Percepção ambiental como instrumento para educação ambiental e políticas públicas: o caso do Pico do Jabre, Paraíba, Brasil.

Abstract

Research on Environmental Awareness has been multiplied and has been gaining scientific recognition, but some methodologies for the construction of knowledge are still necessary so as to facilitate sustainable management of conservation areas in the surrounding community. In this sense, environmental education emerges as a methodological support to raise awareness of the local environment, as an educational proposal from the formal to the informal education system. It acts as an instrument capable of constructing knowledge that provides planning and management of these areas with methodologies that encourage the community’s participation and involvement. Based on this assumption, the objective of this study was to investigate the environmental awareness of students, teachers and the surrounding community in relation to Pico do Jabre, in order to equip educational actions and environmental policies that foster a major involvement of the community concerning the conservation and preservation of this natural environment. The survey was fulfilled in the municipalities of Teixeira and Maturéia, state of Paraiba. Data collection was performed in public schools located in these municipalities, as well as in the community placed in the road that leads to the Pico in the period from June to August 2011. The participants were 153 students representing the three high school years and 13 teachers, being 71 students and 4 teachers from the State Elementary and High School Moacir Antônio Dantas Cavalcanti, located just 6.3 km far from Pico do Jabre, in the municipality of Maturéia and 82 students and 9 teachers of the State Elementary and High School Sebastião Guedes da Silva, located in the town of Teixeira being 20.5 km distant from Pico do Jabre. Besides this audience, we worked with 12 dwellers of the surrounding rural community. The questionnaires used in the schools and the interviews carried out in the community aimed at analyzing the meanings of the environmental attitudes and evaluations of the surveyed population. The results point out the main environmental problems, being waste (52.2%) as the most cited one, especially regarding the fact that the visitors contribute to this process. Then other problems come out such as hunting and graffiti on stones (14.6%), burnings (10.7%) and deforestation (8.4%). These problems are probably reported due to the lack of administration and disordered visits since there is not any planning for the development of tourist activity in that environment. There is need for the establishment of an administration to develop projects for restoration of physical assets and preservation of the area, which is abandoned in order to plan and arrange the visits, using Environmental Education as management tool.