The following data are taken from a presentation made by Alan Reid, editor of Environmental Education Research, in April.
A Nature Conservancy enquiry report, presented at the 1965 Keele Conference, stated that funds being spent on research into the education of all our future citizens equalled the amount devoted to research on glue.
Sean Carson said that in the 1970s the UK’s Council for Environmental Education which represented the whole of conservation and environmental education, received less public money than the English Table Tennis Association or the annual grant for research into the maintenance of sports turf. It received less than one-hundredth of the grant to the Central Council for Physical Recreation although even on the level of those enjoying the environment as their major leisure activity, its market far outnumbers those taking part in games.
Horst Rode, an evaluator, developer and researcher of environmental education and ESD in Germany said at the start of UN DESD that while many look to Germany as a leader in all manner of things ‘green’, the annual state and federal budgets for ESD pooled to less than that spent on constructing 1km of autobahn.
The Apollo Program cost roughly $25.4 billion (in today’s money). By contrast, the National Environmental Education Act (the primary source of US federal support for K-12 environmental education, provided $6.6 million in 2006, an average of only $132,000 per state.
£0 – the amount spent in 2019 by the DfE supporting environmental education in schools.