This paper attempts to link four themes which are interrelated, but not often discussed together in local sustainability discourses. They are: the tension between achieving both environmental quality and human equality; the possibilities offered by Local Agenda 21 (LA21); what a sustainable community or society might look like and some good practice guidelines for local governments in their pivotal role as key facilitators of local sustainability.

Environmentalists and environmental educators are good on notions of what they perceive as ‘environmental quality’, but are poor, or very poor on notions of ‘human equality’. Human equality has always been an implicit agreement as opposed to an explicit goal, safely tucked away in the notion of ‘quality of life’.

One of the guiding principles of LA21 is that people normally excluded from the decision making process (women, indigenous people and young people) need to be integrally involved in decision making within a framework which stresses the importance of public participation. The reason for this inclusive form of participation is that these groups are seen as having had little impact on the production of local environments, although they are sometimes disproportionately affected by them, by virtue of their social role.

Using a set of 13 themes that were developed by community consultations In Britain that would feature in a sustainable community or society, the paper looks at the potential for integrating quality and equality concerns. The paper finishes by looking at some good practice guidelines or ways that local governments, as decision makers nearest local peoples, could be integrating quality and equality concerns into emerging local sustainability strategies.

How learners come to grips and can transform their thinking about something extremely complex such as environmental issues are addressed with this research. It is argued that the qualities of the visual mode of information processing are of particular relevance for cognition in the environmental context. This paper reports on a study of the photographic experience of nineteen participants who worked individually on an environmental photography project of their choice over a period of up to ten weeks. It was found that on completion of their project, the participants' conceptualisations of their topics became more differentiated, complex and defined; multiple perspectives were constructed and their own positions and feelings clarified. Above all, a notion of optimism emerged after Initial conceptualisations of environmental issues as issues of pollution, degradation, violation and death. This paper discusses the cognitive potential of the visual mode for the development of environmental thinking and presents some examples of conceptual shifts through the photographic work.

This article is critical of the Infusion of pseudo-spiritualities in the form of non-legitimised indigenous wisdom and activities in environmental education. Drawing on a definition of true ecospirituality, the doctrine of the world soul, a teaching from western traditions, is presented as a viable alternative in the search for re-enchantment. Implications for environmental educators are addressed.

In what sense might nature based tourism be considered education for sustainability? “Educational” confers an implied worthiness which may seem to offset the environmental costs of tourism. Moreover, nature-based tourism may indeed have an important educational role to play. This paper examines the role of “education” in ecotourism discourse, and argues that a predominance in ecotourism of an overly simplified set of educational concepts. These fail to convince that “educational” nature based tourism provides a significant contribution to education for sustainability, and equally fail to establish the necessity for tourism as a means to those educatonal ends which are achieved. The paper concludes with a discussion of some of the considerations which a more serious consideration of nature based tourism as education would have to take into account.

This paper uses the work of Weber and Foucault to explore the ways in which environmental education may operate as a site for forming and maintaining particular ethical competencies which most environmental educators argue are necessary in order to live in an ‘environmentally sustainable' manner. Environmental education practices, as evidenced in the Earthkeepers program, are examined to show how environmental education may be working in quite particular ways to construct specific ethical abilities and competencies in students. It is argued that we need to be far more concerned with and aware of the actual means we use to encourage students to live in an ‘environmentally sustainable' fashion.

The genesis and development of environmental education in the People's Republic of China is described. Background information about the education system and about environmental issues are summarised. Some key factors which have proven to be obstacles to progress, in terms of environmental education, are identified and some thoughts about future prospects are outlined.

This paper highlights issues identified in a study that explored the perceptions of secondary pre-service teachers, from Key Learning Areas (KLAs) that are traditionally and non-traditionally linked to environmental education. Perceptions shared by these pre-service teachers illustrated that they held views about the nature and scope of environmental education that could limit their practice as potential environmental educators. They also shared perceptions about constraints to the implementation of environmental education policy into practice. Implications for pre-service teacher education are discussed in light of these findings.

