Education for Sustainable Development and Conceptions of Environmental Education in Brazil: Possible Approaches

Introduction

Elaborated as a reference for the use of natural resources, the sustainable development (SD) concept was officially declared at the 1972 United Nations Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm, Sweden. In its conception, it is associated with humanity’s ability to use natural resources with responsibility without compromising future generations. The Brundtland Report formalized it in 1987 and made it publicly known worldwide, and Eco-92 in Rio de Janeiro used it as a reference by concentrating efforts to fulfil its premises. As a result of Rio 92, UNESCO became responsible for coordinating educational actions aimed at SD, known as education for sustainable development (ESD).

However, according to these documents, SD does not clearly indicate its effective implementation, and the international community hardly recognizes that current actions and measures are practical enough for SD. In the opinion of Frey (2001, p. 2), SD is, first of all, a political and power problem that raises the question of political-administrative institutions, participation and political process. For this author, SD can be analysed through three different approaches. The first one is identified as an economic-liberal market approach that considers the regulatory force of the market for SD. The second is identified as an ecological-technocratic planning approach that considers the state and its institutions—that regulate and plan aspects related to the environmental issues—as instruments to ensure the prevalence of the common good in development. And finally the third, which considers the political action and mobilization of the population and civil society organizations through a democratic process, is identified as a political approach to democratic participation.

The fundamental aspects of SD were already included in the principles of environmental education (EE) which were declared at the Tbilisi Conference (United Nations, 1978) such as: the need to consider the social aspects of the environment and its relations between economy, environment and development; the adoption of local and global perspectives; and the promotion of international solidarity.

Regarding education for the implementation of SD, it is considered as a process that must contemplate the values, the culture and the history of the subjects involved. These conditions cannot be ignored when promoting ESD since the act of educating is inserted in a social context in which there are different social groups with different and often antagonistic interests. Education is beyond an educational process, as it is also a political process that contemplates the emancipation and the autonomy of the subjects (Freire, 2001, 2013). In this way, the act of educating does not mean supposed neutrality since any subjects involved in the educational process have their constituent values and culture that accompany them throughout their lives through a historical process. Thus, the educational process, when involving environmental aspects, also inserts itself in the political sphere since attitudes, discussions and decision-making in the use of natural resources by humanity depend on the interests of different social groups; that is, EE is also political.

In Brazil, different descriptions and mappings of EE are currently found. There are several identifications, classifications and definitions of its various aspects, in which SD and ESD are analysed in the main conceptions.

The Conceptions of EE, SD and ESD in Brazil

The EE categorized as ecopedagogy is defended by authors such as Ruscheinsky (2004) and Avanzi (2004). Ecopedagogy is understood as the basis for critical and innovative thinking, promoting the transformation and construction of society, involving individuality and collectivity in a holistic perspective with an interdisciplinary focus on the relationship between human being and nature. Also in ecopedagogy, EE should stimulate solidarity, equality and respect for human rights, helping to develop an ethical conscience towards all forms of life, respecting their life cycles and imposing limits on the exploitation of these forms of life. Nature is treated as a dynamic whole, relational, harmonious and self-organized, interacting with existing relationships in society, and ecosystems are understood in an integrated way, as a unit.

Ecopedagogy criticizes EE approaches based on a concept of the environment as separate from social issues. According to Avanzi (2004, p. 37), the conception of educational processes in ecopedagogy from a Freirean pedagogical conception—in which reflection on reality reveals their oppressive elements—enables the transformation of this reality as a way to emancipate the subjects. From this perspective, subjects need to reflect on their daily life in a dynamic way, interweaving their individualities with society and nature. Ecopedagogy presents means that enable the subjects to turn to themselves and to the values, the practices and the patterns assumed; improve public policy projects, with solidarity and social equality; and also incorporate the macro-perspective, as the planetary citizenship (Ruscheinsky, 2004).

