Educando para as mudanças climáticas e a sustentabilidade, possibilidades de inovação nos territórios do Seridó Potiguar (Brasil) e da Alta Guajira (Colômbia)

Abstract

Latin America has regions that are sensitive and vulnerable to climate change, particularly from a socioenvironmental perspective, such as northeastern Brazil and northern Colombia. The current climate emergency requires that public policies and institutional planning be prioritized, converging on behavioral and cultural changes that promote the construction of knowledge aimed at climate adaptation. However, teaching and learning processes still do not seem to fully incorporate environmental and climate education as an essential condition for expanding individuals' transformative awareness of contemporary socioenvironmental issues. This thesis aims to understand how school educational policies and practices related to climate change and sustainability are formulated in the territories of Seridó Potiguar, in Rio Grande do Norte/Brazil, and Alta Guajira/Colombia. Subsequently, a theoretical approach is established that explores climate change and sustainability, the bibliographic production on sustainability actions in the school environment, and the regulatory regime in the environmental and educational contexts related to the central themes of this research. After building this theoretical framework, field activities were carried out to interview 45 teachers from 12 educational institutions in Brazil and Colombia. The semi-structured interviews aimed to gather data on the formative, pedagogical, conceptual, and institutional dimensions related to the teachers' work. Subsequently, the history and incorporation of climate change and sustainability into national curricular guidelines were analyzed, culminating in the proposal of a curriculum that integrates the perspective of 13 international agreements and responses provided by the teachers interviewed. The results highlight the need to incorporate the analysis of vulnerability and risk in school contexts, aiming to propose horizontal and participatory mechanisms that guide adaptive and effective education in response to the impacts of extreme climate events. Furthermore, it is highlighted that the institutional agenda should be anchored in discussions and actions focused on sustainability, with the aim of fostering local pro-environmental behaviors in the school environment. Thus, the state and schools must develop cross-cutting and interdisciplinary policies that not only mitigate the effects of climate change, but also address social inequalities and environmental problems in the regions studied. The interviews conducted allowed us to identify gaps in teachers' environmental training, as well as approaches adopted in the development of this theme by schools. Also challenges in the articulation between teachers, disciplines, and entities of the environmental ecosystem. Finally, it was observed that school curricula have addressed climate change and sustainability superficially. In this sense, the proposed curriculum integrates six thematic units and a practical workshop, with the objective of preparing a new generation of students to face climate change and promote sustainability. It is therefore concluded that it is essential that educational institutions incorporate climate issues at all levels of the curriculum, in addition to including them in the process of formulating public policies.