Three Decades of International Guidelines for Environment-Related Education - A Critical Hermeneutic of the United Nations Discourse

Oct 15, 2026

The UNESCO-UNEP International Environmental Education Program (1975-1995) helped legitimize and institutionalize environmental education, and the UN later mandated a shift toward education for sustainable development. Because international organizations’ recommendations and guidelines strongly shape national formal and nonformal education programs, the paper critically appraises their content through hermeneutical analysis of UN documents. The analysis foregrounds an instrumental view of education, a resourcist view of environment, and an economicist view of development that demands discussion and critique.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages22

Reading Time55 min

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Introduction

Context and institutionalization

Research focus and method

Key findings approach

Three Decades of International Guidelines for Environment-Related Education: A Critical Hermeneutic of the United Nations Discourse Lucie Sauvé, Tom Berryman, & Renée Brunelle, Université du Québec à Montréal, Canada Abstract The UNESCO-UNEP International Environmental Education Program (1975- 1995) provided impetus for developing, legitimizing, and institutionalizing environmental education. More recently, UNESCO was mandated by the United Nations to carry out a worldwide shift towards education for sustainable development. As international organizations’ recommendations and guidelines often act as beacons for the conception and implementation of national formal and nonformal education programs, it is necessary to critically appraise their content. Our hermeneutical analysis of United Nations documents concerning environmental education, which is now subsumed to sustainable development, highlights an instrumental view of education, a resourcist conception of the environment, and an economicist view of development. Such a worldview needs to be discussed. Résumé De 1975 à 1995, les activités et productions de l’UNESCO-PNUE dans le cadre du Programme international d’éducation relative à l’environnement (1975-1995) ont contribué à légitimer, à institutionnaliser et à développer ce champ d’intervention éducative. Plus récemment, l’UNESCO a été mandatée par l’Organisation des Nations Unies (ONU) pour opérer un virage vers une éducation pour le développement durable. En raison de l’influence souventdéterminante des recommandations et lignes directrices des organisations internationales sur les politiques et programmes nationaux et locaux, tanten milieu d’éducation formelle que non formelle, il importe d’en faire un examen critique. Notre analyse permet de mettre en lumière les conceptions de base véhiculées par les discours élaborés dans la « filière » ONU : l’éducation y apparaît comme un instrument au service d’un programme politique, l’environnement est conçu comme un ensemble de ressources à exploiter et le développement correspond à la croissance économique. Unetelle vision du monde doit être discutée et mise à distance critique, historicisée et déconstruite. Keywords: environmental education; education for sustainable development; international guidelines; national policies; educational reform Canadian Journal of Environmental Education, 12, 2007 33 Introduction After almost 30 years of formal international efforts to promote environmental education, mainly through the UNESCO-UNEP International Environmental Education Program (1975-1995), environmental education has entered a new phase of institutionalization with the recent or ongoing educational reforms throughout the world and at a time when it tends to be subsumed to a socalled “broader” frame of reference, that of education for sustainable development. The institutionalization of environmental education or any form of“environment-related education”(following Hart’s expression, 2003, p. 3) has been and remains an important issue, considering the crucial need to improve personal and social relations with the environment. On one hand, institutionalization is seen as the main lever of promoting environmental education (as stated since the Belgrade Charter , 1976 to the United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development, 2005-2014); on the other hand, institutionalization is considered by many authors and educators as being problematic when it corresponds to a top-down strategy (for example, Speller, 2000), when it promotes a “culturally-blind isomorphism”(ChanTiberghien, 2004), when it reifies socially constructed knowledge that fostersand reproduces domination (Berryman, 2007), when it uncritically supports or imposes certain ways of thinking and doing, and when it does not offer concrete strategies and means of implementation. In any case, the introduction of an environmental dimension into school curricula or into nonformal education program

FAQs

What program and time period initially drove international environmental education efforts?

The UNESCO-UNEP International Environmental Education Program (1975-1995) provided impetus for developing and institutionalizing environmental education.

Why is it important to critically analyze international recommendations and guidelines?

Because recommendations often act as beacons for designing national formal and nonformal education programs, it is necessary to clarify ideological foundations, underlying conceptions, and epistemological, ethical, and pedagogical aspects.

What core conceptions does the hermeneutical analysis of UN documents highlight?

It highlights an instrumental view of education, a resourcist conception of the environment, and an economicist view of development.

Oct 15, 2026

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