Environmental education goes back a long way.
-the establishment of United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) in 1946
graduatly saw the organisation employing concepts such as'conservation awareness' and 'environmental
awareness' and later on became part of the process of developing environmental education.
-in 1S1, the establishment of the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) was primarily to raise funds for wildlife conservation
and later on began to engage with and influence govemment institutions and other NGOs.
-in 1972, United Nations Conference on the Human Environment held in Stockholm raised concerns for the first
time on matters of environmental concerns which led to the estabtishment of the United Nations Environment
Programme (UNEP).
the first ever international environmental edumtion conference was hosted by the United Nations Educational,
Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) in 1977 in Tbilisi. ln particular, the Tbilisi Declaration noted that
environmental education had to be inter-disciplinary, so that learners could develop a holistic understanding of
environrnental problems. The conference resulted in the declaration of 12 principles which provided guidelines for
the practice of environmental education on global, regional and national scale.
- there were a number of other intemational commissions and reports during the 1980s that influenced the way in
which people viewed the environment such as the Brandt Commission report (1983) entitled Common crisis
North-South: caoperatian for world recovetyi Brundtland reportlll/CED report (1987) entitled Our Cammon
Future; and the Nyerere report (1990) called the Report of the South Cornmr'ssion: the challenge fo fhe Soufh.
Environmental education in the internatianal arena: 1990-2002
-in 1992, the Earth Summit held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, produced principles for education for just and
environmentally sustainable societies, which noted that environmental education was not value-free; it promoted a
particular ethical approach to a world that was ecologically protected and socially just.
-the 2A02 Johannesburg Summit on Sustainable Development gave further emphasis fo the need for
sustainable development and the key role education fias to play in enviranmental prateetion and socral
developrnenL
Pr* 1994 developments in Saath Africa
-in the 1950s an African church leader led community education programmes to slow down soil erosion in the
Transkei region.
-by the 1970s the Wildlife Society of South Africa was taking groups of children to wilderness areas for
educational camps.
-during the 1970s and 1980s a popular form of conservation education focussed mostly on the need to protect
Africa's dwindling wildlife and wildernesses. Over time educators became more conscious of the need to further
explore the interactions between the ecological, sociat, economic, and cultural aspects of the environment, the
need to protect the environment as the basis for human well-being and sustainable livelihoods, and the complex
relations between social and economic development and the improvement of the environment.
-in 1975, the Umgeni Valley Project (UVP) played a major role in the development of environmental education
practice and theory in South Africa.
-in 1982, the first international conference on environmental education in South Africa was held at Treverton
College in Natal and it was a landmark for environmental education in South Africa.
-in 1984, parties who were involved in environmental education in the southem African region, mostly informally,
met in Swaziland and formed the Environmental Education Association of Southern Africa (EEASA). This body
was to become an important force in supporting networking between environmental educators and growing the
field of environmental educa