Epistemic Marginality, Higher and Environmental Education in Colombia

Abstract

Due to their ecological and cultural wealth and diversity many Latin American countries suffer from the exploitation of natural resources and environmental conflicts. These are furthered by many interconnected factors: divergent world views on land and territory and the competitive interests that stem from them (land and nature as livelihood with symbolic meaning vs. land and its resources as commodity), multiple legal systems (legal pluralism), different social relations and equally divergent strategies and technologies to transform nature. In Colombia among other countries, these factors are largely responsible for the emergence and intensification of the unsustainable resource use and the exploitation of natural resources, for example through an increase of extractive activities such as mining and agricultural practices in the style of the green revolution. Both are privileged in the current conventional and neoliberal model of development, with serious destructive consequences for the natural and cultural environment (symbolic, social, economic, political and technological). Strategies to solve the mentioned problems need a critical reflection on the epistemic foundations that represent diverse perspectives on ecology, development and the environment. We assume that higher and environmental education are important aspects, political agents and protagonists for the enforcement of ideologies and interests, and should therefore be diversified to increase political participation and decrease social inequalities.