Educação ambiental e movimentos sociais: espaços paralelos ou compartilhados?

Abstract

Nowadays we are getting more and more amazed by people's low expressivity of consciousness and by how slowly social behavior towards the environment changes. Environmental Education (EE) and social movements (SM) are important paths through which we can transform such reality. However, even considering similar goals within these social action domains, in many cases they work as separate domains. In order to understand this scenario, it is relevant to think not only of what is happening but of what is the nature of such situation. From this perspective, it is necessary to reflect on the kind of questions we are asking and on what kind of answers we are providing when dealing with ecological problems. This paper examines two points, among many others, that were discussed in a group at the V Research Meeting on Environmental Education (EPEA), occurred in 2009. The first point refers to the importance of EE and SM spaces in providing strong questions about people-environment relations. The second point is the discussion about the academic contribution to the creation of effective democratic spaces that goes beyond simple investigation to include strong answers.