This paper explores C. A. Bowers' main thesis: “environmental education for an ecologically sustainable culture”, and tries to determine how the thesis is important in the theoretical effort to develop Education for Sustainability (EfS). The critical analysis centers on Bowers' three major propositions: (1) the radical criticism addressed to modern Western orthodoxies in terms of their compatibility with ecological sustainability; (2) the “reactionary” position against the unchallenged belief supporting the idea of “progress” with a particular emphasis on technological innovation; and (3) Bowers' peculiar “holism”, which largely denies individualism and liberalism. These three propositions clearly separate Bowers' position from the mainstream ideas of environmental education. Bowers' argument, though with quite a few important flaws, serves as a good reference in trying to work out alternative approaches to environmental education helping us to reach a sustainable society.

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  Since the 1990s, international educational cooperation has become an emphasis in basic education and has been stressed as a basis for solving various issues such as population and poverty. In 2002, Japan announced the “BEGIN: Basic Education for Growth Initiative” as international educational cooperation towards basic education development and launched the Cooperation Bases System by MEXT as a concrete measure aiming to strengthen primary and secondary educational cooperation. The system used Japan's universities as hubs to systematically organize, store, share and make use of educational experiences for future cooperation projects. As part of the System Construction Project, this research analyzes the activity reports of the official Japan Overseas Cooperation Volunteers Program, which is carried out as environmental education, and aims to (1) analyze in order to grasp the overall trends in JOCV environmental education activities, and (2) extract the barriers and contributing factors to JOCV environmental education activities in the Asia region. As a result, this research found that success in environmental education does not only rely on volunteers' communication skills, developed environmental education materials and the quality of environmental education programs. The following factors were also found to have influence: (1) Host agency staff's knowledge, skills and awareness, (2) Local citizens' knowledge and awareness, (3) Ability to build networks and partnerships, (4) Intra-organizational awareness and recognition of environmental problems and environmental education, (5) Availability of teaching materials and appealing environmental education programs, (6) Availability of human resources to cooperate in environmental education and environmental conservation activities (7) Availability of funds, and (8) Political priorities.

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  Adult and Community Education is the practice to support and organize the activities of self-directed education for widening and deepening cultural reasons based on real life. It is composed of enjoying human culture and learning of living/environment, act/cooperation, production/distribution, and self-governing/policy. Environmental Education is to promote living/environment learning as learning to be, and to form Environmental Reason, through realizing the mutual relationship between human individuals and their environment.
  Environmental Education has to be based on the theory of ‘Conscientization’ proposed by Paulo Freire, and ‘Learning Network’ proposed by Ivan Illich. It is real as Community Development Education that needs Illich's ideas of Conviviality, Subsistence and Commons, and Freire's Ideas for ‘Pedagogy of Hope’ However, if we are to regenerate those theories and ideas in Environmental Education, we must critically analyze them and clarify their meanings and limits.
  The article will discuss, firstly, Illich's criticism against modern technique and institution, and Freire's understandings of human praxis, secondly, Freire's pedagogy towards environmental education, thirdly, Illich's idea of Learning Network towards Education for Sustainable Community Development Education (ESCD). Lastly, it will propose Community Environmental Education (CEE) to structurize the learnings (1) to conscientize nature, (2) to self-conscientize one's own life, (3) to realize the relationship between nature and human being, and (4) to empower the people by themselves for regenerating the environment.

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  This paper reports the current status of and opinions on environmental education research in Japan taking into account researchers' discussion prior to publishing the 20^th anniversary issue of “Japanese Society for Environmental Education”. The introduction describes the context and purpose of this paper, and the 2^nd section looks back at the approaches considered at the 10^th anniversary academic conference. The 3^rd section details the aims and the methods of the 20^th anniversary special edition project. The goal is not only to develop each person's ideas on environmental education research but also to have a deeper discussion about environmental education. The proposed methods of achieving this were round table talks, general remarks and criticism by theme, the omnibus paper, and other source data. In the 4^th section, among the four approaches, the round table talk is reviewed and explained. Fragmentation of current research is pointed out, as is the need for systemizing environmental education. Pertaining to a method of systematization in the future, some suggested creating a world map of examples of environmental education, and making a database. The 5^th section covers the general remarks and criticism by theme and summarizes them. The following eight themes are also analyzed: nature conservation education, pollution education, environmental education as a part of school education, environmental education during early childhood, environmental education related to food-agriculture, environmental education with other countries, environmental education and education for sustainable development, and environmental education about lifestyle.
  In conclusion, the paper argues that currently environmental education research is continuous and discontinuous, and also that methods for environmental education research are in their draft phases, like a map made from individual case studies and general criticism. Also, it is possible to say that masters' theses could be case studies and doctoral theses could be drafts.

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  On the special occasion of the 20th anniversary of the Japanese Society of Environmental Education, systematic reviews of environmental education research were conducted. In this paper I as an editor in charge reflect on these reviews as a whole with an aim to developing an academic field on the basis of the ideas of environmental education. The following questions lead my argument: 1) What is an overall framework of the systematic reviews of environmental education research? 2) What is the ultimate goal of the reviews? 3) What mentality underlies the framework? 4) What would another mentality look like? 5) What reviews could be conducted on the premise of another mentality? and, 6) What possibilities would there be of environmental education research in the future?
  I compare the systematic reviews of environmental education research in Japan with those conducted in the international environmental education community using English as a common language and consider the former to be underpinned by ‘instrumental mentality’ and the latter by ‘reflexive mentality.’ I also argue that there are contrastive differences between these two environmental education communities in terms of orientations in the overall framework of research reviews and the ultimate goals of the reviews.
  I conclude the paper by suggesting that an attempt to ‘re-story’ action in the interwoven spheres of culture, environment and education, which is work across various fields of green in the environmental education and related communities, should be one of the possibilities of environmental education research in the future.

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