LOCAL ORGANISERS
Open University of Aveiro; ASPEA (Associação Portuguesa de Educação Ambiental); Portuguese Order of Biologists.

THEMES
Environmental policies and education, Media and communication, Environmental activism and citizenship, EE and local activities, Sustainable agriculture and tourism, EE and economics and sustainability, Teachers training

PARTICIPANTS
300 participants from 40 countries

ABSTRACT
The first World Environmental Education Congress was held in Espinho (Portugal), under the sponsorship of UNEP and UNESCO; it was the first of what would be a series of global events offering an international platform for educators, scientific experts, researchers, scholars, politicians, technicians, activists, the media and teachers to discuss worldwide key issues in Environmental Education (EE) in an integrated perspective.

The 1st WEEC was designed to have an open profile that would help to promote contact among the several stakeholders that emerged in the past decades in EE and related fields, thereby contributing to a better understanding and communication between them. At the first edition of WEEC there emerged the need for a new EE paradigm, presumably more multi and interdisciplinary, capable of dealing with the complexity and uncertainty of the natural world but also of the cultural and human world.