ISSN 2277-0852; Volume X, Issue X, pp. xxx-xxx; September, 2013 Online International Journal of Arts and Humanities ©2013 Online Research Journals Full Length Research Article Available Online at http://www.onlineresearchjournals.org/IJAH Murals in Urban Space for Public Education on Environmental Degradation Nana Afia Opoku-Asare Department of Art Education, College of Art and Social Sciences, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi, Ghana. E-mail: naopokuasare@gmail.com ; afia_asare@yahoo.co.uk . Received 2 August, 2013 Accepted 7 September, 2013 This article reports on a mural painting project meant to document indiscriminate waste disposal, felling of trees, burning of car tyres, and pollution of water bodies at Offinso, Ghana, as a permanent exhibition for public education on environmental degradation. Community ownership for protecting the murals was assured by involving local students and traders to execute three juxtaposed compositions depicting different sources of degradation in the community’s market and a school. From initial pencil sketching of content images through to completion of the murals, the project attracted much public attention and offered a social platform for conversation on local government action on waste management and sanitation in the township. Official response was the removal of piled up refuse near the market, construction of a concrete compartment and provision of a skip to contain waste generated from trading. Unfortunately, no official requests backed public calls to replicate the project in other communities. Keywords: Public education, environment, degradation, murals, urban space, Ghana. INTRODUCTION Societies everywhere are closely and inextricably linked to the natural environment in which they are found. Greater demands placed on the environment by an ever increasing human population is putting a great strain and drain on the earth’s limited natural resources. Environmental degradation is a term that has been used to describe a situation in which the natural environment is damaged, it can also be used to refer to damage to the land, water or the air, a loss of biodiversity or loss of natural resources in an area [1]. Environmental degradation, which includes depletion of renewable and non-renewable resources and pollution of air, water and soils, can act on social integration indirectly through the constraints that it puts on productive activities, and also have direct social impacts [2]. Environmental degradation is therefore a serious threat to the lives of people, animals and plants, which makes it imperative for action to stop further degradation from occurring. Causes of environmental degradation include inappropriate land use, over-cultivation, over grazing and pollution. Root causes of environmental degradation include poor government policies, foreign debt and unfair land tenure. Indiscriminate disposal and handling of waste also lead to environmental degradation in terms of air, water and soil pollution, and destruction of the ecosystem, which pose great risks to public health [3]. Environmental pollution is also more than just a health issue, it is a wider social issue in that pollution has the potential to destroy homes and communities. This raises concern over the impact of environmental pollution on public health as a result of expanding human population coupled with insufficient and inappropriate development in both developing and developed nations. This is why the International Decade of Natural Disaster Reduction (IDNDR) insists that environmental protection, as a component of sustainable development, and consistent with poverty alleviation, is imperative in the prevention and mitigation of natural disasters [4]. Managing environmental degradation involves the application of acquired knowledge about the environment with the aim of reducing, conserving or preventing further degradation which is considered the purview of environmental science [5]. However, environmental science is inadequate for solving the problem of environmental degradation and pollution. Because living in healthy environmental conditions is acknowledged as a