Pixel International Conferences

Ecological education, an imperative of contemporaneity, is addressed to all age groups. In urban areas, ecosystem services, the immaterial and intangible benefits of nature, play a key role in public appreciation of nature and in increasing the quality of life[1]. Ecological planning projects developed at the level of human communities have among their objectives, the ecological exploitation of urban spaces [2]. Urban green spaces, including unused land, are valuable for preserving urban biodiversity [3]. Hosting wild and spontaneous vegetation, they promote citizens' contact with nature. The urban community is generally divided into two currents: the utilitarian and the aesthetic, whose followers focus on the criteria that strictly serve human activities, respectively, the criterion of supporting biodiversity, appreciated by a minority concerned with the well-being of the living things with which they share the urban ecosystem. The whole community, regardless of attitude, looks at these projects as landmarks of ecological education. The case study followed by this article presents the project "Rehabilitation of degraded green spaces and the creation of leisure infrastructure in the area of the banks of the Săsar River", between the desired and the ecological reality. The principle that, at the declarative level, represents the central point of the project, is ecological and refers to "coherent planning, which emphasizes the importance of the river - the structuring axis of the municipality, through quality public spaces that connect the urban and natural environment". Words such as: coherent planning, the river as a structuring axis, the connection between the urban and the natural environment, emphasize and refer to the heightened interest in the river as an ecological support. In fact, both in the description of the project activities and in their implementation, there is a lack of concern for the creation of urban ecosystems that fulfill the dual role of serving human interests and supporting urban biodiversity. Suspecting a false ecological understanding of the problem, both by those responsible for these types of projects and by the general public, and a lack of education in this niche, the study investigates the causes of the differences between the declaratively ecological principles and the reality that ignores them. By interviewing a representative sample of 200 townspeople, we evaluate the level of perception towards the ecological correctness of the adopted solutions. In this way, we consider the analyzed project as a barometer of the level of ecological education of citizens, identifying the limits and educational levels that will have to be improved through the ecological education of adults.