Territórios e saberes: sistematização participativa para a educação ambiental crítica em comunidades vulnerabilizadas

Abstract

Critical Environmental Education requires practices that engage with the reality of vulnerable territories; nevertheless, educators working in these communities need planning instruments that articulate theory and practice. Although principles such as socio-environmental justice, environmental racism, and the ecology of knowledges are well established in the literature, tools that translate them into concrete planning rooted in the reality of communities are still lacking. Given this gap, this research aimed to systematize a Guiding Framework for planning Critical Environmental Education actions in vulnerable territories, grounded in the trajectories of educators who work directly within such realities. The study adopted a qualitative approach with a methodological protocol comprising two stages: (i) the development of a research instrument grounded in scientific literature, with participatory refinement by the researcher, who also works in urban communities and favelas; (ii) this instrument served as an elicitation device for discussions in activities carried out with 13 educators from the Baixada Santista Metropolitan Region, distributed across two focus groups with distinct profiles: technical-academic (FG1) and community-territorial (FG2). Data treatment combined individual assessments and group discussions with thematic and lexicometric analysis. Convergence of opinions between the groups was found regarding the centrality of education, showing that, despite differing backgrounds and experiences, there was complementarity of knowledges concerning socio-environmental problems, understood across cultural, economic, and political dimensions, associated with precarious access to basic rights and urban infrastructure. Territorial inequalities condition distinct ways of experiencing environmental problems, conferring centrality to socio-environmental justice, the valuing of local knowledges, and the participation of subjects in the construction of territorialized educational practices. In this sense, the Guiding Framework constitutes a social technology rooted in the reality of vulnerable communities, capable of supporting the continuing education of environmental educators, in alignment with Research Line 3 — Innovations and Applied Practices in Urban Planning, while also presenting potential contribution to the achievement of the SDGs, in particular target 4.7, focused on human rights, citizenship, and cultural diversity and target 11.3, concerning participatory territorial planning in contexts of urban vulnerability.