In the contemporary world, the water problem has been transformed into a serious environmental problem that has acquired a global connotation. The shortage of drinking water will be the main cause of conflicts between states in the future if efficient policies are not drawn up for the protection of this resource and to implement education programs for communities that contribute to creating a water culture that manifests itself in responsible behavior in relation to the resource. Hydrographic basins are complex environmental systems originated by the action of water in dialectical interaction with other abiotic components, biotics and socio-economic components in the same geographical space. Developing environmental education within environmental management in these systems is vital for their protection andsustainable management. The guiding idea behind this statement is that without concrete actions for the training of people in environmental matters, they cannot create the basis for efficient environmental management in the spaces.
Introduction
The water problem has become an environmental problem that has acquired global connotation. Although it is mistakenly believed that water is abundant on our planet, only 0.007% of the total is usable for the consumption of society. Overconsumption, together with the discharge of pollutants on water bodies, have limited availability and endangered important ecosystems and human health itself. If we add to this the accelerated melting of glaciers as a consequence of global warming, the situation of water availability in the future does not seem very rosy. In fact, today at least 4 out of 10 people on the planet already suffer from water shortages.
Within water bodies, rivers and their hydrographic basins have directly and massively suffered the degradation of their environmental conditions. This is a serious global environmental problem. Cuba has not been an exception in this problem. As a consequence of a historical process of accumulation of environmental problems in these systems, in the 90's the situation reached such a degree of complexity that the Cuban State guided the creation in 1997 of the National Council of Hydrographic Basins and later the of the Provincial and Municipal Councils with the central objective of reversing the environmental deterioration of the hydrographic basins through the creation of sustainable integral environmental management systems and the training and education of the communities located in them.
The success of a comprehensive watershed management plan is unlikely without the implementation of training and the people who will be the main actors in the process. Environmental training and education are the instruments within environmental management that constitute the starting points to provide participants with the tools and values necessary for responsible participation in the sustainable management of these systems.
The then Minister of Education of Cuba in a letter from him in July 1997 addressed to the Rectors of the Pedagogical Sciences Universities of the country, clearly outlined the need for the Cuban educational system to implement specific educational actions on this subject in the different teachings and in response to this request, research projects are carried out in the province of Matanzas to develop environmental educationin the basic secondary schools related territorially with the most important hydrographic basins of the province. In these projects, which have been developed since the year 2000, the programs are applied in the basic secondary schools related to the basins of the San Juan and Yumurí rivers due to their close connection with the main municipality and the provincial capital, the city of Matanzas, in which manifest the highest population densities and therefore the greatest environmental impacts.
Based on these assumptions and because it is an environmental problem that decisively influences the socioeconomic environment of the country, the main purpose of this work is to demonstrate how environmental education in hydrographic basins contributes to the formation of responsible behavior for communities as a social problem in these contexts.
Development
One of the current problems facing the environment on a global, regional or local scale is that of an “atomization” of the worldview that manifests itself in social contemporaneity, which has led to the loss of the “unitary” sense of that world creating what has been called “fragmentation”, which is nothing more than the absence of holistic, comprehensive analysis of the problems derived from the nature-society interaction. Curiously, in the modern world of the most advanced science and technology, only the most primitive societies have managed to preserve that sense of "unity" with nature and a truly harmonious relationship with their environment.
As a consequence of the extension of the philosophy of sustainable development as a new paradigm, management systems for the treatment and management of environmental problems have been implemented and generalized, especially at regional and local levels of influence. For the investigation and management of environmental problems, the study of hydrographic basins is of great importance due to the role they play in the general functioning of nature and society; It is highly topical to consider their study to achieve a better understanding of the problems that affect a territory and a better application of measures and regulations with a view to solving their environmental problems.
The Cuban environmental policy establishes as a system for the integrated management of environmental systems the environmental management defined as the set of activities, mechanisms, actions and instruments aimed at guaranteeing the administration and rational use of natural resources through the conservation, improvement, rehabilitation and monitoring of the environment and control of human activity in this sphere. Environmental management applies the environmental policy established through a multidisciplinary approach to science, taking into account cultural heritage, accumulated national experience and citizen participation.
This work philosophy, based on environmental management, is applied to Cuban hydrographic basins from their consideration since 1998 as the basic units for environmental management in the country.
Why consider the hydrographic basin as the basic unit for environmental management?
This consideration starts from the following theoretical-practical considerations:
- It is stable as a physical geographic unit and for the materialization of actions within a complex and interactive system in which the protection and management of the environment are linked to economic and social development.
- A balance of the energy flows of the territory is established, derived from the management of water, soils, forests, human settlements, industrial development, agricultural activities and cultural heritage.
- It allows comprehensive management of environmental, economic and social variables with the aim of raising the quality of life of the population located there.