After more than twenty years of contemporary environmental education, there is still an inferior representation of it in schools. By 1990, UNESCO recognised that to improve the effectiveness of teacher implementation of environmental education in schools, teachers needed training. To date, there is insufficient research into teacher training in environmental education that could provide insights into teacher understanding and how to positively change teacher understandings about environmental education. The aim of this research was to document and examine the changes in teacher understandings of environmental education during an in-service training program in environmental education.

To examine teacher change in detail, this research used a qualitative and naturalistic inquiry methodology while using a case study approach. The case study showed that teacher understanding was complex and affected by many factors that contribute to personal and professional growth, development and learning.

Based on a review of NSW and Victorian education materials, we conclude that the following three issues are neglected within education about climate change, and should be included in future syllabuses: (1) there are large disparities in per-capita greenhouse gas emissions between industrialised and developing countries. Hence, international equity and its implications for Australians must be addressed. (2) There is a considerable gap between the outcome of Australian emissions abatement, and reductions, which are necessary to achieve an ecologically sustainable and internationally equitable emissions level. Given the absence of adequate technological and political incentives, the potential of individual responses must be further explored. (3) Responsibility for climate change is not restricted to emissions from households and private cars, but must be extended towards emissions associated with the personal consumption of goods and services.

This paper uses a two part analysis of a new syllabus document developed by the International Baccalaureate Organisation (IBO) for its Diploma in the area of environmental studies. The environmental analysis Is based on the need for concepts to support sustainability. Key ideas in this model are natural systems of flows of energy, cycles of materials and webs of life and human impact on these natural systems. This analysis suggests that some concepts for sustainability, such as soil and water as basic resources, are not covered adequately and that the identification of the syllabus as a science precludes essential economic and social sciences considerations and the dominance of the methodology of manipulation. Using the Habermasian technical, practical and emancipatory interests as analytical categories, serious difficulties are identified. These include the likely lack of congruence of the syllabus with the advertised philosophy of the Diploma and the fundamental technical interest of control expressed in the syllabus. Taken together, It is probable that in many teachers' hands students may inadvertently learn about exploitation rather than sustainability of the environment. Modifications to the syllabus are proposed.

Land management is often a three-way partnership between management agencies, scientists and community members. Co-operation between these three sectors in working for better environmental outcomes has a long history in Victoria, and nature conservation has often previously been achieved through successful adult environmental education. The recent development of an ecology course on the Box and Ironbark forests continues this tradition. It was organised by the Department of Natural Resources and Environment (DNRE) for community interest groups and was taught by scientists.

This article presents the results of qualitative research into some participants' view of their learning on the course. It suggests significant directions for adult learning in environmental education. An intensive experience of field-based scientific inquiry appeared to prompt not only ecological learning but also development of aesthetic, moral and action dimensions for the interviewees. The article suggests that environmental education needs to embrace fruitful elements of various learning methods for adults, including scientific learning about ecology. The process of enabling people to extend their knowledge of natural settings and processes can also enhance their relationship with and commitment to these places.

There are many examples of environmental courses in tertiary institutions, but the integration of environmental education across the range of courses has generally not occurred. The paper describes a process and strategy to establish environmental literacy in tertiary courses. This strategy was developed from a project to introduce waste minimisation education into four disciplinary based courses. Since waste minimisation was introduced in the context of ecological sustainability, the project provided a framework for the broad principles of environmental literacy. The project began with the assumption that adequate materials were already available, but what was needed was a process that would guide academics in the revision of their course content, and would support them in making changes. The paper reports on the conduct of the project and, based on our experiences, presents a strategy for developing curriculum change. This strategy has been developed to recognise the contexts associated with environmental understanding and tertiary institutions, and the processes needed to facilitate the change.

The underlying ideologies which support higher education have received only limited attention in relation to our desired goals of social and ecological sustainability. This paper examines the current ideologies which drive higher education, and proposes a different ideological framework which can be used to support a sustainable higher education. Firstly, a criticism of the current convergence of utilitarian and neo-liberal ideologies is presented from the perspective of sustainability. Secondly, building upon the educational theory of John Dewey, an alternative perspective termed “environmental progressivism” is outlined as a possible ideological framework for a sustainable higher education. The paper concludes with some preliminary remarks as to the practical implications of environmental progressivism.

