Education for sustainable development in brazil: Challenges for inclusive, differentiated and multicultural education

Abstract

Economic progress has been noteworthy in almost all fields in the last 70 years. However, the unsustainable use of non renewable resources, the destruction of biological diversity, and greenhouse gas emissions accelerated the environmental crisis and highlighted social inequalities. The accountability over this civilizational crisis is diffuse, but environmental education in Brazil is mostly focused on those who cause the least environmental damage. This chapter analyses the interactions between the determinants of the current environmental crisis and the contribution of education to sustainable development, critically considering the sustainability of the current means of production and consumption and as a strategy for the promotion of autonomy and equity in the Brazilian reality. A qualitative methodology was used to understand a movement in environmental education based on the critical analysis of the sustainability of the means of production and consumption. For such, documents, laws, and texts were analyzed to approach three important aspects, not intending to exhaust the issue. The first aspect is the original, foundational, and practical constitution of environmental education. The second is about understanding the challenges of institutionalizing environmental education in the Brazilian context. The third has to do with the paths of political action to be carried out to attain the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).