Opportunities and Challenges to Implement Environmental Education in Brazilian Coastal and Marine Protected Areas

Abstract

The 1988 Brazilian Federal Constitution established the promotion of environmental education (EE) as a Government’s public policy, which constitutes an important legal frame addressing this subject in Brazil, also considering the EE activities in coastal and marine protected areas (CMPAs). This chapter presents the legal frame, concepts, and potentialities of EE in CMPAs. Also, it highlights some experiences of EE in Brazilian PAs particularly to identify gaps, potentialities, and specificities for the development of coastal and marine environmental education (CMEE). Despite the conceptual and legal support for the development of EE activities in CMPAs, managers have a great difficulty to achieve these goals given the lack of funding, resources, personnel, and training, among other challenges that will be presented throughout this chapter. Thereby, environmental interpretation strategies assume great importance as well as citizen science initiatives and partnerships between public entities, civil society, and educational institutions. Considering this, it is of fundamental importance to encourage the social participation and diversity of partnerships. Also, it is necessary to test and improve CMEE methodologies in order to potentiate the teaching and learning process and to strength the democratic participation in the CMPAs management. In addition, it is clear that the CMEE needs financial independence, which could be supplied by the ecotourism in the CMPAs, but such initiatives are still incipient in Brazil.