Seminar addressed the “urgent” need to turn environmental education into public policy
- Publicado el 15.06.2023
- Escrito por Angel Fondon
The seminar “Comprehensive Environmental Education: Experiences and Challenges for the Development of Public Policies” was held this Tuesday at the Pontifical Catholic University of Valparaíso’s Central Campus. The seminar aimed to generate new spaces for discussion that encourage nature-conscious education.
This initiative is part of the Transformative Nature Project, promoted by the Faculty of Education of Alberto Hurtado University and the Cosmos Foundation. The project aims to support, strengthen, and improve environmental education in the formal setting through the pedagogical model of Transformative Education with Nature.
During the seminar a space for conversation and reflection was opened where Antonia Condeza-Marmentini, director of the Transformative Nature Project, commented on the proposal for this program: “The Transformative Nature project has several objectives. It presents a concrete pedagogical approach that enhances knowledge generation from the territories, and it is also geared toward spaces where environmental education has not been present. In addition, we are conducting an evaluation of our high-quality educational research experiences. All of this is intended to generate questions and answers regarding how we create a new way of delivering environmental education nationwide.”
For his part, Diego Urrejola, executive director of the Cosmos Foundation, noted that it is of utmost importance to incorporate nature and environmental challenges as drivers of learning. “Given the challenges that have arisen recently in the post-pandemic era, it is necessary to adapt new educational tools that allow us to foster awareness, focusing on the development of people and nature. To achieve this, it is necessary to generate a cultural shift through the implementation of public policies that open up new educational opportunities in the context of climate change,” he said.
The event featured Dr. Silvina Corbetta, a UNSE-UNAHUR academic, Argentine political scientist, and environmental education specialist. She addressed the progress made by the Comprehensive Environmental Education Law approved in Argentina in 2021 and the role of the State in advancing the right to environmental education. “We must demand that States guarantee the right to environmental education in a world that is no longer enough to call a planet in environmental crisis, but rather in collapse. With decimated systems, with a culture of unequal conditions where communities barely manage to appropriate these common goods in a context where, particularly in Latin America, a highly extractivist model prevails. In this sense, a State that does not guarantee the existence of these common goods and the ability of communities to continue inhabiting the territories in which they reside is a State that is violating rights.” “, he said.
The seminar also featured Roberto González, Head of the Environmental Education Department of the Ministry of the Environment, and Juan Pablo Álvarez, National Coordinator of Coexistence for Citizenship at the Ministry of Education. During the panel discussion, González commented that “value-based education is necessary, one that is built within communities in the territories, that views the whole picture and understands that there is a greater responsibility than a specific action. We believe that environmental education is necessary, one that not only addresses content but goes beyond that. It is a discussion about the formation of society, where we must ask ourselves: What kind of society do we need today?”
Transformative Nature
The Transformative Nature project began in 2021 and is currently projected to last three years. It is the result of a collaboration between the Cosmos Foundation and the UAH Faculty of Education.
You can relive the Environmental Education Seminar: Experiences and Challenges for Public Policy Development in the video below or by clicking here.