In this paper we review the forest kindergartens and Skogsmulle programs (Swedish outdoor programs) as well as the formally registered early childhood services in Japan. All of these different service types are known to include nature-based activities for young children. The formally registered early childhood services are subject to national guidelines (CAO et al. 2017, MEXT 2017, MHLW 2017) that require nature-based activities to promote children's development. However, these guidelines fall short on matters of global sustainability, environmental issues, environmental education (EE), or education for sustainability (EfS), thus we argue a comprehensive approach is lacking and a gap in practices evident. We suggest that the two alternative service types, forest kindergartens and Skogsmulle programs, offer more potential to promote EE/EfS than the formally registered early childhood services. We also briefly review Australian early childhood policies and settings and identify a similar situation, where naturebased activities appear to deflect from a comprehensive approach to EE/EfS. We argue that a critical analysis of policies and improvement of pre-service and in-service teacher programs to build sustainability knowledge and pedagogical skills is required. Also the establishment of collective professional networks across the varied naturebased activity programs and service types is necessary across each nation to transform existing nature-based activities into effective EE/EfS approaches and practices for global sustainability. We also identify this review paper as a precursor to further research in this topical area.

This research evaluates how children’s new subjectivities emerge through exploring urban landscapes in the river basin in Tokyo. Research has stressed the importance of children as active agents, while posthuman perspectives include all elements of human–nature entangled world as potential agents. This analysis indicates how an assemblage of human and non-human agents contributes to enacting children as critical agents for sustainability issues. The theoretical framework for this study is the theory of landscape, including traditional Japanese discourses and the assemblage theory inspired by Félix Guattari’s ecosophy. One of the authors conducted nine-month ethnographic research at a Japanese nursery in 2018, accompanying a five-year-old class whose curiosity drove the expedition at the river basin all the way to the Tokyo Bay. The authors applied the method of multiple interpretations of the documentation, including photos and children’s drawings. This exploration and subsequent events during the journey transformed the children’s fragmented interpretation of the environment into an interconnected one and translated it into tangible action. This study illustrated that stimulating children’s subjectivity toward the landscape and fostering their positive but critical relationship with it through emergent first-hand exploration provided them with potential grounds to be resilient by ethically and ecologically responding to changes in vulnerable environments and potential commons in the community and to take actions for sustainable lifestyles at present and in the future.