AHMEDABAD - The encounter of environmental education with education for sustainability

Abstract

The IV International Environmental Education Conference, was accomplished from the 24th till the 28th of November, 2007, in the Center of Environmental Education in Ahmedabad (India), an institution founded in 1984, in the Gujarat State, that counts with 48 regional nucleus in all the states of the country. Participated on this conference 1200 people from 97 countries. 30 working groups covered all the aspects of the general theme. It was built in a participative form with preparatory meetings in Durban, South Africa, in New York and Paris. In Ahmedabad many references were done to Tbilisi. Thirty years before (1977), in Tbilisi (Georgia), had been accomplished the I International Environmental Education Conference. Before Tbilisi the theme had already been rise in the United Nations Conference about Sustainable development held in Stockholm (1972) and in the Belgrade Conference (1975). Until Tbilisi, environmental education was much more known as education for conservation (conservationism). Tbilisi had given a step ahead, consecrating the expression “environmental education”, in the broader vision that we have today. Tbilisi became a divisor in the question of environmental education.