Sustainability Learners – Interview with Moema Viezzer

By Enrique Buchichio
ICAE
Moema Viezzer is Brazilian, sociologist, has a master’s degree in social sciences, she is a writer and adult educator. She was the founder and president of the Rede Mulher de Educação in the early 1980’s. Since 1978 she has also been working as an educator on issues related to the environment. She was a coordinator in the Treaty on Environmental Education for Sustainable Societies and Global Responsibility during the Rio 92 Conference on Sustainable Development. She is a member of the Gender and Education Office (GEO) – ICAE and she is one the Council’s points of reference in Latin America regarding environmental matters.

During her recent visit in Montevideo where she participated in the Training Institute and Regional Consultation “Strengthening the incidence and analysis of policies on gender, economic and ecological policies in Latin America”, organized by DAWN with the cooperation of GEO/ICAE on April 18-21, we were able to discuss several issues she has been working on during all these years.

From your point of view, what has the evolution of the fight for women’s rights been like in Latin America during the last decades?

I have been working on this since 1975 when the first International Women’s Tribune was held in parallel with the International Women’s Conference held in Mexico. I think that many changes have occurred since then.  First, many things that remained invisible during thousands of years, as natural events, are being nowadays addressed as issues which caused social problems that affect half the population.  I remember that when I was in Mexico there was polarization between the class struggle (it was the time when dictatorships were in force) and feminism, as if they were opposed one against the other. Working on issues that affected women would not allow the fight against the inequality among social classes. At present, as we have accepted to work on diversity the progress of humankind as such is allowed. In that sense, I see there ha been significant progress when work on equity is developed. Gender equity helps to understand the various types of diversity, we are men or women and at the same time we are African-descendants, young, adult and everything is reflected in the way we were treated for thousands of years.

For example, when women started to work massively in the labor market the production world was not organized and connected with the universe of life reproduction. Then, as it had occurred for so many centuries, women had to bear the burden of being responsible for not only the natural things that were related to reproduction such as gestating, giving birth, breastfeeding but also for everything which was related to household life. Women had both responsibilities. Men remained in the world of production and also in activities related to social, political, religious, military and administrative life without getting involved in the other aspects. That does not mean that everything which has been done has been to no avail; however, we have not reached that point where women and men may can really change the way they are in society.  I think there has been much progress regarding the legislation. Nowadays, women’s struggle to achieve same pay for same job is improving, but we have not reached total equality. In certain way, all the above mentioned is visible now and that is important.

Another difficult point, at least in my country, is the promotion of women in politics. At present we have a woman president which does not mean that in states, municipalities, what we call a second stage, we really have women in power and decision-making positions. When elections are held at local or national levels, women have always the same difficulty: to be supported by their own parties and create conditions equal to men’s in order to have access to power. I think they are points of reference but we have not reached the goal we long for.

I also think there has been a significant progress in the public policies especially aimed at women. At least in my country, it was important the acknowledgement of land ownership for rural women and also programs that have promoted the effective participation of women with economic conditions equal to men’s. There have also been other policies such as instances created to fight violence against women, domestic and family violence as well as within workplaces where violence was considered as something almost normal. The same has occurred to moral and sexual harassment. All the measures taken are important so that little by little, there is equal treatment and men and women can become equal at work and in any social environment.

Today two women are presidents in the largest countries in the region. Do you think that this situation may have incidence on the implementation of regional policies committed to economic justice related to gender and climate?

I think it may, at least in my country the President herself is demonstrating it is not enough that a woman is president if she is surrounded only by men. She has been careful enough to place men and women in ministries and she is working in that direction for the second stage. I think she has made an impact on women of different classes. Several interviews we have listened to and watched show women with self-esteem when they see themselves represented by other women in important positions. I think this is going to have an effective impact on other government positions either in municipalities or in states. It is not something taken for granted and that may remain under a symbolic condition. It is the real impact of demonstrating that it is possible for men and women to share power and decision making spaces.

In this regional consultation you are participating in discussions on the formulation of sustainable development alternatives in Latin America.

Yes, above all, I’m doing it from the point of view of education since I am an educator: education for sustainable societies with global responsibility. This is related to the idea that the declarations we already have do not suffice and it seems that when we manage to have the outcome documents, things are already happening. Many of the challenges are related to the way we have to change things we did before, believing it was the right thing to do, and at present, the Earth is showing us we have to change a lot, even the conception of what is to live well, the conception of what is to get organized from the economic, social point of view.  Japan is a rather extreme case but that leads us to reconsider what to build sustainable societies is. It seems that high technology is not going to solve problems. Japan was really an example of how everything had been thought even how to protect buildings from the point of view of engineering and architecture in the event of an earthquake. But when an earthquake or a tsunami occurs, as it happened, everything went out of control and it involved a fundamental topic: nuclear power. The most shocking aspect is how the events occurred in Japan forced the whole world to ponder over the nuclear power issue. We do not need to go through so many accidents. Was Chernobyl not enough to ponder over nuclear technology?

