Socio-economic and ethical issues in pollution: individual or social responsability? Analysis of textbooks from 16 countries

Abstract

The goal of the present study was to analyse the progression of the Socio-economic and ethical dimensions within the topic pollution, in the textbooks of 16 countries, since the 1st level until the last one before university. Results showed that: i) this dimensions are completely absent in 6 of the analysed countries; ii) among the countries where both dimension are present (predominantly in the Western European countries), the Socio-economic dimension is consistently more present than the Ethical one. The results of the present study indicate that more emphasis need to be given to ethical controversies related to pollution problems. We also analysed the Approaches to solve pollution problems, within the conception Individual vs social associated to the topic of Pollution in textbooks of 16 countries involved in the FP6 European project Biohead-Citizen. Countries that highlight changes in technologies in detriment of changes in individual behaviour are also the same ones that give more attention to socio-economic and ethical controversies.