This paper focuses on efforts to promote environmental education andcommunity mobilization around environmental issues in Hong Kong. It is primarily concerned with efforts directed at the broader community(i.e. the population as a whole) rather than with environmental education through formal school and college curricula. The paper draws ona recently completed study commissioned by the Environmental Campaign Committee, the principal source of financial support for such efforts undertaken by environmental NGOs, community groups and educationalinstitutions in Hong Kong. The study examined how and to what effectthe Committee had used its financial resources between 1994-1999. Italso examined international experience with a view to recommending changes in the overall approach to environmental education and community mobilization initiatives and their funding in Hong Kong. The papersuggests that the existing approach to community wide environmental education and its funding in Hong Kong have suffered from various weaknesses, most notably the absence of an integrated and goal-oriented strategy, an over-reliance on a `top-down' campaign-based approach, afailure to establish explicit linkages with the concept of sustainable development and to ground initiatives at the local neighborhood and community levels, and a preoccupation with the financial inputs provided to support this work at the expense of effective monitoring andauditing of project outputs and benefits.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13504500109470071]