Nowadays we face a dilemma. We must really try to learn how to be different, how not to depend on so many things considered necessary for our welfare. In Brazil, for instance, cars:  São Pablo has to stop at certain time of the year, year after year, yet, one million cars runs all over São Pablo everyday.  Then this new paradigm has to lead us to the meaning of a sustainable society where human and non human beings may coexist and people and the planet will not walk towards destruction. But everything is organized to maintain what exists now and that is shown in world leaders’ decisions who take so long to make them in order to transform them into policies to be accepted by countries as it happened at the whole COPs process, especially at the Copenhagen conference which was a scandal of international proportions. Therefore, we have to reconsider our learning. We must ponder over our ways to interact with the environment.

There is a need for going through transforming learning processes derived from the interaction with the environment such as the process proposed by the popular environmental education, by the eco-pedagogy that works more on this interlinkage between statements and demand based on the situation of populations and the environment.  In fact, there are no social problems on one side and environmental problems on the other, they are all intertwined. We must accept our status as sustainability learners, and we cannot teach children if adults have not learnt that before. This is a new way to think on education, even at schools, based on the concept of ecological literacy brought by California Edmund Institute: when we are in front of a class of children, these are not the only ones who learn; their teachers, fathers and mothers and the ones around them are learning too.  The same occurs in popular environmental education. All which is obtained through research and participative action helps to demonstrate that adults and youngsters, independently of our academic education and our role in society, we all have to access that status of sustainability learners because it is a paradigm completely different from the one which has guided teaching practices for at least four centuries.

You participated in the Rio 92 Conference. A year after the Rio +20 review, what do you think has been the evolving debate on sustainable development in Latin America, particularly within civil society?

I feel there has been certain progress. I participated in the Global Forum parallel with the 1992 conference and participated as coordinator of the First International Conference on Environmental Education coordinating the ICAE Environmental Education Program. It was very interesting as a process and it proved the above mentioned: the division existing in the universe of organizations and movements and in such a way that if you belonged to an environmental movement you had no place in the universe of NGOs whose work was more oriented to the social field, to the point that those who worked in that field many times did not even want to talk to environmental activists. A very interesting event occurred in my country. During the Rio 92 preparation, after several debates, a Brazilian forum of NGOs and social movements was finally created. It was shocking to see how divided they were in aspects which cannot exist one without the other.

At present I see that NGOs and social movements, including the Landless Workers’ Movement, work a lot on the idea of pedagogy of the land and many NGOs that used to work exclusively with social movements have incorporated environmental issues as a part of their daily activity. That progress exists. Nevertheless, I think that in the sphere of education where I work there is still much work ahead. I have been working for CONFINTEA and for the World Social Forum and I have observed that little has been produced and worked or at least, little has been disseminated on socio-environmental education or education for sustainability among young peopel and adults, for instance. That is why I believe we have still a lot ahead so as to create new paradigms and new practices of socio-environmental education and work on what should be an axis such as socio-biodiversity, as opposed to the model of global colonization. It will only be possible to make a difference as long as we really adopt socio-biodiversity as a new paradigm.

I work on the concept of ethics of care and I think that nowadays what we call socio-environmental education is the formation for the ethics of care of everything, of ourselves, of our families. There exists a movement around all this and as this idea of care becomes clearer, human beings coexistence and the way their connecting with nature become naturally more harmonic.

Do you think that ICAE Latin-American members should take a shared standpoint to the World Meeting which will be held at Malmö?

I am not so active at present but I guess that each division of the Council will have a previous meeting or has already had it. I think that problems are worldwide, what affects us here in Latin America also affects people in Asia or Africa. From the point of view of outlining common strategies with common actions I think it may be very interesting if Latin America can present what is seen as relevant issues on education. I think that ICAE may achieve a lot if they present what has been brought to the last conferences such as the UNESCO’s so that all the affiliated centers of ICAE become pioneers in this new way of thinking adult and children’s education, connected to the relevant issues which have arisen due to great global crisis, not only the environmental crisis. Perhaps, Malmö will represent a milestone and I think that it would also be interesting for ICAE to participate in Rio+20 with a clear proposal from the civil society together with other organizations. ICAE should be a voice of the civil society and somehow help to gather together people who wish to build a sustainable world.  I wish it could contribute, together with other institutions, to have more incidence on United Nations organizations.

We are trying to organize the Second International Conference on Environmental Education together with some international institutions such as ICAE, the Brahma Kumaris World Spiritual University, Siglo XXIII (23rd Century) –which from El Salvador is networking in Central America- and also some European institutions. I hope that during this year previous to Rio+20 male and female educators of the world get mobilized as it happened in the First International Conference on Environmental Education, which for many people was clarifying, above all in the sense of feeling as learners and work under the same conception: to get educated in order to build sustainable societies, respecting ecosystems and cultures with global responsibility. It is clear that what happens in Uruguay is very much related to what happens in other countries, and not only here at the River Plate Basin. It would be good for ICAE to further this cause so that Malmö serves as a stepping stone from the strategic and programmatic points of view to present, jointly with other institutions, this idea before the United Nations.  World leaders have much to learn. There are things that should not happen, as common sense says, like the thing that happened in Copenhagen.