De la montaña al PDEM Cerro Seco. Educación ambiental y representaciones sociales de ambiente periodo 2013 - 2024

Abstract

This document presents the results of the research entitled From the mountain to the PDEM Cerro Seco: environmental education and social representations of the environment, term 2013 - 2024. This research aims to analyze the incidence of environmental education (EE) processes in the transformation of environmental social representations (ESR) of social groups linked to the District Ecological Mountain Park (PDEM) Cerro Seco. The problem arises when recognizing some relevant facts in the history of Cerro Seco, located in the locality of Ciudad Bolivar, where, since its conformation, the population and the territory have experienced activities such as mining exploitation and solid waste disposal. These practices have caused the degradation of the ecosystem and negative effects on the quality of life of its inhabitants. In response to this situation, various social groups have played a crucial role. Through their discourses and practices, they have contributed for over a decade to the recognition of Cerro Seco as a protected area included in Bogotá D.C.’s Land Use Plan (POT), giving rise to the expression “From the Mountain to the PDEM Cerro Seco.” The research adopts the conceptual framework of social representations, understanding them as a type of common sense knowledge on which groups build their practices and establish objectives for change, in this case, with respect to the human - nature relationship, a fundamental aspect in the EA processes. The research approach is interpretative and employs data collection instruments such as the semi-structured interview and the Free Word Association questionnaire, widely used in studies on social representations that allow from the content analysis to identify relationships between categories, using the Atlas.Ti software for data processing and analysis. The findings show that, in the history of Cerro Seco, there are key milestones that drove social and community organization processes, such as the Camp for Life in 2015 and Decree 555 of 2021, which facilitated the transformation of environmental representations in the territory and undoubtedly influenced social practice. The historical analysis indicates that the first identified ESR corresponds to the representation of the environment as a problem, mainly marked by the impact of mining. However, at present, the CSR - Nature, CSR - Community Project and CSR - Context predominate, which evidences a change in the positions of social groups and their closeness to positions such as popular environmental education and emerging approaches such as Good Living.