These foundations are justified by the role that hydrographic basins have as environmental systems within the Cuban environmental panorama.
Some figures exemplify this statement:
- There are 632 hydrographic basins in Cuba in the country with dimensions greater than 5 km2.
- 85% of them do not exceed 200 km2. (small systems)
- The total area occupied by these systems is 81,038 km2, which represents 77.17% of the country's total area.
- More than 40% of the Cuban population lives in the areas of the 8 basins of national interest.
It is obvious that these territories are of capital importance for the country not only as natural systems but also from the social and economic point of view because they support a high percentage of the Cuban agricultural economy.
There are numerous definitions of the hydrographic basin used in the Cuban scientific context; The analysis of different conceptions highlights three fundamental trends:
1. Consider the hydrographic basin from an eminently hydrological point of view, including elements such as: river system, watercourse and river bed. (González, I. 1984; Law 85/98).
2. Consider the basin as the combination of various natural components; soils, vegetation, relief and water among others. (Law 33/81).
3. Consider the basin as a system where natural and social elements are related in the same naturally defined territorial unit, linked to water and its use. (Romero, 1995).
Within this last trend is the definition used by the MsC Ivis Villasuso Socarrás (Assistant Professor, specialist and researcher of the Environment Unit of CITMA in Matanzas) in 1999, where he points out that the hydrographic basin can be defined as the area of the surface drained by a fluvial system, that is to say, by a river and its tributaries, is separated from that of another river by the so-called hydrographic or fluvial divide (divide). At the same time it states that "… the basin is a hydrological unit that has been described and used as a physical-biological and socio-economic-political unit, for the comprehensive study of them."
All these definitions recognize the hydrographic basin as a natural formation, well delimited and linked to water. What not all recognize the basin as the area where natural, productive and social processes develop, within the latter, the education of the population that occupies them.
Taking as previous references the criteria offered by Romero, 1995 and Villasuso, 1999; that recognize the basin as a biogeographic and socio-economic area, the criterion of the MsC Marta Martínez R. (Assistant Professor, teacher of the Department of Environment of the Varadero School of Hospitality and Tourism) of 1999 modified is finally assumed in the work by the author:
"The hydrographic basin is a territorial unit, formed under the action of water from a river or lake system, where other abiotic elements, biotics, the socio-economic and cultural scientific activity of man interact dialectically with it, naturally spatially delimited by the dividing line of the waters ”.
In this definition the dialectical interrelation between the different elements of a basin is evidenced; unlike others, it does not insert the activity of man in the basin, but considers it as one more component, closely related to the rest, which he modifies and in turn receives the results of said modification, whether positive or negatives.
In the hydrographic basins most of the agricultural, industrial and socio-educational activities of the country are developed, originating in them serious effects on their comprehensive management, given both by the conditions inherited from the past, and by the development of the Cuban economy and by the way degree of social ignorance; reason why it is necessary to reverse the situation of deterioration existing in them, a task that does not belong to a particular organism, but to the entire society as a whole.
The environmental impacts in the hydrographic basins as a consequence of the historical results of the nature-society interaction in these systems have caused as more regular environmental problems in Cuba:
- Soil degradation.
- Water contamination.
- Conflicts of use.
- Deforestation, especially of the hydro-regulatory strip.
- Loss of biodiversity, especially relative to endemic species.
- Hygienic-sanitary deterioration of human settlements.
- Lack of environmental education in the communities.
This implies that the application of the instruments for environmental management must be done from an integrated management concept and with the participation of a wide spectrum of scientific disciplines that with an interdisciplinary vision pursue the sustainable management of these environmental systems as a final objective.. The instruments of the environmental management have their practical application in the solution of the environmental problems of the hydrographic basins by means of the integrated application of different scientific disciplines such as the hydrological, biological, edaphological, geomorphological, geographical sciences, among others that are integrated into the social sciences. such as pedagogy, sociology,psychology and others that make it possible to reach solutions from the perspective of a complex approach in the integral management of hydrographic basins.
The necessary tools for the integrated management of the hydrographic basins are the instruments of environmental management. The main ones among others are:
- Environmental legislation.
- The environmental diagnosis.
- The environmental license.
- The environmental impact assessment (environmental diagnosis).
- The environmental territorial ordering.
- The national system of protected areas and its management categorization.
- Environmental education and dissemination.
The instruments indicated allow the integrated work of the different sciences from different areas of knowledge and technology linked to the implementation of essential measures aimed at achieving the integrated and comprehensive management of these systems. In the case of the hydrographic basins of interest in the Matanzas province, it is particularized in those of the San Juan and Yumurí rivers that have been subject to the following measures:
The environmental diagnosis of the hydrographic basins to evaluate the degree of the negative environmental impacts on the systems.
