In these last years, educational institutions have been focusing more and more on environmental issues even in view of some opposition.

Teaching methods are being criticized all around the world to varying extent according to geographical latitude, and show deep areas of inadequacy towards social educational requirements.

Educational processes are often constructed to indoctrinate the young generation and transmit pre-established social models. Students are passively subjected to flows of information rather than learning though direct experience and develop their own cognitive ability,

In addition to instructing the youth on the natural processes, on the species which populate our planet as well as on the ecosystems in which they live, it is essential to promote critical learning through the understanding of the common roots of local cultures, the territory, natural and cultural resources in which they live. It is important to introduce the notion of sustainable development across all traditional subjects of learning. In this formative work it is equally necessary to sustain the terrestrial identity for which biodiversity of the cultures and the quality of the rapport with the biosphere is are the core components.

The possibility to gain easy access to information and to analyze data opens a whole new ground for discussion in which the use of modern digital technologies can become a useful instrument to achieve the aforementioned objectives. This is because the potential of every individual is only marginally stimulated and expressed. One should bear in mind the concrete example of how the education of young girls contributes to raising the threshold of wellbeing of all those communities in which this objective is followed.

These considerations are presented and upheld by a privileged observatory: the competition "Earth Charter Youth Contest" conducted in conjunction with the association Verdi Ambiente e Società - VAS, at the end of its thirteenth edition and which we discuss further in another section of this web site. In this context, there are few experiences in which one does not find traces of documents elaborated by institutional conferences of non-governmental organizations as well as of reports of the European Union and Unesco.

There is a widespread demand to discuss these issues and to improve training of educators as well as to overcome rigid and bureaucratic educational systems. These questions are met by two emblematic answers: the postponement sine die of the National Conference on Environmental Education and the organization of the Third World Congress on Environmental Education (www.3eec.org) which will be held in Turin from 2 to 6 October, 2005.

All of this is taking place in conjunction with the United Nations ten years program dedicated to Education for Sustainable Development, which started on 1st January 2005.

A long-term perspective for future generations and programming for tomorrow seems not to be taken into account by contemporary decision-makers. Environmental education is the first to suffer the consequences of this reasoning. Societies, which live without worrying about future perspectives for sustainable development inevitably face social decline. This is exactly what we are trying to avoid by giving young generations a hope towards sustainability and wellbeing.

Elio Pacilio
Green Cross Italia Vice - President

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