Activities in environmental education in the United States during the 1980s are summarized, in terms of audiences involved – formal (school), college/university, and non-formal. Discussion focusses on specific programs and materials, in summary fashion. Trends are noted, and speculative projections into the 1990s are offered.

This year of 1990 is an appropriate time to review the place of environmental education in the Australian school curriculum. After a period in the mid 1980s when environmental issues and political attention to the environment were on the back burner in comparison with economic issues, the environment is again a top international political priority. With Green victories in a number of European elections, even the hitherto unmindful Thatcher government in Britain is claiming an environmental concern and announcing several conservation measures, albeit with rather distant targets compared with a number of their prospective partners in Europe.

The Hawke government in its third term sensed a growing environmental disenchantment among its supporters, and appointed one of its heavy-weights to the Environment portfolio. This move, and the strong action he took over several sensitive issues, were enough to keep the Green preferences in line and ensure in 1990 a fourth, unprecedented Labor term of office.

The first Australian government involving official Green support appeared in Tasmania and in most of the other states the governments have upgraded Conservation and the Environment among their ministries.

Most Australians, according to a poll conducted late in May (The Age, 15 June, 1990), feel that the threat to the environment is real, and that its protection should be put ahead of economic growth. Such strong public support for the environment would have been unthinkable a decade ago, even though the evidence for much of the now widely recognised damage to the Australian and global environment was available.

Over the past decade concern for the environment and, as a consequence, interest in environmental education have undergone a revival in Britain. Interest generated in the late Sixties and early Seventies was followed by a quiescent period during which few significant developments occurred. The publication of the World Conservation Strategy and the UK Response in the early Eighties, coupled with the general realisation that environmental degradation was occurring on a global scale, has caused a substantial increase in environmental interest. Recent developments in the formulation of a National Curriculum in England and Wales have provided a real opportunity to incorporate environmental education into the programs of study for every pupil between the ages of 5 to 16.

The following paper concentrates on the formal education system but important developments are currently taking place in the youth sector. As the National Curriculum proceeds and becomes fully implemented it will further affect higher and further education and environmental education in industry.

Environmental education has become a major concern for many politicians, educators, and parents in Canada. The politics of resource scarcity, environmental deterioration, and failed economic theories have combined to force nations such as Canada to reassess their priorities. Environmentalism has matured to the degree that large numbers of environmentally related contradictions in Canadian society can be traced to patterns of western intellectual thought and debated in terms of differing ideologies relating to population, economic development, government policy making, the legal system, and to education. As we face the 21st century with growing uncertainty and threats to our understandings, our ideas, and our institutions, an environmental perspective may well come to dominate our consciousness and our education.

This paper develops an argument for reform in current environmental education practices within Canada at a time when educational systems in this country are becoming serious about incorporating an environmental perspective. After setting the context within systems of Canadian education, the paper attempts to capture the essence of environmental education activities by means of some broadly based Canadian contributions to the field and by two specific examples. The purpose of these sections is to throw into relief a number of tensions and contradictions in the contemporary theory and practice of environmental education in Canada and to identify a number of issues for debate in light of this experience. Finally, a proposal consistent with authentic principles of socially critical environmental education is suggested as a means of reconceptualising future environmental education activities within Canadian contexts.

In the early 1980s environmental education programs in Latin America and Caribbean school systems had just begun. The first efforts were a straight transfer of programs from other countries, especially the developed countries of the north. Often these programs were not well suited to local needs and issues. Programs now have a much stronger local flavor. Surprisingly, nongovernmental organisations and other institutions not related to the school system have given the greatest impetus to formal environmental education in the region.

For this paper formal education efforts in the Dominican Republic, Peru and Argentina are highlighted. The three projects have been underway for four years and are examples of programs that respond to local teacher needs.

Workshops have been the primary form of training teachers. To increase the effectiveness of training programs in the '90s local support systems for teachers are needed. Environmental education must branch out from the natural sciences to other areas of the curriculum. It must also increase the number of teachers reached by using other delivery systems such as teacher training institutions, radio and video.

In the first part of the paper some features of the international 0ECD/CERI Project “Environment and School Initiatives” are described. The central idea of the project is to support teachers in educational activities that connect the promotion of dynamic qualities (such as initiative and self-confidence) with the promotion of environmental awareness. In the second part the project's philosophy and its educational implications are discussed: The main idea is that the increase in human-produced complexity has created a qualitatively new situation, in which local initiatives, long-term value-orientations and the wide-spread ability to reflect on one's own actions become a matter of survival. For the educational system this means a redefinition of its tasks to include reflective action on their environment by students and teachers and an appreciation of the value complexity of environmental problems.

The Water Analysis Project (WAP) is an environmental research project conceived in the 70s in Mantova, Italy, as a result of a syllabus revision in the chemistry courses of the Istituto Tecnico Industriale “E. Fermi”. Being restricted only to that school at the beginning, the experience, which was run under the sponsorship of Local Authorities, through improvement and expansion, involved four different schools in a pluri-and interdisciplinary investigation.

This report presents an account of a significant example of an Italian E.E. experience, examining the historical and socioeconomic context in which it grew and developed, its objectives, its processes, and its results.