic knowledge should be strengthened. Although many issues involved in the investigation are not difficult, it is not easy to understand scientific knowledge related to air, water, soil, noise and radiation. Ecological environment and health literacy is a new field, and it must also beStrengthen popular science propagandaWork.
The survey shows that among people of all ages, residents aged 15-19 have the lowest level of basic knowledge classification literacy, only 2.2%. Zhu Zhongjun said that the vast majority of this group are students at school. "We can’t ignore the cultivation of young people’s green and healthy lifestyleThey should also strengthen their understanding of basic scientific concepts and knowledge such as risk and exposure. "
Regarding the phenomenon that the environmental and health literacy level of rural residents is significantly lower than that of urban residents, Zhu Zhongjun pointed out that this is related to factors such as the education level of the population, the level of economic development, the attention to environmental issues, and the coverage of publicity and popularization. Therefore, efforts should be made to improve literacy.Go into the countryside and live in the village..
The survey results show that the correct answer rate of respondents to basic scientific knowledge such as risk and exposure is relatively low. Zhu Zhongjun said that risks are always with us, and they are not terrible. The key is how to understand and prevent risks and make their impact on health at an acceptable level. If the publicGenerally mastered the basic scientific knowledge that is helpful to correctly judge environmental and health problems.It will be beneficial to improve the efficiency of risk communication, clarify and avoid the spread of rumors, and resolve environmental-related social problems such as neighborhood effect.
In the next step, we should strengthen the communication of environmental health risks in a way that is easy for the public to understand, accept and participate, guide the rational understanding of risk factors, and enhance the awareness and ability of risk prevention.
In order to improve literacy, the Ministry of Ecology and Environment organized the Chinese Society of Environmental Sciences to draft the Action Plan for Improving Residents’ Ecological Environment and Health Literacy (2020-2022) according to the survey results in 2018, and put forward "establishing a literacy improvement system", "strengthening the capacity building of literacy science popularization", "spreading and popularizing knowledge, behavior and skills", "developing ecological environment health risk communication" and "vigorously improving rural residents’ literacy"7 actions.
"At present, this plan has been issued to the national ecological environment system for organization and implementation." Zhu Zhongjun said.
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