Thus, the values and attitudes in EE for ecopedagogic adherents can be constructed according to a pedagogical and socio-historical movement that enables the formation of citizens capable of choosing the indicators of the quality of their future through the use of natural resources without compromising future generations. Proposing a reflection on the reality that allows the unveiling of its oppressive elements involves the understanding of society and environment in agreement with ESD from an SD perspective of a political approach to democratic participation.

However, an EE that promotes social change in order to overcome the oppressive forces and allows equality between individuals as well as a balanced relationship between man and nature does not clearly appear in the proposal of Chapter 36 of Agenda 21. This document proposes as premises the promotion and improvement of basic education that should focus on the communion of knowledge, skills, values and perspectives to encourage and support humankind to live in a sustainable way. The SD and ESD do not clearly present how to conciliate the interests of ordinary people—who would like to improve their relationship with the environment—with the interests of large corporations that make their decisions based on financial goals. The ESD should propose referrals by reorienting education at all levels to that one capable of forming citizens who build knowledge and realize that they also relate to these large corporations when they need objects and tools that are, for example, the result of mining and oil extraction. Thus, they would allow everybody to understand the contradictions in which they take part, what happens on the planet such as the case of the great oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010 or the overflow of a mining dam in the state of Minas Gerais in Brazil in 2015. Ecopedagogy must be in accordance with an SD perspective meant to promote a political approach to democratic participation and aimed at overcoming SD that presents an economic-liberal market approach.

The concept of critical EE is defended by several Brazilian authors, who present differences in their theoretical constructions. The following is a discussion of the position of Isabel Carvalho, Mauro Guimarães and Carlos Frederico Loureiro on EE criticism.

Carvalho (2004a) develops the concept of critical EE as an overcoming of the naive vision of EE. In this perspective, EE is considered in its legitimacy due to the specificity of environmentally oriented educational practice and its critical role in understanding the relationships between society and nature, to intervene in environmental problems and conflicts. The political and pedagogical aspects of critical EE enable a change of values and attitudes that contribute to the formation of an ecological subject. The formation of the subjects is guided by sensitivities in solidarity with the community and the environment, serving as a model for the formation of social subjects and groups that have the capacity to identify, problematize and act on social and environmental problems, with the aim of an ethics concerned with environmental justice. Critical EE supports environmental ethics as a reference of social decisions and allows a new orientation of collective and individual life styles because it generates a new meaning to the care for nature and with other subjects such as ethical–political values (Carvalho, 2004b).

For Carvalho (2004a), the educational practice of critical EE consists in forming subjects in their individual and social dimensions, considering them as historical subjects. Education does not exclusively focus on the individual as a unique being and also does not treat the collective in an abstract way. This perspective goes against the belief that social changes happen through the sum of individual changes, when everyone does their part. It also goes against the belief that subjectivity is part of something broader or more encompassing in a general and depersonalized social system, which must first change and then it allows transformations in the collective and individual experience.

Formation is focused on the relations between the individual and society, whose responsibilities in the world we live presuppose responsibilities with oneself, with others and with the environment, without dichotomization and/or hierarchization of dimensions that contemplate the human being. Thus, in this EE perspective, a formation of an ‘ecological subject’ is above all related to a reconstruction of consciousness, customs and practices.

It is an identity project, supported by an array of traits and tendencies supposedly capable of translating the ideals of the field. Thus, as an environmentally oriented narrative identity, the ecological subject would ideally be able to face the dilemmas in society, the ethical and aesthetic dilemmas present in the societal crisis in its countercultural translation, moving towards a socially and environmentally sustainable emancipated society project (Carvalho, 2005).

Therefore, the ‘ecological subject’ contemplates a formation of a subject in the scope of social relations that has conditions of decision-making, including in environmental issues, in a conscious and autonomous way. The foundations of this perspective are not according to a deepening of relations between society and nature comparable with other critical perspectives of EE that will be mentioned below. A formation focused on the individual and society does not consider a totality of the relations between the subjects with respect to the dynamic and procedural form, since the relations of interest between different social classes involve different material conditions of existence.

