Investigation of environmental attitudes and behaviors of environmental experts in local goverments

Nowadays, destructive impacts of environmental problems are heavily felt in the world inspite of global policies. Therefore, in addition to global efforts; responsibilities, authorization and competence of local authorities becoming more and more important.As it is known, by the laws numbered 5216 and 5393, authorisation and responsibilities of local authorities are increased on environmental issues. However competencies and effectiveness of local authorities technically and financially should be investigated.Along this line, it is aimed to measure awareness on environmental problems, environmental commitments towards behavioral changes,environmental attitudes and awareness of environmental problems in Turkey of local authoritys staff. Questionnaires were given both staff working for environmental related departments and other non-technical departments to see the difference among them.It is found out that, there is no statistically significant difference between municipality staff working for environmental departments and other departments. As the results are examined one by one based on questions (not based on all questions as a scale), it is questioned that; `environmental protection or economic development has the first priority for the staff. As expected, people working for environmental departments of municipalities are mostly give priority to environmental protection as opposed to people working in non-technical departments. However, in general most of the municipalities staff (% 91) are agree on we have to protect environment for ourselves and for future generations. In general, mean scores for environmental attitudes are towards environmental protection.