Estudo sobre os programas de educação ambiental no Brasil e a questão da sustentabilidade ambiental

Abstract

In this research, the joint of the Environmental Education is analyzed under the parameters of the sustainable development, defined as those that identify and evaluate the transformations of the social processes in the direction of the Environmental conservation and human promotion. According to this study, these parameters are: the ecological, the social, technological and the economic one. The goal was to present a hypothesis of the models that could represent an Environmental Education directed towards the issues of the development and sustainability that focused on the effective processes of social transformations, especially those that involved the productive mechanisms of the society, besides the Environmental ones. The analysis and interpretation of the data had been in harmony with the techniques of content analysis. This analysis of content involved three stages: pre­analysis, the analysis of the material and the treatment and interpretation of the results. The ecological parameter was evaluated considering the relation of the area, natural resources and people directly involved in the use of the biotic and physical natural resources, and the use of methods of protection and conservation that reduce the anthropical impact on the local and regional environment. The social parameter was evaluated considering the function of the percentage of people directly affected in the project in relation with the population distribution, and of the health and welfare of the inhabitants in relation to the surrounding natural systems. In this parameter, the distinguishing aspect of the sustainable development was in relation to the traditional conceptions of development, the access to the education, health, social services, natural resources and the politic and social rights. The technological parameter was evaluated considering the continuity of use of technologies needed during these programs by the population, as well as the applications of new technologies that represent the improvement and quality of the process. The economic parameter was evaluated considering the levels of energy exploration and other natural resources by means of the rational use of the resources, the economic improvements and the style of life of the involved communities. This work analyzed 43 programs of Environmental Education in Brazil and concluded that the parameters of the sustainable development are not found in the actions of Environmental Education. In the qualification of the programs of Environmental Education also analyzed, was shown that the majority possess, of direct or indirect form, strong governmental participation, either in the management or in the financial support. The parameters analyzed in the programs had been restricted or limited to the communitarian actions, presenting a clever Environmental Education, but it cannot achieve definitive impact in the way of reformulating processes and to come up with an Environmental Education that is known as effectively transforming. The observed procedures do not solve the processes that continuously generate the ambient degradation. In the analysis of the programs that had considered the parameters of the Sustainable Development was presented the importance of the awareness of theoretical and methodology of reorientation of the programs of Environmental Education in relation with the development and environmental sustainability. This work concluded that a transforming Environmental Education must be identified as sustainable Environmental Education and that must be a common process, where the idea of the future of the society must be a collective decision and the actions must be incorporated to day­by­day life of the involved community. Therefore, sustainable Environmental Education works in the level of the knowledge and the rational and affective agreement that the individual and groups construct regarding themselves and other things, being capable to interpret and to act in the transformation of equal and environmentally sustainable societies.