This EE perspective has elements that approach the premise of reorienting existing education at all levels towards SD and the premise about training for ESD through the development of specialized training programmes for all sectors in order to have the knowledge and skills required to carry out work in a sustainable way, according to Chapter 36 of Agenda 21 for ESD. These approximations are possible since this critical EE allows transformations in the experience of the collective and the individual, which are something that would enable social change as a whole. On the other hand, this EE perspective does not consider any of the SD approaches described by Frey (2001). In the same way, despite the collective and the political aspects in the construction of EE, Carvalho’s perspective does not point to a formative process in which education contemplates aspects of autonomy and emancipation of the characteristic subjects of Freire’s pedagogy (2001, 2013).

Guimarães (2004) also categorizes the critical EE concept through a theoretical construction of contraposition to something existing, in the sense of overcoming another concept categorized as conservative EE. This EE perspective is related to an educational and world understanding and posture based on a paradigm and an ideology that manifest hegemonically in the constitution of society today. According to this author, conservative EE is related to the promotion and privilege of the cognitive aspects of the pedagogical process. It also considers that transformation of the individual and society occurs through the transmission of correct knowledge in which rationalism is above emotion, individualism comes before the collective, the local is decontextualized of the global, and the technicist dimension is more important than politics (Guimarães, 2004).

The construction of EE’s perspective critical of this author is based on ideas of a conservative EE which is not instrumentalized from the epistemological point of view and it is not engaged in the process of significant transformations of the socio-environmental reality because it is stuck in its ideological perspectives. From the same constituents of the crisis, a conservative EE seeks to find a solution.

An example for understanding conservative EE is the confrontation of the environmentalists in 2010 against the construction of a shipyard in the Brazilian city of Biguaçu on the coast of Santa Catarina state. Studies have pointed out that this development could alter the marine currents in the region, cause beach erosion and contamination of water and soil by fuels, lubricants, solvents and paints. This set of possible problems could lead to the disappearance of dolphins and the reduction of fish (Kafruni, 2010). The company responsible for the construction of the shipyard gave up the project, which denotes a considerable victory for the environmentalists and the community that could be directly impacted. Although it is significant from the environmental point of view, the aspects that involved the confrontation were limited to the region considered. There was no further discussion of the totality of the construction of the shipyard. In this case, a conservative EE developed a correct knowledge that allowed the understanding of the environmental problem by the individuals and consequently transformed them to a certain extent.

The context that concerns the construction of the shipyard also involved government agencies, which relate to an ecological-technocratic approach of planning, which, according to Frey (2001), considers the state and its institutions that regulate and plan aspects related to the environmental problem. The conservative EE perspective is in accordance with Chapter 36 of Agenda 21 and with the premise of educating for SD, developing a public understanding and awareness of sustainability.

As an overcoming of the perspective presented above, Guimarães (2004) developed the concept of critical EE as a necessary tool to differentiate an educational action with the capacity to transform social reality, as well as its relations with the environment, which is in crisis according to historical processes. In this sense, this perspective of EE would be able to lead to the overcoming of a society with a fragmentary, dualistic and dichotomous tendency. Thus, this understanding is regarded as a contrast, according to another epistemological reference, that allows to subsidize a more complex and instrumentalized interpretation of reality, for an intervention that contributes to the process of transformation of the socio-environmental reality.

For Guimarães (2004), critical EE focuses on the promotion of educational environments of mobilization with intervention on the reality and its socio-environmental problems. Thus, it is possible to overcome the paradigmatic traps in these environments and enable an education through the exercise of an active citizenship, in order to transform the existing socio-environmental crisis (Guimarães, 2004). The purpose is to implement pedagogical actions of sensitization, involving affectively the subjects with the environmental cause, in the sense of overcoming the mere transmission of ecologically correct knowledge.