Territorial planning within the basin, assigning its sustainable use to each sector of it and eliminating use conflicts. It includes the incorporation of environmentally clean technologies in production processes.
Mitigation through recovery measures of natural components:
Recovery of soil agro productivity. Mitigation of degrading processes: erosion, poor drainage, compaction, etc.
Reforestation of deforested areas, especially hydro-regulatory belts.
Protection of threatened species. Application of management categories: Floristic Reserves, Wildlife Refuges, etc.
Decrease in polluting loads, among others.
Environmental education and outreach programs.
As the center of the problems addressed by this work, the role of environmental education and dissemination within the integrated management system of hydrographic basins in the province will be explored. As a starting point, a study of environmental perception was carried out among the participants with the following sample and general indicators to assess:
Perception study sample:
7th and 8th grade students: 219
Teachers: 41
School officials: 26
Students' families (community): 100
Indicators:
Knowledge level.
Sensitivity to the problem.
Willingness to change and participation in solving problems.
The study showed as main regularities:
Medium to low level of information about the problem.
Lack of an “integral” vision of the basin as a territorial system.
Lack of skills development to identify environmental problems.
Lack of ways of improvement for the teacher.
Little subject specific integration in class.
High sensitivity to the problem.
High willingness to change and to participate in confronting problems at the school level.
Based on these results and taking into account the micro context of basic secondary schools within the macro context of the hydrographic basins of the San Juan and Yumurí rivers, the need to apply a structured project in programs based on the following requirements or premises:
- The results of the perception study carried out.
- The necessary preparation of all teaching staff.
- Interdisciplinary nature of environmental education.
- The decentralization of environmental education.
- The participative nature that environmental education acquires.
- The importance of involving the family and the community.
- Harmonic combination of actions that are developed through the carrying out of teaching, extra-teaching and extra-curricular activities.
- The state of the environmental conditions of the hydrographic basin.
The project is structured in three fundamental programs:
The training of teaching staff.
The environmental education of the students through the educational process.
Participation of the family and the community in the environmental education of the students.
These programs are structured in ways that make it possible to achieve the project's objectives aimed at contributing to developing environmental education in the pedagogical community within the general principles of integrated management of hydrographic basins.
Particularizing in the program aimed at working with students, their actions aim to integrate the environmental problem of the context into the curriculum through an interdisciplinary approach.
This implies the establishment of cognitive nodes that allow the link between the teaching content of the subjects faced by the student, seeking to minimize the pernicious influence of “fragmentation” within the teaching content of the different disciplines. Cognitive nodes are:
Water within Natural Sciences, which is in fact the central object of study of the environmental management and education project.
The environment, as a system that integrates the natural and socioeconomic components in a web of relations of reciprocal dependency.
The program also includes the insertion of an educational software within the process with the conception of the learning hyper-environments that the collections of this type of products installed in schools have (El Navegante).
The environmental educational work with the students linked to these contexts has a participatory character through which, and in stages that involve the gradual development of skills, the students are able to:
1st place: Identify the environmental problems that affect them in the environment in which they live, putting them in environmental conflict.
2nd place: Carry out own evaluations about the consequences of these problems for the quality of life of the environment that surrounds them and of which they are part.
3rd place: Encourage them to propose solutions that involve their practical participation in the mitigation of impacts and in community education towards clean and sustainable environmental practices.
The realization of these environmental educational projects and programs does not have direct economic results, but there are indisputable achievements from the social point of view in the aspect of education related to the local environment of the communities that inhabit these contexts and also due to the fact that the actions related to the integrated management of the hydrographic basins require the training, environmental training of the people and that this is expressed in a reconstruction of the behaviors towards the conscious and responsible environmental responsibility in the interrelation between the socioeconomic activities and the natural components that both are integrated within these systems in a relationship of interdependence with each other.
Environmental education within the instruments of environmental management for the sustainable management of river basins is an example of coordinated action from an interdisciplinary approach of applied scientific knowledge from various areas of science and technology that includes the natural, exact sciences and the social ones based on the solution of a key problem in Cuban society: achieving environmental sustainability in these systems through the participation of a responsible and participatory society in its relationship with the local environment.
Conclusions
1. For Cuba in general and for the province of Matanzas in particular, the situation of the hydrographic basins conceived as systems that integrate the natural and socioeconomic components in the same operating dynamics is a social and applied science problem.
2. The environmental impacts in the hydrographic basins and the situation of their environmental deterioration requires environmental management programs that lead to their integrated management as a problem of the economy and society to be undertaken through a multidisciplinary vision.
3. Environmental education as an instrument of environmental management and as a direction within integrated management links pedagogical sciences (Pedagogy, Didactics, Pedagogical Ethics and even Educational Informatics) in the problem as a way to contribute to promoting environmentally responsible behavior in the relationship of pedagogical communities and the community in general with these systems.
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