In the pursuit of a sustainable society and lifestyles, it’s been a critical issue to deepen people’s understanding of the nature of sustainability from three perspectives‒economy, environment and society‒ and to question the ways and views of human consumption. Regarding this issue, environmental education focusing on relationships is expected to uncover important links among humans, nature and society, and result in building better bonds among them through the pursuit of harmonizing the above three aspects.

  This study discusses the use of “Life Cycle Thinking (LCT)” in the field of home economics to promote changes in lifestyles. Home economics features comprehensive and practical approaches to daily life, and LCT facilitates tracing the relational paths on the goods and services people enjoy. Focusing on LCT, the authors analyzed Japanese laws and regulations related to environmental education, home economics as an academic course, and lessons on home economics in general, with the spreading of LCT-based environmental education in mind.

  The findings of the study are as follows:

  1. In Japanese laws and regulations related to environmental education and home economics as an academic course, the use of the life cycle approach is encouraged to promote understanding the relationship between socio-economic system and environmental impacts, helping to clarify the principles of a sound, sustainable recycling-based society.

  2. Environmental education in general home economics lessons in recent years is recognized widely, most commonly at high schools, and incorporating a variety of themes; in particular, “consumer life and environment.” A qualitative analysis of the lessons given shows that the teachers’ awareness of environmental issues is reflected in the lesson contents. Accordingly, the authors recorded trends and developed possible lesson content for each theme.

  3. Home economics lessons with LCT-based environmental education is a way of opening students’ eyes and creating awareness of unseen relationships in people’s lifestyles, where one engages self-questioning recursively and makes decisions about everyday consumer life. LCT contributes to nurturing students’ practical life skills that require environmental consideration.

  Conception of Learning is a concept related to the motivations to learning. Even in the case of environmental learning, this concept can be said to be important. It is significant to understand what concept affects the motivation to environmental learning. There are two scenes of environmental learning focused on motivation to learning, one is the scene of voluntary learning, and the other is extrinsic learning. These two scenes can be seen significantly in the environment learning at schools (learning until high school and learning in university). Therefore, the purpose of this study is to consider what kind of the differences arise at concept of environmental learning in schools. Then, survey with an open answer questionnaire allowing free comment was conducted with the high school and college students (N=121). The results of the questionnaire provided data considering the conception of environmental learning. As to the data, there were 12 aspects of the conception : understanding, application of knowledge, social skills, schooling obligation, personal interest, experience, own opinion, extraordinary learning, recognition of nature and environmental issues, expertise, social duty, and share opportunities. Cluster analysis using the 12 sides revealed that the students could be classified into six clusters : type of extraordinary learning, type of cognition to environment (understanding and social skills), type of cognition to environment (social duty), type of cognition to environment (experience), type of practice in school, and type of pursuit of interests. The type of practice in school and type of pursuit of interests were conceptions that depends on school belonging. These two types could be considered as loss of motivation for learning during school transition, and as difficultly to continue learning.

  This paper focuses on the capacity development initiatives required for the development of a community planning and human resources program in Japan. For this, we first identify the educational and implementation requirements for realizing a low-carbon and climate-resilient community. Secondly, we provide suitable recommendations for developing such programs by comparing and analyzing a number of similar initiatives implemented in Japan and Germany. Finally, we selected one major Climate Change Education (CCE) program developed by the federal state of Germany and conducted semi-structured interviews with the developer of the program based on the following aspects: (1) overview, (2) educational characteristics, (3) evaluation status, (4) climate change-related content, and (5) implemenation scheme. We then compared this with a previous result of our interview survey carried out on major CCE programs in Japan (Takahashi et al., 2016) and identified the required elements for improving the capacity development program.

  The elements revealed during the investigations are: (1) setting an intended competence at the program developmental stage and selecting an appropriate learning method for the participants, (2) setting a standard for the capacity level and knowledge level required of the instructor, (3) implementing a CCE program support system utilizing the federal state’s educational system and structure, (4) constructing holistic educational contents following the developmental stage of sustainable key competencies (Wiek et al., 2011), and (5) use of local official data on climate change based on a regional approach. These are the differences used for the comparison with Japanese CCE programs, and these elements should be considered when CCE capacity development programs are developed and implemented in Japan.