European Journal of Biomedical and Pharmaceutical Sciences

THE PERCEPTION OF THE CLIMATE CHANGE AMONG STUDENTS IN HIGHER EDUCATION AT IBN ZOHR UNIVERSITY, MOROCCO

Nejmeddine Mohamed*, Aourir Mohamed and El Ouizgani Hassan

ABSTRACT

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), encouraged the governments to educate, inform and involve citizens in the making of policies that mitigate and adapt to the climate change. To this purpose, the role of the education system is crucial in improving the awareness and influencing the behaviour of the population toward the issue of climate change. The aim of this study is to assess the knowledge and the perception of the students attending Ibn Zohr University in Agadir, Morocco. This study involved 1017 students, attending the faculty of science. The participants were aged 22 years old, in average; among them 47% were female and 29 % were from rural areas. Our results, demonstrated a wide difference in the perception of students on the climate change. The students were well informed about the climate change. Indeed, the majority (90%) of them believed that the climate change issue is a reality. However, when asked to indicate more precisely the causes and the consequences of the climate change, they showed the limitation of their knowledge and the inaccuracy of their perception. This study revealed the limitation of the higher education system on implementing a coherent and consistent programme on the climate change topics that improve the awareness of the next generation of decision maker.

Keywords: Perception, climate change, global warming, students and Higher education.