Publications

Today Shapes Tomorrow: Environmental Education for a Sustainable Future - A Discussion Paper

Environment Australia, January 1999

Appendix 1
Environmental Education - Historical Background:

Efforts to define environmental education as a specific endeavour began in the 1960s.

They were given international support at the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment held in Stockholm in 1972, where participating governments recommended that it be recognised and promoted on an international scale through the United Nations.

One of the initial tasks was to develop some consensus on what environmental education could and should become, and to assist governments in implementing relevant programs as soon as practicable.

Two major conferences, supported by regional meetings of experts, were hosted by the newly formed UNESCO-UNEP International Environmental Education Programme.

The purpose of the first (Belgrade, 1975) was to draft concepts of and a vision for environmental education. The second, an Intergovernmental Conference on Environmental Education (Tbilisi, 1977), formally approved the scope and action plans put forward from the previous conference.

The provisions of the 'Tbilisi Declaration on the role, objectives and characteristics of environmental education', appended to this document, remain in wide international use and have sustained their role as a guiding influence over the past two decades.

Other major milestones include:

• The IUCN World Conservation Strategy (1980) suggested requirements for human survival and prosperity, putting forward the conservationist concept of sustainable development.

• Our Common Future (1988) was the name of the report published by the World Commission on Environment and Development, chaired by the Prime Minister of Norway, Mrs Brundtland. It emphasised the relationship between the under-developed nature of parts of the world, and existing social and environmental problems. The report is a survey of the planet's health, presenting the problems of atmospheric pollution, desertification, over-population, over-consumption, water shortages, poverty and under-development.

• Agenda 21 (1992) The United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro established further strategies for a sustainable future. Chapter 36 of the action plan adopted by the Conference, Agenda 21, focused on public education, awareness and training and confirms the role of education and the importance of positioning environmental education in the perspective of sustainable development.

• UNESCO Thessaloniki Declaration (1997), Educating for a Viable Future: a multidisciplinary vision for concerted action sought to further clarify the concept of education for sustainable development. It presented sustainability as an ethical and moral imperative and the objective to which education should devote itself as an instrument of choice. Education is described as an ongoing process aimed at developing the capability of adapting to rapid changes in the world, but first and foremost as a process of transmitting knowledge and information to make the public understand the problems and to stimulate awareness.

During the same period, individuals and groups, both within and outside formal education systems and agencies, began to generate new emphases in their educational work, finding and expressing different focal points and relationships as well as a new urgency in their treatment.

This groundswell helped institutionalise environmental education in formal settings and inspire the rising activism of the voluntary and community environmental groups which have contributed so much.