~The first ~tergovernmental Conference on Environmental Educat)Dn washeld in Tbilisi (Georgian SSR, USSR) from 14 to 26 October 1977~. Theconference was organized by Unesco in co-operation with the UnitedNations Environment Programme (UNEP) at the kind invitation of the Government of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. It was a follow-up to the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment (Stockholm, June 1972), for the purpose of determining its implications for education, and was relevant to the chapter on 'Man and His Environment' in Unesco's Me,Jam-Term Plan (I977-I982), adopted by the General Conference at its ffmeteenth session (Nairobi, 1976). The Tbilisi Conference was the c~tlmination of the first phase of the International Environmental Education Programme launched by Unesco in 1975 in co-operation with UNEP. The various activities undertaken under this programme may, in fact, be regarded to a great extent as prelimi- nary stages in laying down a general framework of ideas and guidelines for fie conference. For this purpose Unesco carried out in 1975 a survey of international environmental education needs and priorities, in which lo,~r cent of its Member States took part. With the same end in view~ Unesco orgamzed an international workshop on environmental education ~elgrade, 1975) and regional and subregional meetings on the same subject in Africa, the Arab States, Asia, Europe and Latin America. Lastly, experimental studies on environmental education have been undertaken in all the regions and an international network of information on environ- mental education has been set up. Furthermore, the Tbilisi Conference was the starting-point for an international environmental education programme consistent with the wishes of all the Member States. In particular, it helped to specify thetctual nature of environmental education by laying down its aims andcharacteristics as well as the strategies to be adopted at the national andimmational levels. It considered that environmental education, as anmeatial component in comprehensive lifelong education, with a problem-~lving approach and providing for active involvement by the public, th0uld help to make education systems more relevant and more realistic