In 1977, delegates from around the world gathered in Tbilisi, Georgia, for the world’s first intergovernmental conference on environmental education. Convened by UNESCO and UNEP, the conference produced what became one of the most influential frameworks in the history of environmental learning: the Tbilisi Declaration.
FEE General Assembly 2014
The declaration recognised something that remains profoundly relevant today: environmental challenges cannot be solved through policy or technology alone. They require informed, empowered, and engaged citizens. Environmental education was defined not as a niche subject, but as a lifelong learning process connecting awareness, knowledge, attitudes, skills, and participation.
Three years later, in 1981, the Foundation for Environmental Education (FEE) was established in direct response to this global call.
As FEE marks its 45th anniversary, we are not only celebrating an organisational milestone. We are reflecting on four and a half decades of turning the principles of Tbilisi into practical action and asking what environmental education must become in a world facing climate breakdown, biodiversity loss, rising inequality, democratic fragility, and growing distrust in institutions.
A Movement Built on Education and Action
The Tbilisi Declaration argued that environmental education should help people understand “the complex nature of the natural and the built environments” and equip them with “the knowledge, values, attitudes, and practical skills” needed to solve environmental problems.
Blue Flag Ceremony in Denmark, 1998. Ole Løvig Simonsen and Prince Henrik of Denmark
FEE was founded to help make that vision real.
Over the past 45 years, FEE has grown from a European initiative into one of the world’s largest environmental education organisations, active across more than 100 countries and engaging millions of learners, educators, young people, tourism operators, municipalities, businesses, and communities every year.
Through programmes such as Blue Flag, Eco-Campus, Eco-Schools, Green Key, LEAF, and Young Reporters for the Environment, FEE has translated abstract principles into everyday practice.
What has distinguished FEE throughout its history is the belief that sustainability is learned through participation, ownership, and lived experience, not only through information transfer.
Students do not simply study environmental problems; they investigate them in their schools and communities. Young people do not only learn communication skills; they report, campaign, and advocate. Tourism operators do not merely commit to standards; they demonstrate environmental responsibility in practice. Municipalities, educators, and local communities become active participants in change rather than passive recipients of guidance, in alignment with the declaration’s principle to emphasise the complexity of environmental problems and thus the need to develop critical thinking and problem-solving skills.
This practical, participatory approach reflects one of the central ideas of the Tbilisi Declaration: that environmental education must connect directly to real life and empower people to act.
From Environmental Education to Education for Sustainability
Over 45 years, the context surrounding FEE’s work has changed dramatically.
Klimatias Kindergarten, Greece (Eco-Schools programme)
When FEE was founded, environmental education was still emerging as a field. Climate change was not yet central in public discourse. Biodiversity loss had not reached today’s alarming levels. Sustainability reporting, green finance, ESG frameworks, and net-zero commitments did not exist.
Today, environmental education cannot be separated from wider questions of social justice, democratic participation, economic systems, and global resilience.
Eco-Schools National Operators Meeting 2015 in South Africa
In many ways, the Tbilisi Declaration anticipated this evolution. It recognised the “economic, political, and ecological interdependence of the modern world” and called for education that fosters responsibility, solidarity, critical thinking, and international cooperation.
FEE’s work has evolved accordingly.
Environmental education has increasingly become education for sustainability — integrating climate action, biodiversity, circular economy thinking, global citizenship, wellbeing, systems thinking, and youth participation. This shift has not been about abandoning environmental education’s roots, but about expanding them to meet a more interconnected reality.
The adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in 2015 reinforced this broader understanding. The SDGs provided a shared global framework linking environmental sustainability with poverty reduction, health, equity, education, and peace.
FEE and its members have played an important role in localising these global ambitions, helping schools, communities, and tourism stakeholders translate international goals into practical action.
But the SDGs are now approaching their 2030 horizon at a time when progress remains deeply uneven. Many targets are off track. Climate impacts are accelerating. Polarisation and misinformation are undermining trust. Young people increasingly experience eco-anxiety alongside frustration at institutional inaction.
This creates an uncomfortable but necessary question:
What kind of environmental and sustainability education is needed for the next era?
The Next 45 Years
The future demands more than awareness.
The world does not lack information about environmental crises. It lacks sufficient collective capacity to respond at the speed and scale required.
That means education must increasingly focus on agency, resilience, systems thinking, collaboration, civic participation, and the ability to navigate complexity and uncertainty.
It also means confronting difficult tensions honestly.
Sustainability education cannot become performative or reduced to branding. It cannot rely on optimism detached from reality. Nor can it assume that behavioural change alone will solve structural problems.
At the same time, despair is not a strategy.
San Roberto International School, Mexico
FEE’s experience over 45 years demonstrates that people are far more likely to act when they feel connected, capable, and part of something larger than themselves. This is especially true for young people.
The next phase of environmental education must therefore balance urgency with empowerment and investments to scale it up. It must help learners in formal and informal settings understand risks without freezing them. It must strengthen democratic participation and critical thinking at a time when both are under pressure. And it must remain grounded in action, community, and hope that is earned through meaningful engagement rather than rhetoric.
These questions will shape FEE’s next strategic chapter.
As global discussions increasingly turn toward what comes after the SDGs, FEE also has an opportunity and responsibility to help shape the future of sustainability education itself.
The challenges ahead are complex, but the core insight from Tbilisi remains remarkably durable: education is not peripheral to sustainability transitions. It is foundational that impacts all drivers – citizens, policy, economy etc.
As FEE enters its next chapter, we invite educators, young people, tourism stakeholders, policymakers, and communities to join us in shaping the future of sustainability education. Because the transition to a more sustainable world will depend not only on what we know, but on how we act together.
Forty-five years after FEE’s founding, that mission remains as urgent as ever.
