Environmental Education and Participation: the necessary action in the environmental management forums

The objective of this study was to diagnose the socioenvironmental perception and the knowledge of forms of political participation of students of a State School located in the Baixada Fluminense. It also presents reflections on Environmental Education in the process of stimulating social participation in environmental management forums. From two questionnaires (open and semi-open) it was identified that, although they are able to point out problems in their locality, they do not know about such spaces of participation, with some distance from public environmental policies. The path to social and environmental change may not be so clear, but it will certainly go through Criticism (the knowledge of the cause), an initial step to reverse the situation, and will go through Participation (beginning of action) decision-making.