REFLECTIONS ON ENVIRONMENTAL INTERPRETATION IN INTEGRAL PROTECTION CONSERVATION UNITS: THE CASE OF ABROLHOS NATIONAL MARINE PARK
Environmental Interpretation; Critical Environmental Education; Ecotourism; Protected Natural Areas; Sustainable Societies
It is already an indisputable scientific fact that if our civilization continues to relate to nature as it does today, in a few years we will be at a point where it will no longer be possible to stop our current path towards the destruction of the minimum conditions for human survival in this period. planet. It also seems increasingly obvious that to prevent us from reaching this point of no return, more than merely technological solutions are needed. We need to change our way of understanding and relating to the environment; we need to change our priorities and our behaviors, and quickly. Environmental interpretation (AI) and environmental education (EA) are two practices that can contribute to promoting this new understanding and behavior change. The aim of this work is to investigate several aspects in which AI and EA can be inserted in protected areas (UC) where ecotourism activities take place. In this way, considering the elaboration of the interpretative plan (IP) of the Abrolhos Marine National Park (PARNAMAR) in 2018, the objective of the work is to contribute to the reflection on the relevance of IPs in strict protection PAs in Brazil, having in mind view the transition to Sustainable Societies. For this, it will be necessary: (1) to clarify the notions of EE, ecotourism and AI; (2) create dimensions for AI; (3) point out the importance of AI being a critical EE tool in the development of IPs in UC, in the search for sustainable societies; (4) make the historical contextualization of the IP of PARNAMAR dos Abrolhos; (5) to analyze the perception of ICMBIO's employees and of the Park's partners regarding the participatory process in the elaboration of the PI of PARNAMAR dos Abrolhos; and, (6) to analyze the coherence between the aforementioned perception of ICMBIO's employees and the Park's partners and the principles of critical EE, especially those referring to participation. An exploratory research is being carried out, with a qualitative research approach, more specifically the Case Study, subdivided into two chapters that will configure two distinct and complementary articles: the 1st is for qualification and the 2nd for the defense of the dissertation. As a result already obtained, it is clear that there is no consensus that AI is an educational activity and, in addition, for IPs to leverage ecotourism as an activity with a positive socio-environmental impact, they need to be committed to processes that involve critical EE.