Olga Tarabashkina, Associate Professor, American University of Central Asia (Kyrgyzstan)

Olga’s project aims to research the level of environmental awareness, attitudes, values, perceptions, intentions, and knowledge related to various aspects of environmental protection and resilience needs of young adults in order to identify problem areas/gaps for the subsequent development of appropriate state policy in the field of environmental protection and increase adaptation measures among youth of Kyrgyzstan.

Olga’s project is guided by the following questions: What are the current level of environmental knowledge among young adults in Kyrgyzstan 7 provinces? What are the sources of their environmental knowledge? What factors that lead to different levels of knowledge across 7 provinces?
What is the relationship between knowledge and environmental attitude, behavior and participation among young adults in 7 provinces? What are the knowledge needs of young adults in terms of resilience and adaptation to climate change? What policy actions can help increase knowledge and enhance attitudes as well as behavioral uptake of sustainable behaviors in Kyrgyzstan?

Public Association ‘Students of Kyrgyzstan for Green Economy’ which is very interested in conducting this empirical study with long-lasting consequences for the society and policy making in Kyrgyzstan. The community partner will employ their regional volunteers to collect data and code data once they have been trained by Olga in the research processes to ensure reliability and quality of research data. The Association will serve as a intermediary between researcher and end users and stakeholders.

The implementation of this project will allow Olga to thoroughly investigate multiple dimensions of environmental behavior and cognition and identify problem areas/existing gaps in the field of environmental education and the level of environmental awareness of the young adults of Kyrgyzstan which impede youth from a fully-fledged participation in the green economy.

After summarizing the results, this project will contribute to the development of normative legal acts in the field of environmental education in schools and universities of the country. The Public Association ‘Students of Kyrgyzstan for Green Economy’ (SKGE henceforth) will be responsible for delivering and discussion the results of this research to various stakeholders that can initiate legal acts.

In addition, the SKGE leadership team will draw the attention of government agencies and the international community to increase measures aimed at adapting to climate change among young people, as well as developing new methods and programs on the topic of ecology, climate, biodiversity, etc.