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The ecological environment is the material basis for the survival of the human social and economic systems and an important guarantee for achieving sustainable development. However, since the industrial revolution, the human society and economy have developed rapidly and material wealth has been greatly satisfied. At the same time, the consumption of natural resources has also increased significantly (Adjei et al., 2021). The increasing reduction and even depletion of non-renewable resources, the excessive use of renewable resources, and the discharge of a large number of toxic and harmful pollutants have led to the deterioration of the ecological environment in many regions, which has triggered a series of ecological and environmental problems (Boca & Saraçlı, 2019), including water and soil loss, expansion of desertification area, grassland degradation, forest area reduction, biodiversity reduction, etc. In the face of the deteriorating ecological environment, which has seriously affected the survival and development of human beings, governments and environmentalists of all countries are increasingly calling for the protection and construction of a beautiful and harmonious ecological environment (аронбаевet et al., 2021).
The western region of China is one of the first regions of human activity. With the continuous migration and natural growth of population since history, the population has increased rapidly, while the excessive growth of population under the trend of excessive reclamation activities, induced the ecological changes in the west, the destruction of ecological environment by agricultural (animal husbandry) activities is increasingly aggravated (Kerr, 2021). The cause of formation of ecological fragile areas in the west should be classified into natural factors and human factors. The poor ecological environment is very prominent in the western region of China. The local natural conditions are poor, the living conditions are difficult, and the infrastructure is weak, resulting in the low living standard of the people. Seventy percent of the poor in China are mainly concentrated here (Chakraborty et al., 2021). For the sake of human survival and development, coupled with some policy guidance mistakes in recent years, the excessive development and utilization of natural resources have led to the increasingly fragile ecological environment of the original evil line in the west.
China's ecological environment is quite fragile, and the fragile ecological environment area accounts for more than 60% of the land area, which seriously hinders the process of realizing sustainable development in China (Elias Roberts, 2020). The huge environmental and health costs of rapid economic growth have become a real and serious problem that the Chinese government is increasingly concerned about (Hekmatpour & Leslie, 2022). College students are a group of contemporary high-level and high-quality young citizens, who shoulder the task of future development and the historical mission of national rejuvenation. Their mastery of environmental protection awareness, environmental protection knowledge and skills, and the ability to solve environmental problems will have a significant impact on the long-term development of the nation (Alonso Fernández, & Regueiro Ferreira, 2022). At the same time, at present, there are still some deficiencies in the education of environmental awareness in colleges and universities (Shafiei et al., 2020). Therefore, the authors have chosen this topic to cultivate the contemporary college students' high sense of responsibility for the future living environment through the research on the education of college students' environmental awareness.