Environmental Education of the South: Critical Approaches and Perspectives from the Latin American Panorama

This article focuses on the research and the Praxis of environmental education carried out within the framework of the Grupo de Estudos de Educacao ambiental Desde El Sur (GEASur) (Southern Environmental Education Study Group) of the Federal University of The state of Rio de Janeiro (UNIRIO). This research group tends to produce a reflection on environmental education from the perspective of the South, that is, in the context of a contextualisation of the complex realities of this region of the world. For the GEASur, this approach is part of the work of Paulo Freire and falls within the field of critical decolonial studies. From the struggles against oil companies in Argentina and Brazil, this analysis focuses on the use of the theoretical-methodological referential in the context of environmental education and in the resistance pedagogies of groups in struggle. By demonstrating that environmental education and pedagogical praxis constitute social movements, the group postulates that in the South, environmental education goes beyond the popular education processes. Reinventing itself and creating new strategies constantly, the struggle movements in the South show a creative potential that helps to reflect the environmental education in a structuring way, in all its spaces and forms of action.