The crucial importance of environmental factors for successful development became globally recognized during the 1970’s, fostered by a series of United Nations conferences, the most influential of which was the 1972 Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment (Caldwell 1984). “Environment” then became institutionalized, as countries throughout the world created new policies, laws, and administrative bodies to deal with environmental protection specifically.
Environmental education and training also came into its own during this period. As one follow-up to the Stockholm conference, in 1975 the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNESCO; UNEP) launched their joint International Environmental Education Programme (IEEP), which had an all-encompassing view of what environmental education should entail and who should receive it (Stapp 1976; Blackburn 1983). Innovations at national and local levels began to appear throughout the world, implementing the intent of the broad statement of environmental education goals and principles developed by the IEEP and subsequently endorsed as policy guidelines by the Intergovernmental Conference on Environmental Education, held in Tbilisi in the Soviet Union in October 1977 (UNESCO 1978).