Environmental and market ideologies in the latin american’s presidents’ discourses

ENVIRONMENTAL AND MARKET IDEOLOGIES IN THE LATIN
AMERICAN’S PRESIDENTS’ DISCOURSES AT THE UNITED
NATIONS CLIMATE ACTION SUMMIT: IMPLICATION FOR
CLIMATE CHANGE EDUCATION
María Angélica Mejía-Cáceres
Marco Rieckman

INTRODUCTION
The climate crisis is generating strategies in
diverse sectors: politics, economy, as well as
education. The Paris agreement (UN, 2015, p. 6),
in its article 12 establishes
“Parties shall cooperate in taking measures, as
appropriate, to enhance climate change
education (CCE), training, public awareness,
public participation and public access to
information, recognizing the importance of these
steps with respect to enhancing actions under
this Agreement”.
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CLIMA CRISES
This requires commitments by the
governments through creating policies,
programs, and agendas to facilitate the
educational process. In this sense, and
according to UNESCO (2019) “the
education is an essential element of the
global response to climate change”.
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ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION
SUSTAINABILITY EDUCATION
The first two educational concepts try to equilibrate the
relationship between humans, society and environment,
recognizing some wicked problems, and searching
contributions from the field of education to solve them.
Esta foto de Autor desconocido está bajo licencia CC BY
Esta foto de Autor desconocido está bajo licencia CC BY-ND
The third one, according to Stevenson et al. (2017),
is about learning in the face of risk, uncertainty and
rapid change, and the same time, it is a possibility
to develop capacities for addressing the climate
crisis.

ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION
SUSTAINABILITY EDUCATION
…. It is education.
… It is about environment.

HOW EVER…
Education is constructed through ideological institutions, it
means that the school as institution is an instrument to
change from a political civil society to regulated society
(Gramsci, 1984).
And If we continue in a capitalist context, it will be difficult to
achieve the goals of environmental education, sustainability
education, and CCE, because the schools are teaching based
on a capital ideology.

According to Althusser (2014) “the school
teaches ‘know-how’, but in forms that
ensure subjection to the dominant
ideology, or else the ‘practice’ of it, every
agent of production, exploration, or
repression, to say nothing of professional
ideologies” (p. 52). It means if the
government has a neoliberal ideology,
the schools as ideological state
apparatuses will design and develop
education with this perspective
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In consequence, if governments are not committed strongly with
environmental issues, hardly will we be reflecting in the practice of
educational programs and curriculums, on CCE, unless communities
take leadership to design and develop local activities. In addition,
according to Van Dijk (2011) ideologies are underlying discourses.

METHODOLOGY
According to Martínez “The central objective
of a critical qualitative research transcends
an explanation to prediction, or control or to
verification of hypotheses, characteristic
aspects of the investigation quantitative”
(2010, p. 107), thus we used the critical
discourse analysis as a theoretical and
methodological perspective. In so far as we
recognize the discourse as action, and the
social as object of observation that cannot be
separate ontologically from the discourse.

METHODOLOGY
We considered the discourse strategies used in each of
the transcribed texts of the Colombian and Chilean
presidents’ discourses made at the United Nations
Climate Action Summit meeting in New York on 23 of
September 2019, first performing a general reading of
the document, and then textual analysis. Thus, within
our analysis, we find aspects of textual dimension such
as modality, speech acts, presuppositions, and
intertextuality, allowing the understanding of the
cognitive dimension based on Van Dijk’s theory.
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FINDINGS
Colombia: Climate Change as a
Rhetoric of Economic Strategy.
Duque’s discourse started doing an auto presentation with positive
valorization. Legitimation Strategies used in his discourse started
with compare gases emissions, followed about ranking position of
energy production (6º), and finally recognized the importance of
two ecosystems and their quantity in Colombia concerning to the
world, badlands (50%) and tropical rainforest (40%). If we
considered other social practices connected to his discourse, it
implies that local policies in Colombia are in favor to protect
ecosystems, green productions related to energy, water,
agroecology, and others. So, analyzing his discourse concerning
local reality is necessary to understand his level of commitment to
environmental issues.

What about natural disaster produced by the human?
Which social practices to help economic growth generated impact? How local
agenda contributed to act with determination with a sense of urgency?
Does support fracking doesn't cause natural disasters?
Does neglect crimes of social leaders don't indicate act with determination?

Mejía-Cáceres, Freitas Juliani, Ventura & Freire (2017, p. 36) argues
that
“The substitution of social justice for market laws leads to different
types of crises, especially those that induce the decrease of the
basic conditions that we have as a human right, which constantly
affects the most popular populations”.
Esta foto de Autor desconocido está bajo
licencia CC BY

CHILE: CLIMATE CHANGE
PROVE BY A NON -
IDEOLOGICAL SCIENCE
Piñera’s discourse was based on the
legitimization strategy discursive, using
the science to argue his assertions. He
started with the affirmation about the
impact that the human can do over the
planet, including an instrumentalist, and
positivist perspective of science, when he
affirms that the sciences are neutral, and
without ideology.

