A educação ambiental em meio às relações entre o rural e o urbano no entorno do Parque Estadual dos Três Picos, Teresópolis - RJ

Abstract

The fast expansion of urban centers associated with the environmetal movement enlargement has generated a growing flow of migration from urban to rural areas, where significant natural landscapes are found. Dissatisfied with the conditions of life and with the model of uncontrolled consumption of natural resources observed in the big urban centers, they try to reinvent their relationship with nature and disseminate the environmental concepts, aiming at a new way of thinking the human relationship with nature. However, we observe that the environmental proposals presented under the perspective of the outsiders has been clashing itself with the world views, traditional habits and cultural values of the rural people, generating mistrust and showing up the conflicts and contradictions of this urban people’s attempt to meet their “lost relationship with nature”. This work was made in Teresópolis, Rio de Janeiro State, in the communities of Canoas, Prata dos Aredes and Varginha, on the nearside of the Parque Estadual dos Três Picos - PETP (Three Peaks State Park). The research’s objective was to analyse, by the perspective of the different local players, the sociocultural complexity formed with the arrival of urban people at the local, confronting the different world views and setting out the challenges of a work with environmental education on these communities. At that context, the study of interactions between rural and urban people emphasizes the importance of the environmental education to improve the dialogue between the different local actors, aiming at to overcome the conflicts and to implement a model of local development actually different from the urban-industrial model. In the same way, this model becomes fundamental for the complete realization of PETP’s goals, creating the conditions to consolidate its buffering zone. A qualitative perspective was adopted in this research. Participant observation, non structured and semi-structured interviews were the tools used in order to understand the relationship between nature and society, the way of thinking rural space is conceived and its interaction with the urban side.