For this perspective of critical EE, the construction of the shipyard can be analysed in depth. Although the importance of the struggle of environmentalists to prevent the construction of the enterprise is recognized, the surroundings are, beyond the context, treated by conservative EE. The construction of a shipyard is related to a demand for the market for its products, such as ships, rafts, oil rigs and so on. In this way, these products will be produced regardless of location. Thus, the adopted measures, after a clash like this one, solve an environmental problem of a specific location. The environmental impacts related to the existence of a shipyard will inevitably occur in another place of the country or in other countries with less rigid environmental laws where there is no confrontation with environmentalists.

Critical EE permits to relate several dimensions, such as economic, political, cultural, environmental, among others, that should be considered as a dynamic process that allows an active citizenship of the involved subjects, in which the environmental crisis is related to the crisis of the capitalist mode of production. It is a perspective that overcomes the limited and romanticized vision of the environmental problems by conservative EE. The perspective of critical EE of Guimarães is related to a political approach of democratic participation of SD that aims at overcoming an existing SD approach: the economic-liberal market. The political approach to democratic participation allows the development of an ESD for public understanding and awareness of sustainability, according to the premise of Agenda 21. However, there is no agreement about the premise related to training for ESD under the argument that specialized training so that all sectors have the knowledge and skills necessary to perform work sustainably reduces the educational process to a mere training. Critical EE considers the education perspective of Freire, in which the collective and democratic discussion is oriented to a citizen formation with the subjects emancipated.

For Loureiro (2009), critical EE is categorized as not deriving from disunited and compartmentalized knowledge. From this perspective, there is the understanding that the apprehension of reality must occur according to some conceptual categories that are inseparable from pedagogical procedures. The EE should consider the context involved when approaching a concept or topic. It should also consider: the global as a whole, meaning the relations in which we are inserted; the multidimensional as a perception of the human being as a biological, social, psychological, cultural being, with its experience in society, with its historicity; and the complex as a union of distinct elements inseparably constitutive of the whole (Loureiro, 2009).

This EE perspective, for example, would make a different interpretation of the accident at the Fukushima nuclear power plant in Japan in 2011 possible. Japan is in the Pacific Fire Circle, one of the most earthquake-prone regions on the planet. A critical understanding of the existing processes in social relations allied to processes occurring in nature allows the conclusion that a nuclear power plant built in a region of earthquakes is responsible for a natural event such as the cause of the accident. We have not rethought the energy demands, or the way we satisfy human needs, whether in industry or in the service sector. The question that arises here is whether all these needs are necessary for human existence or are they the needs of a market that wants to produce just to generate profits. The premise in Chapter 36 of Agenda 21 for ESD of a reorientation of existing education at all levels towards SD according to critical EE should have a critical understanding that the needs of the market possibly may not be in accordance with human needs and limitations of nature. In this way, it is verified that this perspective of EE is not in agreement with the economic-liberal approach for SD, that is, the market with its regulatory force is not able to solve the environmental problem. It is also not in accordance with an ecological-technocratic approach since the State demonstrates that it does not have the capacity to regulate and plan aspects related to the environmental problem.

Another perspective is an emancipatory and transformative EE, presented by Quintas (2004, 2006) and Loureiro (2004, 2009). The conception of studies in the environmental management processes developed by Quintas (2004) is committed to building a sustainable future, in which the background environment is understood as ecologically balanced and right for all, good for common use and essential for a healthy quality of life. Another ethical commitment regarded as a duty of the public power and collectivity is ecologically balanced preservation, in order to protect the environment for present and future generations. This implies building a society with a development style that is socially fair and environmentally secure, in a context of economic and social dependence, whose practice of environmental management is democratic, with the assumption that all species have the right to life, and that faces the challenges of a society of privileges for a few and obligations for many.

