Chapter 36 of Agenda 21 (the Convention of the UNCED conference, Rio de Janeiro 1992) made it clear that (environmental) education is a crucial instrument in the development of sodeties which may call themselves environmentally, economically, socially and culturally sustainable. In the light of the Rio+10 conference Oohannesblirg, 26 August - 4 September 2002) the question arises on which areas education should focus more in order to contribute better to this process and how education should accomplish that. lt is clear that education in genera! and environmental education in particular did not yet fully develop the necessary theoretical and practical tools for such a consistent contribution. As far as environmental education is concerned, this constraint is a consequence of important social and cultural trends in the ways people identify with the environment, and, to close the ei rele, also to how these relate to the general understandings in the official models of sustainability. These social and cultural trends are crucial in social learning and in the way people deal with values. Ethics thus gets into the picture. The CEEE Gent 2002 conference aims at tackling the following questions:
1. What is the impact of social and cultural trends on the ways in which people idèntify with the environment? Is this in concordance with the embedded understandings in official models of sustainability? How might 'the environment' be reconfigured such that it better resonates with how people are experiencing polities, environment and everyday life? And why does this matter?
2 . Which methodologies can be grafted upon this? And what importance should be given to ethics in environmental education? How do providers deal with values and how are these incorporated in EE-products. Can ethics be viewed as an indispensable correction factor to be able to achieve, through education, the goal of sustainability?
3. And in the light of the developments of learning for sustainability, what major changes does environmental education have to face in the future? What effects do these changes have on the role of the educator, the methodologies and the management of the organisation to which the educator belongs? How do educators define sustainability in more or less operational terms? Is it in their view and from their particular perspective a new concept? Is it a process we all have to go through? Is it a way of living? And what are the parameters that can serve educators to help others learn about that?
