G

12
Global Campaigns Towards Universidades en el Desarrollo de la Economía
Sustainability and Social Solidaria, Bogotá, Colombia
13
Ecopedagogical Literacies World Social Forum- Dynamics of Extension,
Paris, France
Claudia Alvarez1, Madza Ednir2, 14
Magic RM, CECIP, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Claudia Martinez3, André Gbedan4, 15
Universidad del Cauca, Popayán, Colombia
Catalina Quiroz5, Eduardo T. Vitale6,
Erika Licon7, Heloisa Primavera8,
Howard Richards9, Laura Collin Hargundeguy10,
Introduction
Mariano Flores11, Melba Quijano12,
Pierre George13, Silvia Fittipaldi14 and
The need to educate towards new forms of
Willian Jairo Mavisoy Muchavisoy15
1 interaction among humans, the other living
Red Educación y Economía Social Solidaria,
beings, and their natural environment started to
Buenos Aires, Argentina
2 be more strongly felt after the Second World War
CECIP, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
(1939–1945), when the dimension of the negative
3
Be Pe – Bienaventurados los Pobres,
impact of human activity on the Earth system
Catamarca y Santiago del Estero, Argentina
4 became evident. Scientist’s warnings, that the
Université Catholique de Louvain,
natural and energetic resources of the planet
Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium
5 could not continue to be carelessly exploited as
York St John University, York, UK
6 if they were unlimited, became more audible and
Iandê, São Paulo, Brazil
7 globally disseminated. In the decade of the 1970s,
Concordia University, Montréal, QC, Canada
8 a World Commission on Environment and Devel-
RedLASES, Universidad de Buenos Aires,
opment was created by the United Nations (UN).
Buenos Aires, Argentina
9 The Brundtland Report, “Our Common Future,”
Universidad de Santiago de Chile,
launched the concept of “sustainable develop-
Santiago, Chile
10 ment” in 1987, and there gradually emerged
Colégio de Tlaxcala, Tlaxcala, Mexico
11 among civil society’s organizations and move-
Edualter, Barcelona, Spain
ments, a nonexplicit global project of educating
formally, non-formally, and informally for “a

© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2019

M. A. Peters, R. Heraud (eds.), Encyclopedia of Educational Innovation,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-2262-4_79-1
2 Global Campaigns Towards Sustainability and Ecopedagogical Literacies
new model of civilization, sustainable from the
ecological perspective (integral ecology), which
implies transforming social, cultural and
economic structures” (Gadotti 2010, p. 42).
Originating in the middle of the 1990s in social
organizations in Costa Rica (Instituto Latino
Americano de Pedagogía de la Comunicación-
Ilpec) and Brazil (Instituto Paulo Freire-IPF), the
concept of ecopedagogy can be used to describe
this movement.
We understand ecopedagogies as learning
experiences based on the Freirean educational
approach, that promote ecopedagogical literacy –
the capacity for critically reading environmental
injustices and, becoming aware of their political
and economic causes, exploring possibilities
for overcoming oppressions by acting in a
collective way.
Despite the conquests social movements
achieved during the last decades of the twentieth
century and the beginning of this century, in 2015
one could see worrying signs that ecopedagogical
literacy was far from generalized. In this year,
while 193 chiefs of government were meeting in
a UN Assembly to approve the 17 Sustainable
Development Goals and the Agenda 2030,
patterns of production and consumption contin-
ued to be growingly unsustainable, global
warming was reaching catastrophic levels, and
the basic needs of the greatest part of humanity
were not being met. In 2019, even while the
impacts of climatic changes and the decline of
biodiversity were more and more alarming, right
wing political leaders and their supporters contin-
ued to refuse to admit that the cause of this process
is the destructive influence of the capitalist
economic model on the balance of Earth’s ecosys-
tems. And in addition: the great majority, unable
to read the world as Freire (1974) proposed, is
hindered in its capacity to act for change.
This situation indicates the importance of
the continuity and improvement of global cam-
paigns and social movements that educate
citizens towards confronting, contesting, and
deconstructing the dominant imaginary. These
initiatives are transforming, when they promote
mental emancipation – showing that human
beings have possibilities for dealing in a
constructive way with themselves and with the
planetary challenges they are facing. They foster
ecopedagogical literacy as they can make more
people critically read their realities and under-
stand how environmentally harmful acts lead to
oppressions for humans (anthropocentric aspects)
and damage to all else that makes up the Earth
(biocentric aspects). They promote understanding
the politics of these acts and problem-solving on
how to end socio-environmental oppressions
(Misiaszek 2018).