According to Quintas (2004), emancipatory and transformative EE understands environmental management as a process of mediation of interests and conflicts between subjects who dispute access to and use of environmental resources. In this context, environmental management is not neutral and the State, when facing an environmental problem, defines who will bear the costs or benefits that come from human action in the environment. The practice of environmental management by the State has an asymmetric distribution in society, which is not understood as a place of harmony, but as a space of confrontations and conflicts that involve politics, economy, social relations and values. This is a cognitive issue, but it is mediated by economic, political and ideological interests related to a social and political environment. For Quintas (2006), the objective of education in the environmental management process is to enable the acquisition of knowledge, skills and the development of attitudes, with the individual and collective participation in the management of the use of environmental resources and in the conception and application of decision-making which affect the quality of physical natural and social environment.

In this sense, the subjects involved in educational action are, as a priority, the segment of society that is affected and burdened by the environment management system and that has few conditions for intervention in the decision process. For the emancipatory and transformative EE, the educational process is structured in order to promote the overcoming of the fragmented understanding of reality through a construction and a reconstruction that enable a reflexive process between the involved subjects; the respect for plurality and cultural diversity, strengthening collective and organized action and articulating the different knowledge and actions to provide an understanding of the problems in all their complexity; and the possibility of joint action with an organized civil society, especially with social movements, in a way that there is an understanding of EE, with its interdisciplinary characteristic, as a process that institutes new relations between subjects and nature.

The rupture of a mining dam in the Brazilian city of Mariana, in Minas Gerais state, in 2015, is an example of how transformative and emancipatory EE proposed by this author allows understanding the processes of environmental management. There was no democratic environmental management with the assumption that all species have the right to life. There was no confrontation related to the challenges of a society of privileges for a few and obligations for many. In the rupture of the dam, there was negligence of the mining company and also of the municipal, state and federal public agencies involved in this event. The licenses and operating authorizations were outdated months before the disaster and nothing was done to correct this error (Soares, 2015). The process of commodification of the environment shows that the interests of large corporations overlap the interests of the collective, especially the individuals directly impacted by the dam leak. EE, mandatory in the environmental management of this kind of enterprise, that would allow a collective discussion considering all the possible outcomes, contemplating political, economic and social dimensions, could have resulted in a different outcome.

Educating for SD according to a transformative and emancipatory EE would permit the development of a public understanding and awareness of sustainability, according to the premise of Agenda 21. The emancipatory formative process would allow the understanding by society of an autonomous and conscious decision-making, providing an effective and democratic sustainability, that is, a Freirean perspective of education. Thus, it can be seen that the transformative and emancipatory EE is in accordance with the political approach of democratic participation towards a confrontation in order to overcome an economic-liberal SD of the market that happens in practice.

Loureiro (2004) characterizes EE, for didactic purposes, by blocks of trends, such as conventional EE and transforming EE. In the first, EE is emphatically understood in the individual dimension of the subjects and is based on practical experiences of sensitization, with social relations being treated in a secondary way or with low understanding. Educational processes are treated as behavioural acts with little articulation with the collective or problematization to transform the reality of life, making these processes depoliticized. This leads to a naive belief that objective changes occur through individual changes without understanding the more complex social relationships. The social being is treated as a biological organism without its historical and social characteristics. This is what Loureiro called the ‘biologization’ of the social being. Thus, the responsibility for the degradation of the environment is put on a generic, idealized, ahistorical human being, socially decontextualized.

For example, the city of São Paulo, one of the most populous in the world, experienced its greatest water crisis between 2014 and 2016. The media reported that the causes would be the reduction of rainfall, deforestation, unbridled occupation of the sources and the lack of planning of the authorities. There were criticisms from the United Nations on the lack of investments to prevent the crisis. A conventional EE permits understandings such as these, disconnected, punctual and economistic, without a perception of the relation of water to life as a process. They are understandings that present a market view of natural resources and that is in accordance with the economic-liberal approach of the market since it bets on the regulatory force of the market to deal with environmental problems.

