Indicadores socioambientais: a pegada ecológica como ferramenta para educação ambiental na escola

Abstract

Since 1960s, humanity began to be concerned with the issues surrounding the environment, and in the contemporary era, it is fundamentally important to raise awareness about this. In this sense, the general objective of this project was to carry out an analysis of the Ecological Footprint of the students of a class from an urban college and a class from a rural college, from the city of Dois Vizinhos, southwest of Paraná. The audience was made up of students from the 8th year of elementary school from two different teaching institutions, in which 33 students participated. The methodology adopted in this work has a qualitative and quantitative approach. Initially, a prequestionnaire was applied with the purpose of verifying the previous knowledge of those involved and later, the data was also collected for the calculation of the Ecological Footprint. There was an awareness-raising lecture on environmental issues, dynamics and an environmental game for a better understanding of the content. Finally, the postquestionnaire was applied. Before the lecture, the students did not know much about the Ecological Footprint method, but even so, most of them related this tool to the Environment, but did not know what their real use was. It was possible to notice that there were modifications in the students perception regarding the Ecological Footprint when comparing the pre and post questionnaire responses. The amplitude of the environmental impact that each student would potentially produce (PE) was analyzed and in the urban college, 53% of the students needed 3 planets each to support their lifestyle. Already for the rural college, 73% would also need 3 planets for each one. The analysis also highlights that each student's Ecological Footprint is well above what the planet can support, and awareness activities are needed that promote lifestyle changes and cause fewer impacts to Nature. In this view, this work was important for the participants to become aware of issues involving the environment, and the lecture is an important information tool, since it elucidate in a didactic way the current issues. Besides this, the environmental games was also seen as a learning tool. Finally, it is pointed out that the themes that involve the environment still need to be better worked in our society and the development of activities in the school environment has a fundamental importance as an alternative for the dissemination of information in favor of the environment.