In this input, we will present an example of
such ecopedagogical planetary initiatives, that
strengthen social mobilization to build economic,
cultural, and environmental alternatives to
the systemic imperatives of capitalism, as they
reinforce principles and values of cooperation,
inclusion, and social emancipation: The
Campaign for a Global Curriculum of Social
Solidarity Economy-GCSSE. One of its
distinguishing features is having being conceived
and launched by social organizations belonging
to the Global South – a term coined by Boaventura
Santos (2006) to express a broad field of
innovation, that goes beyond modern Eurocentric
thinking, challenging colonial, capitalist, and
patriarchal assumptions and giving voice to
cultures and knowledges that have been silenced
(http://curriculumglobaleconomiasolidaria.com/).
Another notable characteristic of the Campaign is
its explicit purpose to strengthen, amplify, and
bring together educational policies as well as
formal, non-formal, and informal educational
processes that can acknowledge and include
other forms of knowledge, of understanding and
transforming realities, working towards a new
project of society based on social solidarity econ-
omy principles.
It is possible to say that the Campaign for a
GCSSE is an initiative which is in tune with what
some authors call movements of the global civil
society towards the Great Transition for a plane-
tary civilization, where the current model of
destructive economy that is preying on Nature,
as well as the social interactions stimulated by
it, marked by individualism, competition, and
violence, will be overcome.
Global Campaigns Towards Sustainability and Ecopedagogical Literacies
The Campaign as Ecopedagogical
Literacy
Launched in 2016 by the Education and Social
Solidarity Economy Network-RESS, and then
reinforced by other networks and organizations
in Latin America, Africa, North America, and
Europe, the Campaign for a GCSSE is a self-
managed planetary process of social mobilization
towards a non-capitalist project of society, that in
2019 involved 20 countries, 6 international
networks, and 54 institutions among social
organizations, social movements, universities,
and democratic schools dedicated to Education
for Global Citizenship and Culture of Peace.
It was born in meetings promoted in the
1990s by Bienaventurados los Pobres, BePe, an
Argentinian organization member of RESS, to
support an alternative commerce system among
rural and urban community groups in Catamarca
and other provinces which, while searching for
alternative life proposals, were constructing in
practice a non-formal educational curriculum.
In 2010, it started to take form in rural communi-
ties of Santiago del Estero, as a proposal to
make concrete and visible a Curriculum of Social
Solidarity Economy, which would include
non-formal and informal educational experiences
and not only school and university curricula.
The idea has germinated in the Latin American
Congress of Education and Social Solidarity
Economy realized by the Association of Families
with Vegetable Garden’s Identity – AFIH in 2014
and in Forums for Another Economy, promoted
by RESS.
In October 2016, this collective of social
activists entered into dialogue with the Global
Curriculum for Sustainability initiative, led by
the Center of Creation of Grassroots Images –
CECIP, Brazil – a line of action that had sprung
out of the European Community funded Global
Curriculum Project (2010–2012) on Education
for Global Citizenship. Soon after, having as
background the Agenda 2030/Sustainable Devel-
opment Goals – SDG, recently approved by the
UN, they decided to make public an “Invitation to
participate in the Campaign for a GCSSE.” The
Invitation stated that a transformative education,
3
which includes enhancing global citizenship
(SGD 4.7), is essential to overcome capitalism –
a precondition to reach all the other SDG – and it
declared that the Campaign was in tune with the
global processes made visible in the World Social
Forum-WSF.
The Campaign for a GCSSE may demonstrate
that similar global initiatives can better contribute
to the ecopedagogical literacy of the involved,
when they adopt bottom-up processes of construc-
tion; democratic, solidary, de-commodified ways
to function; with a focus on strengthening
the collective – and when they offer a unifying
perspective, a vision of a sustainable world and
an organizational context for action. What is done
in such Campaigns is ecological literacy since
they help to create new readings of the world,
able to motivate actions to transform structures
that generate oppression, inequality, and injustice.
Without external sponsors and counting only
on its members’ solidarity, the Campaign for a
GCSSE promotes articulation among different
social change agents around the world, who
adhere to a collectively drafted Charter with
17 Principles. Also, it has organized virtual con-
versations and face-to-face meetings in cities of
three continents so far. To sustain exchanges
between participants in these various groups,
online participation practices are promoted in
the frame of the WSF Extension Dynamics. With
that, the convergence of initiatives and processes
is stimulated and supported.
Global Map of Pedagogical Tools for
Education in Social Solidarity Economy
A powerful example of how the Campaign for a
GCSSE promotes ecopedagogical literacy is its
Global Map of Tools. The Map has its database
fed by free contributions, received on the site or
by email and is in a permanent process of con-
struction and improvement. With support of
Socioeco (www.socioeco.org), a resource website
of social solidarity economy, it is independent
from commercial technology. The “Map” format
serves the purpose of making visible the quantity
of transformative initiatives around the world,
breaking the sensation of isolation and
empowering collective social agents.
