Arising out of the increasing concern for the protection and improvement of the environment expressed by individuals and nations which surfaced in the 1960s, the first world conference on the Human Environment was held in Stockholm in 1972. In response to one of the recommendations of this conference, UNESCO and UNEP set up an Intemational Environmental Education Programme (IEEP) in 1975.

This project investigated the impact of the use of high technology with environmental resources on student teachers' performances. The goal was to determine, first, if student teachers could create an interactive learning environment using environmental resources and high-tech, and second, their competency in doing so.

About five years after the completion of the Lesotho Environmental Education Support Project (LEESP), a small-scale qualitative study was undertaken to explore appropriate Environmental Education (EE) pedagogy drawing some lessons from LEESP and EE practice in the UK. LEESP set out to establish ‘action competence’ among learners in primary and secondary schools, in response to intensifying environmental problems in Lesotho.

This study documents the development, implementation, and evaluation of an overseas study programme on environmental education for teachers (Ermer, 2004). Using experience overseas and the power of the Internet, a hybrid course model was designed for the delivery of a 3-credit graduate course in environmental education. This involved 11 participants who completed a one-month online course prior to a travel component in Puerto Rico. Eight teachers from Puerto Rico joined teachers from Wisconsin for a 2-week study tour on island ecology and environmental education.

The handbooks, An Environmental Steward's Handbook and Guidelines for Environmental Clubs, both written by Marceline Collins-Figueroa and Janice HoLung, are two very important and timely books that set out very clearly how school and college communities can attend to the urgent task of caring for the environment. These handbooks are based on the writers' involvement in the Sustainable Teacher Environmental Education Project (STEEP), which piloted a novel approach to environmental education, that is, a 'whole college' approach involving all categories of staff and students.

Jamaica's National Environmental Education Committee (NEEC) aims to encourage, guide, and coordinate environmental education activities in support of sustainable development in the country. This multi-stakeholder national partnership of organizations-drawn from government, non-government, education, community, and private sector agencies-has been in existence since 1993, when it was formed by the National Resources Conservation Authority (NRCA) to help that authority fulfil its legal mandate for increasing the environmental literacy of Jamaicans.

The Schools' Environment Programme (SEP) is a civil society led ten-year-old school-based environmental education programme implemented in the island of Jamaica. It was started in 1997 by two non-governmental environmental agencies, the Jamaica Environment Trust (JET) and the Jamaica Conservation and Development Trust (JCDT), which independently conduct similar education programmes in schools.

Jamaica's commitment to the Decade of Education for Sustainable Development builds on 12 years of environmental education initiatives within the framework of a national action plan. Partnerships developed among educational institutions, government agencies, NGOs and donors are facilitating change in the formal education system, integrating environmental education into teacher professional development and national curricula; involving the school college community in participatory planning; and implementing whole college approaches.

As the global appeal of the sustainable development discourse increased from the mid-1980s onwards, environmental education became unsurprisingly linked with this concept, making sustainable development a principal aim of many environmental education initiatives on global, regional, and national agendas. Notwithstanding the political attractiveness of the discourse, the concept is a highly ambiguous and contested one. This renders engagement with individuals'understandings of sustainability, along with underlying concepts such as nature and the environment, an imperative.

Environmentally related programmes have been part of  the educational landscape in the Caribbean largely in response to a concern about the negative environmental consequences of human activity, and the efforts of Caribbean educators who were influenced by the UNESCO-UNEP International Environmental Programme in the 1980s and 1990s.