Critical environmental education: from socio-environmentalism to sustainable societies

Abstract

The article is a reflection about the historical and theoretical contexts of the creation of environmental education in Brazil, from the perspective of what came to be called Critical Environmental Education. Starting from the theoretical and conceptual framework of political ecology, of critical theory, and of complexity thinking, the text problematizes the origins and the political-cultural unfolding, the arguments and social movements that have shaped this pedagogical trend of such marked presence in the Brazilian educational and environmental reality. The methodological path traversed here revisits and systematizes the literature pertaining to this new field of knowledge and action, and dialogues with our doctorate research which, for almost a decade, observed in loco the recent education initiatives in the field of environmental education in Brazil, following various events in this area, and interviewing significant sources of information belonging to social movements, public bodies and academic sectors associated with this field. In doing so, this article investigates the debate, the differentiation and the internal disputes in the field of environmental education in Brazil, the process of constitution of the socio-environmentalism that positions itself in opposition to a different conservationist trend in environmental education, and the construction of a critique to an education for the sustainable development - ESD, proposed by UNESCO and other sectors interested in the keeping of the status quo and in a sustainability oriented by market forces. It thereby highlights, under a historical perspective, the philosophical origins, the political-pedagogical positions, and the social forces that inspired the emergence of critical environmental education, as well as the decisive contributions that this process made to the ethic and political progress in the relations between education, society and environment in Brazil.