Protected areas and sustainable societies: enviromenmental education developed in the PA in Costa do Descobrimento - BA
Public policies on environmental education. Multi-response model questionnaire. Sustainability. Costa do Descobrimento / Bahia. Discursive textual analysis. Environmental education.
Environmental changes caused by human actions in the last century have called society's attention to the need to build alternatives for the future. Facing the socio-environmental crisis that affects us, two strategies are gaining ground on the national scene, Environmental Education and Protected Areas. The complexity of socioeconomic and environmental relations demands that Environmental Education develops in a critical and transformative way, going beyond environmental information. Protected Areas are more than “nature reserves”, they are spaces with great educational potential and to fulfill this role they must have Environmental Education assimilated into their structures. The Costa do Descobrimento in Bahia is a territory that presents different socio-environmental conflicts and several Protected Areas. In this work we analyze the Environmental Education practices intended and developed in these Protected Areas, and the conceptions of the managers of these units about these practices. Through the Protected Areas’ management documents, we investigated the presence and characteristics of the educational activities planned for these spaces. We conducted interviews with subjects who play a fundamental role in the construction and implementation of these practices and built a multi-response model questionnaire to be answered by these subjects. In addition to raising actions carried out through Discursive Textual Analysis, we seek to understand how the concepts Environmental Education, Environment and Sustainability are presented. After this survey, we will be able to understand if these concepts are close to what is foreseen in public policies on Environmental Education and, consequently, in the Treaty on Environmental Education for Sustainable Societies and Global Responsibility. The mapping of Protected Areas and their educational actions make it possible to plan actions and interventions aimed at deepening and expanding Environmental Education practices, with the objective of contributing, in the territory, to the transition to Sustainable Societies.