Dialogue and Environmental Education: Conflicts Between Marine Conservation and Fishing

by Marcos Sorrentino Rafael de Araujo Arosa Monteiro – [ Journal of Dialogue Studies Vol 7 ]

Abstract

This research sought to analyse how the environmental educator process developed by a non- governmental organisation with maritime artisanal fishermen from the coast of São Paulo (Brazil) helped to foster dialogue to face the conflict of marine conservation versus fisheries. The data were collected through the analysis of documents and semi-structured interviews composed of a set of indicator questions divided into three categories: external aspects, internal aspects, and dialogical action and answers analysed using a synthesis of the ideas on dialogue of Martin Buber, David Bohm, William Isaacs and Paulo Freire. The results show the incipience of dialogue in the relationship between the actors. The external dialogical aspects were limited to the weekly frequency of the conversations and some formations of the participants in certain meetings. The internal aspects revealed the establishment of two types of relations: one anti-dialogical and another that we called incipient dialogical. In relation to the dialogical action, it was possible to verify the beginning of a process according to the principles of the culture circles, which did not have continuity. Regarding the pedagogical strategies adopted in the different environmental education meetings, it is possible to affirm that the one used in the participatory diagnoses was the only one that potentiates the emergence of dialogue. Finally, it was possible to find dialogical potentialities, which should be stimulated together with the creation of new ones, in order to allow the effective transition to a new model of fishing and society.