Educação ambiental na Amazônia amapaense: possibilidade de emancipação pelo saber com foco nas questões socioambientais de áreas de ressaca em Macapá/AP

Abstract

This Dissertation addresses Environmental Education from the perspective of Popular Education, focusing on socio-environmental issues in two wetlands (ressacas) in the municipality of Macapá/AP: the Congós Ressaca, located in the southern zone of the city and close to the urban center, and the Pacoval Ressaca, situated in the northern zone, in a peripheral area. The central theme focuses on the integration between local knowledge, environmental education, and socio-environmental emancipation, contributing to the debate on the appropriate management of garbage, waste, and sanitary sewage in environmentally fragile areas that are also important for the microclimate. In this sense, the problem is constituted by the following question: As a possibility for emancipation, what knowledge about environmental issues and Environmental Education is mobilized by residents of ressaca areas in Macapá/AP? In this line, the general objective is to analyze the knowledge mobilized by residents of ressaca areas in Macapá/AP regarding environmental issues and Environmental Education as a possibility for emancipation. The specific objectives include: 1) to contextualize the ressaca areas that will serve as the locus of the research, identifying environmental, social, and economic aspects that influence the context of the ressaca areas in the Congós and Pacoval neighborhoods in Macapá/AP; 2) to understand the epistemologies that involve environmental education and Freirean thought for emancipation through knowledge; and 3) to identify the knowledge about socio-environmental issues and environmental education mobilized by residents of the ressaca areas in the Congós and Pacoval neighborhoods in Macapá/AP, as well as the articulation between them. The research was guided by the historical and dialectical methods (Gamboa, 2007; Minayo, 2010; Lakatos and Marconi, 2017), with a qualitative approach (Minayo, 2002; Gamboa, 2007; Creswell, 2014), and of the Case Study type (Yin, 2015; Gil, 2016). Data collection was carried out based on informal direct observation (Yin, 2015) and semi-structured interviews, a technique that combines a predefined guide of topics with the flexibility to explore emerging issues during the interaction (Minayo, 2017). Data analysis followed the thematic analysis of Braun and Clarke (2006), which allowed the identification of patterns of meaning in complex narratives, integrating multiple sources of information (speeches and images), generating categories, themes, and subthemes from previously defined central axes. The results show that, despite the socio-environmental inequalities and the absence of public policies faced in the ressaca areas of Pacoval and Congós, these territories produce knowledge and practices of environmental care co-constructed in everyday experience. The analysis of the two areas revealed that, in both contexts, residents demonstrate critical awareness regarding environmental problems, with a strong ideal of emancipation. The findings indicate that Environmental Education, articulated with Popular Education, has the potential to strengthen processes of awareness and socio-environmental emancipation.