The State of the Art and the Study of Environmental Education Conducted in Quilombola Communities in Brazil

Abstract

Brazil has a immense ethnic, linguistic and cultural diversity and, despite the large number of quilombola communities in Brazil, these are still caused by disaster and lack of recognition of their lands, all the more the social problems faced by these communities such as access to health and basic sanitation. From an environmental point of view, as traditional communities in general are well-preserved due to the great relationship of these indigenous communities with nature, where each species of plant, group of animals, type of soil and landscape has a practical or religious use. Environmental education actions have become an important tool in the search for cultural identification and preservation of the nature of quilombola communities. Despite this, few studies are still being published on the respect of these actions, making it difficult to identify gaps in relation to less assisted quilombola communities. The present work sought to quantitatively identify the environmental education studies carried out in quilombola communities. Searches were carried out on the Google Scholar platform using the following keywords: “Quilombolas”, “Environmental Education” and “Traditional Communities”. 65 studies were found, most of which were of the type of scientific article in journals of intermediate quality. The Quilombola Mata-Cavalo community was further studied and the year with the highest number of publications in 2018. The themes of the studies found were quite varied, demonstrating the multidisciplinary nature of environmental education and carried out mostly by public areas, demonstrating the importance of valuing of these institutions.