It ignores when Habermas created
the thesis about science as ideology.
"as Ideology, it legitimates the given
society, providing arguments to
support its progress and, at the same
time, veiling the inequalities and
injustices that it also produces"
(Omoedo, 2019).

However, the chilean science are
having problems of fundings, because
it has 0,38% of their PIB since many
times ago, in spite of their high
productions, publications, and
recognition of their contribution in the
latinoamerica context according to
Rau, and Jaksic (2018).

“in fact, the scientific
community’s protestations have
reached the streets, denouncing
the scarcity of funds for scientific
research in the country [...] the
fact that scientific policies on the
national level are designed solely
on a short-term basis, from 3 to
10 years, has been
continuously criticized” (p.192).

POLITICAL DISCOURSES:
INFLUENCES ON CLIMATE
CHANGE EDUCATION
In first moment, the general discourses from
Colombia and Chilean’s president were
manipulative, using quick and efficient
assertions without do full analyzes of the
contextual reality. Each one took a different
focus to get attention, Colombia was about
characteristic of the ecosystems, and
comparison with another countries in terms of
emissions of gases, creating polarization, and
Chile, about nature as social actors, who asked
the humans for help, because this are powerful.

Being topics easy to remember for the
spectator, after introducing the local
strategies about clean energy, but since a
technical perspective, and in industrial level,
forgetting small companies, farmers,
indigenous, and other citizens. In addition,
associate to climate change are another
dimensions to consider, such as risk,
environmental justice, health, education,
adaptation, and not just production.

Its shows the small powerful of climate change
education because it isn’t considered by state
politic, which are maintaining the status quo.
understanding status quo according to O´Brien,
Selboe, and Haywards (2018)
“status quo to refer to the “taken-for-granted”
logics, institutions, and social practices that are
perpetuating an inequitable and unsustainable
future for youth” (p. 2).

This findings are describing persistence of dominant
discourse with effect on knowledge for the climate
change education, supported by a technical and
economical perspective. This logic affects the
possibility to develop a critical climate change
education, ignoring the contributions for example
that social movement can give for the field, also
ignoring all the dimensions that created the “risk”
that implies the climate crisis, because is no part of
discussion economic system, policies, ideologies
and anothers dimensions

IMPLICATIONS FOR
CLIMATE CHANGE
EDUCATION.
We believe that is necessary a political education, where
vulnerability, social and environmental injustice appear as theme of
discussion, capital system, structure, but also alternatives such as
Buen vivir, degrowth are permanently in debates giving enough
knowledge for the citizen can participate in public debate about our
future.

NEXT
STEPS
Critical analysis of discourses as educational
material to develop a critical perspective in CCE.

CONCLUSIONS:
Analyzing the discourse concerning local reality is necessary to understand the
level of commitment to environmental issues. We argue that we need to doubt
our leader's discourses because it can be used to manipulate.
On the other hand, this analyses show that the climate change education,
implies not only education about risk, adaptation and resilience, we argue that
implies a critical education about publics policies, address emancipatory,
critical and transformative content; consider non-formal and informal
communicative events in the construction of critical thinking, analyze how
power relations can restrict, motivate, or boost the education agency for climate
change education (Mejía-Cáceres, 2019).

From the interpretation of climate change policies, it is possible to
generate breakpoints, which can be reflected in more articulated
curricular transformations with non-formal spaces, and events such
as social movements.

REFERENCES
Althusser L. (2014). Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses. Brooklyn, NY.
Fairclough (2011). Semiotic Aspects of Social Transformation and Learning. In. Rogers R. An Introduction to Critical Discourse Analysis in
Education. Routdlege. New York.
Gramsci, A. (1984). Cuardernos de la cárcel 3. Edición crítica dle Instituto Gramsci. Ediciones Era. México, D.F.
Martínez L. (2010). A Abordagem de Questões Sociocientíficas na Formação Continuada de Professores de Ciências: Contribuições e
Dificuldades. Doctoral Thesis. Universidade Estadual Paulista. Bauru. Brazil.
Mejía-Cáceres M.A. (2019). De las Estructuras Sociales a los Eventos Comunicativos: Formación Inicial de Profesores de Ciencias y Edución
Ambiental en contexto Sociopolitico colombiano.
Stevenson, Nicholls, & Whitehouse (2017). What Is Climate Change Education?. In: Curriculum Perspectives, 37 (1), pp 67-71.
United Nations, (2015). Paris Agreement. Retrieved from
http://unfccc.int/files/essential_background/convention/application/pdf/english_paris_agreement.pdf
UNESCO (2019). Climate Change Education. Retrieved from https://en.unesco.org/themes/education-sustainable-development/cce
Van Dijk, T. A. (2011). Discourse Studies: A Multidisciplinary Introduction. Sage: Los Angeles, London, New Delhi, Singapur, Washington DC.

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