4 Global Campaigns Towards Sustainability and Ecopedagogical Literacies
Besides making accessible a number of poten-
tial tools to develop ecopedagogical literacy, the
Map is in itself an example of an ecopedagogical
tool, since it allows for reading the diversity and
the interconnectedness of aspects involved in
overcoming oppression and building a sustainable
social solidarity economy-driven society. In fact,
it brings together and makes easier to locate
tools of the most varied types – guides, manuals,
games, videos – not only on Education for SSE, in
a strict sense, but also on Environmental Sustain-
ability, Decolonial Education, Human Rights,
Global Citizenship, Radical Democracy, Culture
of Peace, Diversity, Gender Issues, and Racial
Issues.
The Map is coherent with a view of Economy
as moral science: human economic activities must
be at service of humanity and Nature. Also, it
reflects Brazilian economist Paul Singer’s (2010)
conception of SSE as a viscerally democratic
approach, opposed to any kind of oppression and
discrimination. This resource promotes
ecopedagogical literacy while contributing to
make transparent that SSE integrates interactions
with nature with social economic thinking, con-
sidering that ecological care and sustainability
must be principles to guide, in all societies, the
transformation of practices of organization of the
economy, of social and cultural life, and of power.
It can make deeper and wider the understand-
ing that another logic, based on cooperation and
not on competition, is present in the world, orga-
nizing human activities related to the satisfaction
of needs all orders (not only strictly economic –
production, distribution, consumption of goods,
savings, loans), to prevent and eliminate unequal
distribution of power.
The ecopedagogical principles in which the
building of the Map of Tools is based are implicit
in the words of a sociologist, participant of the
Campaign for a GCSSE, when she said in an
activity of the WSF 2018, that the concept of
SSE can be seen as a great “umbrella” that houses
different conceptions, with something in com-
mon: “They are experiences oriented by another
logic, not oppressive, where democratic processes
are built from the bases. What unites them is
an ethical component, which refers not to the
expanded reproduction of capital, but to the
expanded reproduction of life. Solidarity econ-
omy is not a means, it is an end, it is a project of
society.”
With the Global Map of Tools, the Campaign
for a GCSSE, like many other planetary initia-
tives, wants to encourage the growing recognition
of the epistemic character of social movements
linked to environmentalism, feminism, anti-
racism, anti-capitalism/socialism/communitarian-
ism, which are forging new processes, concepts,
methodologies, and experiences. It promotes
ecopedagogical literacy by raising awareness
of the multiplicity of learnings in terms of meth-
odologies and concepts arising from SSE organi-
zations and the alternative practices derived from
it; the identification of the denominations that
are established as referents for local economic
dynamics for production, marketing, and also for
exchange of knowledge – for example, the mingas
(collaborative work with neighbors and friends to
achieve a goal) or organizational practices hap-
pening in spaces where associativity and inter-
associativity in the construction of the collective
are exerted. It invites the members of the
Campaign to invest time and expertise to register
and collect images and sounds that can be exam-
ples of informal educational processes geared
towards transforming economies.
An essential need, although challenging, for
similar efforts to promote ecopedagogical read-
ings, is to determine in what measure each tool
in the Map systematizes or stimulates interdisci-
plinary intercultural educational experiences
that can deepen the “understanding of the connec-
tions between environmental and social violence
acts (socio-environmental). A thorough rigorous
reflection on the determination of the actions is
needed to put an end to the oppressions (i.e., to
engage in transformative praxis)” (Misiaszek
2018). Given the nonexistence of an external
evaluation or “quality control,” the evaluation
promoted will be internal, where every participant
will be invited to rise and answer questions such
as: in what measure do the tools promote
actions where “I” is replaced by “us,” competi-
tion is replaced by complementarity and individ-
ual autonomy by interdependence? Do the tools
Global Campaigns Towards Sustainability and Ecopedagogical Literacies
succeed in integrating cooperative approaches,
gender perspectives, and ecological perspectives,
as well as awareness of the role of capitalism in
the destruction of the environment?
Taking the necessary care, using critical think-
ing, it will be possible to identify and criticize
learning tools that tend to reproduce aspects of
the colonial patriarchal capitalist imaginary, thus
contributing to strengthen Eurocentric
modernity’s institutional pillars such as the
nation-state, global capital, and assumed univer-
salism (Andreotti et al. 2018).
The Map represents a concrete indicator that
in all continents there are people organized in
collectives building solidary and sustainable alter-
natives to the current destructive economic model,
by means of a transformative education.
