From ecologism as a social movement to environmental education as a historical construction

The text that we present examines the historical development of Environmental Education as a pedagogical and social response to the environmental crisis of the last few decades, by placing its arguments on the convergences and divergences that exist between «environmentalism» and the «ecologism» as social movements. For this we start from Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of social field and Michel Foucault’s genealogical analysis, revealing the material and symbolic meanings inherent to the ways of building the institutional story of Environmental Education (ee) and its progressive replacement by that which has become known as Education for Sustainable Development (esd), which is led mainly by unesco and unep. The alternative and transforming desire of the former (ea) has been adjusting to the reformist claims of the latter (eds), in an international context that the Objectives of sustainable development validate, without the environmental movements, ecologists and post-ecologists having to bring together a mutual plan of action, with shared, coherent and consistent educational proposals.Situando sus argumentos en las convergencias y divergencias que existen entre el «ambientalismo» y el «ecologismo» como movimientos sociales, el texto que presentamos analiza el desarrollo histórico de la Educación Ambiental como una respuesta pedagógica y social a la crisis ambiental en las últimas décadas. Para ello, se parte del concepto de campo social de Pierre Bourdieu y del análisis genealógico de Michel Foucault, desvelando sus significados –simbólicos y materiales– inherentes a los modos de construir el relato institucional, protagonizado fundamentalmente por la unesco y el pnuma, de la Educación Ambiental (ea) y su progresiva sustitución por la que ha dado en llamarse Educación para el Desarrollo Sostenible (eds). El afán alternativo y transformador de aquella (ea) se ha ido acomodando a las pretensiones reformistas de esta última (eds), en un contexto internacional que legitiman los Objetivos del Desarrollo Sostenible, sin que los movimientos ambientalistas, ecologistas y postecologistas estén articulando un plan de acción común, con propuestas educativas compartidas, coherentes y consistentes