Distinguished delegates, dear colleagues, dear friends of organizing committee,
First of all thank you very much for attending this 6th World Environmental Education Congress and many, many thanks to Australian Association of Environmental Education, to the sponsor as Government of Queensland and the Griffith University. Many thanks to all other sponsors, to this beautiful city of Brisbane, to the Australian people hosting us warmly and friendly. We welcome you. Hundreds of participants arrived here from all over the world, many of us after a long and tiring trip, for exchanging experiences, for improve our knowledge about different national, cultural, socio-economic contexts, for strengthen relationships and the friendship. This sixth World Congress of Environmental Education takes place in a region, the Asia-Pacific, that has recently seen tremendous natural disasters, but also humankind-made disasters, the result of humankind’s action on the planet.

From the tsunami and the destruction of the nuclear power plant in Fukushima, Japan, to rising sea levels that threaten small islands and the lower coastal regions; from desertification in China to floods right here in Australia. Unfortunately there have been many confirmations that human society, as the sociologist Ulrick Beck said, lives in the era of global risk.
Our biodiversity is increasingly at risk in an overpopulated planet struck by global warming. Water, food and soil are increasingly insufficient resources that are subject to stress, unfairly distributed, and a source of conflict and appropriation by the richer and more powerful nations. Environmental refugees and migration are multiplying. This is the situation we find ourselves in as we get together for our Congress.The WEECs have been an ambitious, difficult and partially-won challenge. We have been meeting regularly since 2003, bringing together thousands of scholars, experts, practitioners and educators from every continent.
After Portugal, Brazil, Italy, South Africa and Australia, we are already planning the next meeting in Morocco in 2013 and considering candidates for the Congresses of 2015 and 2017.
There are many bids, from all over the world; there are many candidate countries and many expressions of interest: from Abu Dhabi, China, Costa Rica, Ireland, Malaysia, Sweden, and Switzerland.
Our congresses are by now the most regular and continual international meeting about research, theory, good/best practices of our community. So, I invite you in the network: join the network!
In short, environmental education is alive and well in the world. Or we hope…
But we are also called on to make a greater commitment to reflection and discussion, to an ever more determined action of building increasingly popular and effective networks at the local, regional and global level.
Environmental education must become even more incisive and give the maximum possible contribution to the emergence of a global system made up of peaceful and cooperative relations between peoples and cultures; a fraternal relationship between humanity and other living beings and with the planet as a whole; and modes of production and consumption profoundly reoriented towards an ecological economy.
Environmental education must be the key to “learning for change”.
To achieve this, it needs to mobilize and involve all fields of learning and all disciplines, it must support the “science of sustainability”, and it must deal with all (and many) issues of a complex and rapidly changing situation, where positive signals and negative signals are interwoven in an alarming and disturbing way.
The issues of this 6th world congress are crucial for the development of environmental education and for the Earth.

I hope that this 6th WEEC could be another step forward towards even better environmental education and I hope that all of you have very constructive discussions during this congress.

So, I wish by myself and by the Permanent secretariat you enjoy this congress. All together we have to help humankind and the planet for building a better sustainable future.

Thank you. Mario Salomone
Secretary General of the WEEC network

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