The 29^th Annual Meeting of the Japanese Society for Environmental Education was held from August 24-26, 2018 at Tokyo Gakugei University. The year 2018 was two years before commemorating the 30^th anniversary of the founding of the Society.

  The theme for the meeting was “Looking Back on the Roots of Environmental Education: Life, Environment and People.” The concept of the theme was to deliberate from the beginning the path the Society has taken what it is and where it will lead to find seeds and germinate new environmental education. The original proposer of the theme was the Executive Director of the Annual Meeting’s Executive Committee, the author of this paper.

  The paper consists of two parts. First, it explains what the author considered in conceiving the theme based on the impact of the Annual Meeting in the history of the Society, the present state of environmental education in Japan both in practice and in research, and the reasons for choosing, and the intentions, implications and assumptions of the theme.

  Second, the paper describes the conceptions of the Public Symposium, which took place on the second day of the Annual Meeting, based on the form, contents and organization of the symposium. Composed of a keynote speech and a panel discussion, it searched the roots of environmental education and the surrounding conditions. The record of the Symposium will follow the paper.