Educação ambiental e a dimensão política: um estudo de caso do programa de formação de educadores ambientais da usina hidroelétrica Itaipu Binacional

Abstract

The objective of this research was to analyze aspects of the political dimension present in the Environmental Education Program of Itaipu Binacional in the Parana III Basin (BP III), and particularly the Environmental Educators Training Program (FEA), as well as to mobilize, possible meanings and senses about the environmental themes and Environmental Education. The analyzes were made considering some documents produced by the FEA program and answers to the questionnaires and semi-structured interviews, with program participants. It is known that discussions around the environmental theme are present in several sectors of society, emerging as a significant problem on a global level, starting in the 1960s and 1970s. In the referred period, several conferences and meetings ocurred that generated diverse documents, pointing to a crisis that was outlined as a crisis of civilization and / or thinking, concerning the environmental issue. Such discussions provoked, at the time, the emergence of environmentalism that began to manifest itself through the actions of civil society and state organizations. Precisely in that context that we identify private, state and mixed-economy companies by becoming important contributors to the development of Environmental Education actions. But, what indicators of the political dimension can be mobilized from the analysis of the Environmental Education Program, and particularly the FEA program under review? What ways about the environmental theme and the political dimension of Environmental Education can we mobilize from the analysis of the FEA program and the participants' discourses of that formative process? What aspects of those discourses mobilized by the FEA program are reflected in the participants' discourses? How much of those discourses are refracted in the speeches of those participants? Which can be evidenced by “Open Polemics” (OP) and / or “Veiled Polemics”(VP)? From those mobilized senses, what relationship can we establish between political action as proposed by Arendt (2014) and the educational process proposed in that program under analysis? To answer these questions, the present research is based on the qualitative research approach, study o f case, and its theoretical-methodological perspective is based on the analysis of the discourse proposed by Bakhtin and the Circle, seeking to understand meanings and mobilize senses that can be constructed in a dialogical process with the context of that region. As main results it was possible to mobilize ways that indicate aspects of the environmental theme, its causes and impacts, as well as the political perspectives of Environmental Education presented by this program in BP III. We can conclude that political action, according to Arendt's contributions, is possible in that territory that has political subjects, effectively engaged in some of the cities involved. Nevertheless, we verified the concealment of the historical context of that region that was strongly marked by the construction of the Plant. Social-environmental conflicts and injustices that are being appeased through mitigating measures that in a way silences the subjects of that territory and does not allow political action, in which public spaces must promote questionings about the current model of society-nature.