Trends and dilemmas facing environmental education in Portugal: from environmental problem assessment to citizenship involvement

Environmental education (EE) emerged in Portugal as an organized field of collective action about 30 years ago. At this time of the return to democracy, major social and environmental changes had begun to occur. Yet, after 30 years of EE, together with significant improvements in the education system and curricula, the real impacts of these mostly voluntary and aggressive efforts aimed at preparing future citizens to deal effectively and sensitively with environmental problem solving are not yet evident. The pathways and social context of these efforts aimed at upgrading EE in Portugal, and their apparent failure to meet their objectives, form the basis of the analysis in this paper. The authors examine the results of a survey questionnaire sent to 15,000 public and private schools all running projects formally associated with both EE and education for sustainable development (ESD). The primary purpose of the analysis was to identify the trends, constraints, and potentials for these EE/ESD projects and initiatives within primary and secondary schools. In addition, perspectives as to the emerging trends in ESD in Portugal are discussed, bearing in mind the shifting educational context

The politics of environmental groups in Portugal : a case study on institutional contexts and communication processes of environmmental collective action

Defence date: 24 January 2000Examining board: Prof. Christian Joppke ; Prof. João Ferreira de Almeida ; Prof. Klaus Eder ; Prof. Maria KousisFirst made available online on 31 October 2014.The fact that most of the European research on «new» social movements has come from more advanced capitalist democracies of Northern Europe -- Germany, in particular -- does not necessarily prove that «new» movements have been either quantitatively or qualitatively more important than in Southern European countries. This could simply be due to the fact that Southern researchers were too occupied with their own countries' regional problems and party systems. This problem was initially raised by Klandermans and Tarrow (1988: 16-7) as a challenging point to one of the most basic assumptions of the European Tradition of «New» Social Movement Studies, which stresses a causal link between advanced industrialism and «new» social movements

Who’s afraid of Local Agenda 21? Top-down and bottom-up perspectives on local sustainability

Local Agenda 21 is essentially a process of democratic practicing, insofar as it involves sharing political competencies in decision making by the local authorities, and the mobilisation of all citizens and civil society organisations in the process. It is, thus, a course of action in which the willingness and openness of local political leaders is as important as the ability of citizens to take the initiative of learning about and getting involved in local public life. Unfortunately, there are no more than twenty LA21 processes running in Portugal, and most of them do not fulfil all the parameters required. This paper discusses some hypotheses on the lack of success of LA21 in Portugal, which are related to structural political conditions for local governance and public participation. Resorting to some surveys on environmental policy issues (applied to both the municipal leaders and the population), the aim is to characterise the trends of mobilisation on local sustainability in Portuguese society, particularly with regard to the citizenry and local administrations

The role of non-scholar organisations in environmental education: a case study from Portugal

The aim of this study was to identify, characterise, collect and systematise data on initiatives of environmental education in Portugal. Currently, there is no integrated governmental program on environmental education in this country, but only unrelated voluntary initiatives. Although surveys indicated a growing concern by young people on environmental issues, systematic studying on the issue was lacking. The field seemed to be characterised by wide diversity and disperse voluntary action by non-governmental agents and self-mobilised teachers. In the context of the Decade Dedicated to Education for Sustainable Development of UNESCO, governmental and non-governmental organisations dedicated to the environment now have a new opportunity to enhance and coordinate contributions to make environmental issues a priority for the next generation

A construção sociológica do espaço rural: da oposição à apropriação Sociological construction of the rural space: from opposition to appropriation

Este artigo propõe uma leitura sobre o espaço rural tendo por base a sua oposição/relação com o urbano. Neste sentido, se desde os meados do século XIX até praticamente ao último terço do século XX, a análise sociológica clássica determinou um dualismo conceptual e analítico entre estes dois mundos, a partir de determinada altura reequacionou-se o significado limitativo da visão binária introduzindo-se, para o efeito, uma concepção mais complexa de cariz eminentemente relacional. Actualmente identificam-se três perspectivas modelares sobre o rural que realçam diferentes evoluções estruturais, mas que não são necessariamente exclusivas e alternativas. Pelo contrário, cada vez mais as realidades do mundo rural se abrem a novos sentidos que não se encaixam necessariamente nas tendências gerais que afectam as zonas mais urbanas.<br>The article proposes an analysis of the rural space based on its opposition / relationship with the urban space. In this sense, from the mid-nineteenth century until almost the last third of the twentieth century, the classical sociological analysis established a conceptual and analytical dichotomy between these two worlds; but at a certain moment the restrictive meaning of this dual vision was reformulated with the introduction of a more complex conception with a highly relational aspect. There are currently three perspectives on the rural model that emphasize different structural changes, which are not necessarily exclusive and alternative. On the contrary, the realities of the rural world are increasingly open to new ideas that do not necessarily fit the general trends that affect the urban areas