by Ivonaldo Leite, sociologist, Federal University of Paraíba, Brazil

It’s critically urgent to adopt policies which truly address the environmental problems we face. Environmental Education is a vital part of this call to action. As an intellectual mechanism, Environmental Education serves both as a means of persuasion and a way to bring about behavioral change.

But, first of all, we need to clarify the kind of Environmental Education that can actually achieve this goal, since, in general, government policies regarding environmental protection have been superficial and do not focus on the true causes of the ecological crisis. This is not a surprise. Governments today are simply incapable of preventing the ecological suicide which the prevailing capitalist logic is paving the way for. This superficial approach, however, is not due to a lack of understanding of the environmental crisis; rather it is an inherent consequence of the functioning of the capitalist economy.

Profit is the main driving force behind capitalism, and this requires unlimited expansion, unlimited accumulation and commodification. These conditions are essential for the continuous reproduction of the capitalist system. Aside from all other technicalities, this is the main ideological aspect of the climate issue: Neoliberal capitalism is incapable of dealing with the global warming issue in a serious and responsible way.

Therefore, environmental educators must formulate a program of instruction which both holds the capitalist economy responsible for the global ecological crisis, while at the same time pointing out new directions in the fight against the ecosystem’s collapse.

In this sense, I present below six guidelines that seem essential for a successful environmental education program. They are inspired by the perspectives of Popular Education, according to the background of Latin American thinkers such as Paulo Freire, Álvaro Vieira Pinto, Carlos Rodrigues Brandão, Orlando
Fals Borda and Enrique Dussel.

1. Environmental Education must emphasize the social implications of the ecological crisis. The effects of desertification, shortage of water, and the food crisis will impact poorer parts of the globe disproportionately. For instance, the poor will have more difficulty finding reliable alternative sources of water and food, as well as gaining access to medical care and emergency help in case of
natural disasters.

2. It is essential for Environmental Education to emphasize that humanity is a part of nature and a product of it. Hence, the notion of the alienation of human labor from what it produces is directly connected to an understanding of the alienation of human beings from nature. The commodification of nature under the capitalist mode of production and private ownership has led inevitably to the
degradation of nature.

3. Environmental Education must be guided by an interdisciplinary perspective. Interdisciplinarity assumes a mutual sharing of knowledge between disciplines and is based essentially on a systemic approach. In this way, interdisciplinary teaching is understood as teaching in which two or more disciplines participate in an interdependent process. Any field of study lends support to the concept of
an interdisciplinary approach, insofar as a scientific fact is always an abstraction from a larger complex, and also insofar as that abstraction necessarily marks out a circumscribed area corresponding to a particular inquiry, specific in its approach, its method, and its epistemological presumptions. In fact, all
disciplines need allied subjects: physics needs mathematics, biology needs physics and chemistry, while mathematics is most frequently used as an abstract instrument of calculation or logic by other disciplines. Similarly, all disciplines need a mutually accepted language as an auxiliary instrument. This
approach is particularly valuable in dealing with environmental problems, where a phenomenon must be studied through different but complementary approaches.

4. Environmental education must take into account, as Paulo Freire says in Pedagogy of the Oppressed, that those who are truly committed to liberation must reject the banking concept of education in its entirety, adopting instead a concept of women and men as conscious beings, and consciousness as consciousness intent upon the world. They must abandon the educational goal of deposit-making and replace it with the posing of the problems of human beings in their relations with the world. “Problem posing” education, responding to the essence of consciousness – intentionality – rejects communique and embodies communication. It epitomizes the special characteristic of consciousness: being conscious of, not only as intent on objects but as turned in upon itself.

5. Liberating education consists in acts of cognition, not the transfer of information. It is a learning situation in which the cognizable object (far from being the end of the cognitive act) intermediates the cognitive actors – teacher on the one hand and students on the other.

6. The problem-posing method does not dichotomize the activity of the teacher-student: she is not “cognitive” at one point and “narrative” at another. She is always “cognitive”, whether preparing a project or engaging in dialogue with the students. He does not regard cognizable objects as his private property, but as the object of reflection by himself and the students. In this way, the problem-posing educator constantly re-forms his reflections in the reflection of the students.

In other words, Environmental Education to face the ecological crisis must be popular and liberating. As Paulo Freire has said, it is this education that promotes critical thinking and enables individuals to become agents of change, including in their relationship with the environment.