The 7th World Environmental Education Congress will be held in Marrakech, Morocco from 9-14 June 2013. The theme of Congress will be Environmental Education in Cities and Rural Areas: Seeking Greater Harmony.

The scale and pace of migration is rising at an unprecedented rate. Migrants flee poverty, hunger, cultural intolerance, conflict, and the effects of environmental deterioration. They also seek new opportunities. In the end, most migrants move from rural areas to urban centres and with this in-migration cities grow. Like an organism, cities exchange material, energy, and information, within themselves and with rural areas. When they consume too much, too fast, they are unsustainable.

Both cities and rural areas suffer from abandonment, changing social relationships, and growing discrepancies in lifestyles and opportunities. Still, rural-urban migrations can bring benefits, freeing rural lands from congestion and fragmentation. But, perhaps most interestingly, distinctions between cities and rural areas are becoming blurred—physically and culturally.

This theme puts critical socio-ecological issues before an audience of environmental educators. It provides us with context for critical questions: What is education to do? What is an appropriate educational response to these complex problems? How can education develop learners’ imagination, resilience, and will to act wisely in the face of seemingly impossible challenges?

It is the first time that the World Environmental Education Congress to be held in Arabic country. It will focus on the themes of urban-rural relationships, climate change, ecological economy, etc..

The delegation headed by Prof. WU Jiang, Vice President of Tongji University will attend the Congress.

For more information, please visit http://www.weec2013.org/en/