The 19^th century
Visionaries interested in the natural sciences urged people to get more intimately acquainted with the elements of nature. They also began ringing alarm bells, calling for a halt to the destructive trends of urbanisation and industrialisation.

The 20^th century

The 1960s

● Natural sciences combined with geography, history, economics and anthropology led to the re-emergence of what experts called 'the science of our home or the domestic economy of dwelling house Earth: ecology'.
● Various associations and societies for the defence of nature were established.
● 1961: Creation of the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) by the World Conservation Union (IUCN, established in 1948).

The 1970s

● Emergence of non-governmental organisations like Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth, with environment as key agenda.
● Establishment of government ministries for the protection of nature and the environment in many countries.
● October 1970: US President Richard Nixon signs the first Environmental Education Act into law.
● 1972: the first United Nations Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm comes up with a set of recommendations on EE, which was then acknowledged to be a tool for solving environmental problems.
● 1975: the International Environmental Workshop in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, results in the Belgrade Charter. The charter defines the goals and objectives of EE.
● 1977: Belgrade Charter is further refined at the Intergovernmental Conference on EE in Tbilisi, Republic of Georgia. It explicitly states the objectives of EE as awareness, knowledge, attitudes, skills and participation.

The 1980s

● Proposals for sustainable development emerge.
● Two major accidents -- explosion of a pesticide plant owned by US corporation, Union Carbide, in Bhopal (1984), and the Chernobyl disaster (1986) -- shook the international community.
● 1983: Work initiated by the International Commission on Environment and Development (of the UN).
● 1987: Brundtland Commission Report confirms the existence of a growing hole in the ozone layer over the Antarctic.
● End of 1980s: Exxon Valdez spills 2,40,000 barrels of oil into the sea on the coast of Alaska

The 1990s

● 1991: Gulf War breaks out, and ends with great loss of human life and environmental catastrophe.
● June 1992: Earth Summit is convened in Rio de Janeiro by the United Nations to debate the contemporary crisis and its environmental aspects. A planetary action plan is conceived under the name of Agenda 21. Chapter 36 establishes the key role of education in solving problems generated by the crisis.
● September 1992: USA, Mexico, and Canada sign a memorandum of understanding on EE.

These major trends of the past: the social protests, environmental problem-solving, planetary crisis and global management, and the effects of globalisation, mark the course of EE.
 

In India EE is compulsory. But there is one huge threat looming. ‘Environment’ may be reduced to being yet another boring subject. Centre for Science and Environment believed that this danger must be averted. So it came up with GSP