Wetlands in Resistance: Critical Environmental Education and Community Participation in the Lower Paraná Delta

Abstract

The present work is located in the Paraná Delta territory, a wetland macrosystem of strategicimportance for flood regulation and drinking water supply for the Metropolitan Area of Buenos Aires (Argentina). In a scenario of growing environmental conflicts in Latin America due to the expansion of extractive activities, this territory is in dispute, threatened by real estate projects that intend to extract income, causing enormous environmental damage and dispossessing the landfrom the local population. The urbanization model in gated communities, which is pressing to be implemented, simultaneously produces the destruction of wetlands and the elimination of the islander way of life. The islander population, however, resists and maintains that their way of life, bearer of peasant and indigenous knowledge, guarantees life sustainability in the region. Interweaving the fields of Environmental Education and Political Ecology of the South, we present an analysis of how environmental knowledge was formed and constructed in the processeswe have been carrying out with socio-territorial organizations that resist and r-exist in the wetlands of the Paraná Delta. We reference Latin American Environmental Thought, considering its approaches to environmental justice, political ontology and environmental rationality. Focusing on community participation, we share the results of the systematization of three experiences in which islanders environmentalists and academics participated.