In December 1997 I was privileged—and very pleasantly surprised—to receive the inaugural Allen Strom Eureka Prize for Environmental Education for ‘environmental education research of a substantive nature which contributes to professional thinking and practice’. According to the program for the prize-giving ceremony, I was awarded the prize ‘for research on recent cultural and philosophical movements, such as postmodernism, which has translated and applied complex social theories to theory and practice in environmental education’.

I want to take this opportunity to repeat my thanks to the New South Wales Environment Protection Authority for their generous sponsorship of this prize. I offer these thanks not only as an individual recipient but also on behalf of the wider Australian environmental education community. I see particular significance in the Allen Strom Eureka Prize for Environmental Education being awarded in a suite that includes separate prizes for environmental research and environmental journalism. This helps to distinguish our field from other disciplines with which it is sometimes confused. My own research emphasises that environmental education is not just another type of environmental study but more a form of cultural and media literacy.

Considering global revisioning and reshaping of the relationships between and among people, other living things, geographies, epistemologies and ways of (re)presenting the world, environmental education might benefit from a more diverse knowledge community. The conversation in environmental education has been largely articulated by science educators and others schooled in the ways of the West. Indigenous communities have not been an integral part of the conversation, rather indigenous epistemologies have been absented or whited out (and otherly hued) and now virtual ized in the Net/scape.

According to John Willinksy (1998), the legacy of imperialism in the West is that we are schooled in differences. We are taught how to divide the world and to construct borderlines of discrimination and privilege between the West and ‘the rest’. In this context difference is seen as negative. Willinsky (1998) argues that students have a right to know that exclusion of ‘other’ is ‘not simply an oversight but a feature of how the disciplines … have gone about dividing the world since the age of the empire’ (p. 250). Furthermore, Noel Gough (1998) writes that Western education attempts to generate global knowledge for all and ‘all around the world,’ but it is the economic interests of ‘developed’ nations [and, I would add, the interests of the political/economic elite of ‘developing’ countries] which are reflected ‘obscuring the exploitation, domination, and social and political inequities underlying global environmental degradation’ (p. 511).

Except in small measure, environmental education in the United States has not yet challenged the status quo of Western notions of progress or monoculturalism, or recognized that moving through the environmental crisis may require significant shifts in generally unquestioned cultural attitudes and beliefs. In the U.S., environmental education has instead tended to focus on information regarding environmental problems and to explore topics such as endangered species, global climate change, or the water quality of local streams and rivers. Even this has become a source of controversy in the United States since the mid-1990s as a coalition of right-wing organizations has mounted a well-coordinated political campaign charging environmental educators with bias and a failure to present both sides of controversial issues (Sanera & Shaw 1996, Independent Commission on Environmental Education 1997). Despite this, we believe that if environmental education is to live up to its promise as a vehicle for developing a citizenry capable of making wise decisions about the impact of human activities on the environment, examining and altering fundamental cultural beliefs and practices that are contributing to the degradation of the planet's natural systems will be imperative.

We have chosen to call this extended form of environmental education ecological education. For us, ecological education connotes an emphasis on the inescapable embeddedness of human beings in natural settings and the responsibilities that arise from this relationship. Rather than seeing nature as other—a set of phenomena capable of being manipulated like parts of a machine—the practice of ecological education requires viewing human beings as one part of the natural world and human cultures as an outgrowth of interactions between our species and particular places. We believe that the development of sustainable cultures will in fact require widespread acceptance of a relationship between humans and the earth grounded in moral sentiments that arise from the willingness to care. As Indian physicist and ecofeminist Vandana Shiva writes, the term ‘sustainability’ implies the ability and willingness ‘to support, bear weight of, hold up, enable to last out, give strength to, endure without giving way’ (Shiva 1992, p. 191).

Having ascended the water-powered cliff railway that takes us from the carpark up to the main site we stand on the cantilevered deck of the upper station looking out across the hills and autumn colours of the wooded Dulas valley below us. The branches on the silver birches are whipped by a cold wind blowing in from the Dovey estuary as we turn to walk across the old slate workings that are now the site of one of the best known eco-centres in Europe. Later, having been given a guided tour of the site, we retire to our self-catering cabins where we split and stack the wood that will later keep us warm. The annual Gobal Futures fieldweek at the Centre for Alternative Technology has come round again.