Cariocas Beaches: Know to Conserve: Prai Amar Project

2. Universidade Federal do Estado do Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Abstract: The sandy beaches of Rio de Janeiro, known worldwide for their beauty, are intensely exploited natural resources. These ecosystems are very prone to environmental impacts, such as the accumulation of solid waste. The objective of the PraiAmar Project was to present the ecosystem of sandy beaches to students of the public education system of the city of Rio de Janeiro to promote environmental awareness, encourage the construction of critical thinking about consumption patterns, and change student perception of sandy beach ecosystems and the problem of the impact of solid waste. The present project was performed in three municipal public schools through five meetings with each target group. At the first meeting, students were asked to draw a beach. Then, the project sought to show that the beaches are not biological deserts and to identify the main anthropic impacts on this ecosystem. Experiments, debates, solid waste reuse workshops and field trips were carried out throughout the project. At the last meeting, the students drew a beach again. Thus, it was possible to verify changes in the environmental perception of the students between the two design periods. The drawn beaches were categorized as urbanized, conserved, preserved, impacted, generalized or reductionist. Natural elements and organisms observed during the outdoor class at the beach were more present in the drawings from the second period. In this period, drawings of conserved and preserved beaches were more common, as were the negative aspects of human presence. It was shown that student ecological knowledge about sandy beaches was enriched and that the environmental perceptions about beaches were positively altered. Thus, knowledge is a key piece for conservation.