Education for Environmental Justice: What Proposals are Being Made?

Abstract

We are currently facing serious environmental problems, such as resource scarcity and climate change, which will worsen over time. To assess whether the existing didactic proposals contribute to the students' socio-ecological transformation, we have catalogued the activities on Environmental Education offered in the Community of Madrid by the Ministry for Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge of Spain (period 2018-2021), considering: the educational level of destination, what they teach, why they teach it, what their scope will be and whether they are democratic. The results show a neglect of early educational stages and a predominance of lectures/exhibitions on conceptual content (biodiversity, recycling), ignoring relevant topics such as environmental health problems of anthropogenic origin, and without developing critical thinking. The activities are difficult to replicate, and present segregating requirements, all features inconsistent with an Education for Environmental Justice. Therefore, proposals can be designed to provide trainers and learners with a polyhedral/holistic vision of the complexity of environmental problems. Educational research should address these deficiencies/limitations.