Igarapé ou esgoto? educação ambiental como estratégia de conservação do Igarapé do Juá - Santarém, PA

Abstract

Unplanned urban growth has caused severe impacts on urban rivers, such as water quality degradation, silting and removal of riparian vegetation. Such impacts can, in the long term, interfere with the perception of the population and public authorities in relation to the water resource, which is treated as “sewage”. The Igarapé do Juá watershed, located in the city of Santarém, underwent a rapid process of urbanization in the first decades of the 2000s, which resulted in the conversion of a natural watercourse into “sewer” according to the perception of local public and private agents and the population that lives in its surroundings. This work presents results which show that most of the interviewees did not know the Juá stream; 88% of the participants did not know what riparian forest is; and 33% of those questioned referred to the stream as a sewer. Based on these results, an Environmental Education action was formulated, adequate to the reality of the area and that can serve as an instrument for changing perceptions and improving environmental conditions.