Reinventing the Concept of Curriculum: The
Ecopedagogical Perspective
The Campaign for a GCSSE seeks to go beyond
the content and records on the Global Map of
Pedagogical Tools. It sees the Global Curriculum
as a meeting place of learning experiences and
processes that, all over the world, seek not only
to understand, but to transform reality. As a reso-
nance box for social organizations, the GCSSE
stimulates in people the ability to evoke and
implement practices that generate thoughts,
actions, feelings, creative, and proactive reflec-
tions, which contest patriarchal, colonial models,
constructing an economic system in which the
dignity of human beings and of other living beings
is prioritized and their vital environment
respected.
Like other planetary Campaigns that foster
ecopedagogical literacy, the Campaign for GCSS
involves a continued dialogue between formal
education systems, non-formal education pro-
cesses, and the informal education that emerges
from daily social interactions, sociopolitical
ecological movements, and so forth. Transforma-
tive Campaigns adopt an “expanded vision” of
education, understood as lifelong learning,
comprising children, youth, adults, and elders
learning in and out of schools and universities.
5
Formal Education
To embed ecopedagogical approaches in formal
education implies taking a firm political position
on ideological struggles present in the modern
world system. It is essential to keep in mind the
inseparability of power and education and to
revise norms, customs, beliefs, languages, and
symbols manifested in the structure and function-
ing of the educational institutions and in the inter-
actions of their students and professionals. Formal
curriculum is a space that can contribute to the
domestication of minds. It can be used either to
perpetuate power structures that deepen injustices
or to promote ecopedagogical literacy. In the latter
case, it invites critical reflection that impels the
transformation and liberation of consciences
(Freire 1974). Transformation and liberation of
consciences is facilitated when socio-educational
norms are questioned, and measures are taken to
change and transcend the limits of what was
previously perceived as the only available
possibility.
Initiatives such the Campaign for a CGSSE
encourage those who act in formal educational
systems to criticize and change curricula governed
by the Cartesian logic that does not reflect the
complexity of life. As a professor, member
of the Campaign said, “lets prioritize, instead of
‘disciplines’, the creative indiscipline of human
beings, as a force in favor of creativity, of intel-
lect.” Thus, the practices of formal education
institutions can constitute critical arenas for social
movements. In an ecopedagogical perspective,
the quality of the knowledge produced by those
institutions should be evaluated accordingly to its
transformative potential. In what measure do they
contribute to transforming unfair and unequal
relationships, and to changing the structures that
generate oppression?
Non-formal and Informal Education
A curriculum that includes and transcends
the curricula of formal educational institutions is
conceived as an agreed dialogued collective
project, to educate formally, non-formally, and
informally for social change; as a dialogue of
cultures, political processes, and knowledge
deeply linked to life and people. To exemplify
6 Global Campaigns Towards Sustainability and Ecopedagogical Literacies
this, the Campaign for a GCSSE embraces the
potential of educational processes that are often
not recognized as such, such those developed
by social movements through their struggles,
generating political literacy.
Based on a general agreement on the world-
view that it should serve, the GCSSE must
be a space where diverse ecologies of know-
ledge may converge (Santos 2011), involving
practice, wisdom, and the experience of people
in everyday contexts. It must be able to integrate
diverse realities into cooperative action.
Conclusions
To foster ecopedagogical literacies, the energy
and intellectual capital of those involved in the
building of a social solidarity economy should be
mobilized to re-signify social structures; to regen-
erate and consolidate solidary relationships in all
areas of human interaction; from the individual,
familiar, communitarian, and workplace levels to
the global ones. The creation of tangible values
and commitments is forged by and for the com-
munities; driving the practice of principles such as
respect for the dignity of each person, collabora-
tion, creativity, autonomy, democratic participa-
tion, responsibility and care for oneself, for the
Other, and for Mother Earth.
Ecopedagogical Campaigns and other global
civil society initiatives such the one here
presented break with the hierarchy established
among different kinds of knowledge that is con-
sidered by several researchers as epistemic colo-
nization – one of the expressions of the
colonization of power (Santos 2011). The decol-
onization of knowledge goes hand in hand with
the rejection of domination and accumulation of
profit of that has placed knowledge and technique
at the service of the ambition of a few. Thus,
a society is being built, where it will be possible
to correct the immense planetary imbalance of the
distribution power. These initiatives contradict
neoliberal fatalism. They foster a Pedagogy of
Hope, considering, with Paulo Freire, that utopia
is the educator’s realism.
References
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modernity built to healthy mycelium. Decolonial
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Freire, P. (1974). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York:
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Gadotti, M. (2010). A Carta da Terra na Educação.
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Misiaszek, G. (2018). Educating the global environmental
citizen. New York: Routledge.
Santos, B. (2011). Epistemiologías del Sur. Ciudad
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Singer, P. (2010). Economia Solidária e Saúde. In
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