Thus, in the understanding of this author, the change through educational processes in the sense of overcoming conventional EE would be possible through the other strand, that is, transformative EE. According to Loureiro (2004), in this aspect the formation of the subject must contemplate the critical capacity allied to the understanding that he is part of nature. Also, their decisions, together with other subjects, have implications, directly or indirectly, on the environment. Moreover, this understanding must occur freely between subjects and without coercive influences. The EE that contemplates these aspects is characterized by the social transformation because through the organized collectivity, it will be able to understand the totality and overcome the causes of the environmental problematic. The transformative EE, for Loureiro (2009, p. 89), presents, as an emancipatory characteristic, the dialectic between form and content occurring in a way that changes in human activity imply other changes and, thus, this EE is a social praxis that could allow the construction of new relations of production, which will be related to a new economic, social, cultural and historical model with its centrality in the political action of the subjects.

In this perspective, EE could not ignore the existing relations between different social groups, with their respective interests that are also different, since they are groups that have different conditions in conflicts of interest. In these understandings, the educational practice aims to develop, in disadvantaged social groups, conceptions of class inserted in an exclusive mode of production and incompatible with the demands that the natural environment can provide for its maintenance. It is to defend the interests of the collective and the environment in a way that allows a balance, in the sense of what the environment can provide to the human being to live in dignified conditions. The failure to contemplate these ideas would contribute to hegemonic forms of power.

Therefore, transformative EE does not allow compatible compatibilist solutions between environmentalism and capitalism, as well as any moralistic referrals that dissociate the behaviour of individuals of their historical and cultural characteristics of life in society.

This EE perspective allows an understanding of how society’s relations with nature take place in their procedural form. It also allows us to understand how humanity produces its existence and has a direct relationship with the environment. The São Paulo water crisis can be interpreted in a different way. Water is a human need and the operating logic of the water and sewage company, responsible for treating water for the population, is a company that has shares in the stock exchange. The logic of an investor who buys shares in this company is its profitability, that is, water is treated not as a human need but as a market need. The way these social relations work would only be understandable in an EE that identified the subjects of these relationships, the social groups in which they belong, the interests of these groups, that is, the existing political process in the relations between society and nature, regarded as a political education with SD aspects of political approach to democratic participation.

These perspectives are not in line with Chapter 36 of Agenda 21 relative to training for ESD. The development of specialized training programmes so that all sectors have the knowledge and skills necessary to carry out work in a sustainable way considers the educational process as a mere training. Transformative EE considers the collective and democratic discussion in which the subjects make possible relations with a view to an effectively balanced relationship with nature as well as the political approach to democratic participation for SD.

End Considerations

The different conceptions of EE existing in Brazil allow in some cases to adapt to ESD, although some lack exactness in how its processes can be put into practice. This lack of clarity shows the need to rethink ESD in order to promote it considering the different realities of different peoples with their different cultures and consequent conceptions of EE, not only in Brazilian reality but also on a planetary scale.

One aspect that could be inserted in the conception of SD and consequently of ESD and that crosses the different societies, in some cases explicitly and directly and in others not so much, is the capitalist mode of production in which humanity reproduces its existence. The ESD would allow the reflection of the environmental problem considering aspects that would make it possible to show the contradictions of a production system focused on the market, not addressing the basic human needs with necessary importance.

The ESD should be treated as an EE that promotes the transformation of society towards a balanced relationship with nature, which, according to Duarte (1986, p. 104), allows a lucid understanding of the ecological crisis and can provide a solution that depends on the political action of the subjects. A perspective that, according to Foster (2000, p. 347), involves contingency and co-evolution, as a necessity of setting out not only to understand the world, but also to transform it according to the needs of human freedom and ecological sustainability. An approach that makes it possible to promote the rescue of the relationship between the human being and nature, in which individuals as social beings who interact with nature, transform it and transform themselves also through a historical process and find equilibrium with the other living beings through autonomy, social equality and emancipation.