“Environment Is Like Nature”: Opinions Of Children Attending Forest Kindergarten About The Concept Of Environment

Abstract

Today, the concepts of nature and environment are frequently used interchangeably. However, environment refers to a broader order including physical, social and artificial environments (Atasoy, 2015). While the concept of environment is used mainly in the meanings of “setting” and “place of residence” and considered as the “sum of natural, economic and cultural values”, nature is defined as “the unity of settings which consists of organic and inorganic matters and where people are interacting with each other” (UNEP, 1978). Although other entities in nature depend on other living or non-living elements in the system, very few affect the environment as adversely as human beings. Various actions of people first started to change their close environments and then their distant environments and in turn started to change nature and the balance of nature has started to deteriorate due to environmental problems (Orr, 1994). People creating environmental problems try to cope with both these problems and negative events brought about by the changing order of nature. Especially in rapidly growing cities, the widespread use of industrialization along with technological developments causes people to change the environment negatively (Roth, 2002). People cannot recognize that they are creating environmental problems by forgetting that they are a part of nature, getting distanced from nature and overexploiting natural resources (Wilson, 1993). This is not only a serious threat to Abstract