This thesis examines young people's attitudes to some aspects of sustainable development.The focus is on attitudes to preservation and to utilization of nature and also to solidarity andto equal distribution of resources. Hence the ecological, social and economic dimensions ofsustainable development are examined in the same survey. The study is aiming to examinehow the attitudes are distributed according to sex, educational programmes and urban/ruralliving as well as to examine how the values, from which the attitudes emanate, are correlatedwith each other.The results show that young female students in theoretical programs and students who livein larger cities are most supportive of nature preservation. The same pattern recurs with evengreater clarity on the attitudes to solidarity. Attitudes to utilization of nature can also be distinguishedclearly between the sexes by young men having more positive attitudes to utilizationthan young women. However, the differences between educational programmes andbetween students from urban and rural areas are clearly smaller than when it comes to attitudesto preservation and to solidarity. Attitudes to equal distribution of recources exhibitirregular patterns. Young women have more positive attitudes than young men but the linksbetween attitudes to equality and educational programme or rural/urban living, are not pointingin any clear direction. The results also show that there is a clear and positive correlationbetween positive attitudes to nature preservation and a willingness to show solidarity with awide circle of people. Those who say they care for nature also say that they are prepared tocare for other people.

Made available in DSpace on 2014-12-17T15:12:13Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 NelsonC_DISSERT.pdf: 3414305 bytes, checksum: a4b4a76f72715b4b6ad26c138e547946 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2010-08-30 / Many environmental ethics thinkers bear the existing ecological crisis is resultig from the fact that both, our thoughts and our actions would be antropocentric. It means that they (our thoughts and our actions) would have the human needs and wishes satisfaction as their only goals. However, a careful investigation about the relationship among humans could perhaps unveil that we are not antropocentric yet. The aim of this work is to enlighten this: whether we think and act in an antropocentric way as it seems to be largely accepted. It seems that we have found a satisfatory answer to the question / Grande parte dos pensadores da ?tica ambiental credita a crise ecol?gica da atualidade ao fato de que tanto o pensamento quanto as a??es dos seres humanos seriam antropoc?ntricos, ou seja, teriam como objetivo ?nico a satisfa??o de necessidades e desejos dos pr?prios homens. No entanto, uma cuidadosa investiga??o sobre a rela??o que os humanos mant?m entre si poderia revelar que talvez n?o sejamos verdadeiramente nem sequer antropoc?ntricos. O objetivo deste trabalho ? tentar trazer ? luz mais conhecimentos sobre isto: se de fato pensamos e agimos de forma antropoc?ntrica, como ? amplamente aceito. E parece que conseguimos nos aproximar de uma resposta satisfat?ria para a quest?o