Programa 21 e Educación Ambiental: raíces da Axenda 21 Escolar

Abstract

Agenda 21 came up in the Earth Summit (1992), as a plan which established the guidelines for the policies, planning and strategies addressed to achieve sustainable de-velopment during the XXI century. Two years later, a large number of European towns and cities signed the “Aalborg Letter” to apply the so-called Local Agenda 21.

At the same time, the environmental education – emerged in the first half of the last century - was in a rather complex situation, due to the emergence of the Sustainable Development’s Concept, and a quite pessimistic evaluation of environmental achieve-ments.

On a formal sphere, the synergy produced by the development of Local Agenda 21 and the interest of School Institutions in improving the environmental and educa-tional quality by playing an active role in the near environment (neighbourhood, district, town council...) generated the School Agenda 21. This program is currently being developed around the world following different pat-terns, but all of them have a common substratum: working for the school itself and for its environment. The potentiality of the program makes it a valuable alternative to face both the challenges of the XXI century and the new environmental education.