Ecological restoration-based education in the Colombian Amazon: toward a new society–nature relationship

Abstract

Caquetá Department, in the Colombian Amazon, has a historical context of deforestation, education of poor quality, land tenure conflicts, and social violence. Thus, there is an urgent need to restore not only the ecosystem, but also the social fabric and the society–nature relationship. This article describes the process, impacts, obstacles, and lessons learned from a program of ecological restoration-based education for local communities. During 2017, a group of 15 local people were selected and trained in ecological restoration to become, as we called them, “local scientists” (LS). After this educative process, these LS, together with researchers from social sciences and biology, developed an ecological restoration education program aimed to local peasants. The bioregional current of environmental education and significant learning theory were the educative theoretical frameworks used. The pedagogical contents were grouped into five main themes: (1) soils, (2) farm planning, (3) river basins, (4) monitoring, and (5) social organization. During 2018, between 8 and 70 peasants per community participated in the program. The last phase, carried out in 2019, consisted of the propagation of native forest species and outplantings by the program participants, to restore the landscape connectivity in a region considered to be high priority. Peasants built 71 nursery gardens on their farms with their own labor. They produced 400,000 seedlings of 21 native forest species, which were further planted on 277 farms over 550?ha. The implications of the pedagogical process of the program, the advances in restoration of degraded forests, and changes in society–nature relationships are discussed