Project description
Local solutions for environmental preservation
In the lush landscapes of the Amazon, a delicate balance is threatened by deforestation, dwindling food supply systems and unsustainable ecotourism. These socio-ecological challenges jeopardise biodiversity and the livelihoods of indigenous communities. In Leticia, a multi-ethnic and multilingual school stands as a beacon of hope amid these pressing issues. Supported by the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) programme, the MultiSEAT project will harness the power of language and community engagement to address environmental concerns and pave the way for sustainable solutions. Specifically, it will integrate indigenous languages into teaching sequences. The project’s findings will benefit local communities and global sustainability efforts.
Objective
MultiSEAT is a timely, participatory research project aiming to expand the frontiers of multilingualism toward socio-ecological and environmental research to contribute to education for nature protection and sustainability. Focusing on an indigenous multi-ethnic and multilingual school in Leticia (Amazon Trapezium), the project has three research objectives: 1. Design and implement multilingually a community-based participatory methodology allowing the collection of socio-ecological and ethnographic interactional data about food supply systems (FSS), deforestation (DEF), and ecotourism (ECOT); 02. Provide insights into the ideological stances (perceptions, attitudes, beliefs, and representations) that the school community and their families have on these socio-ecological issues; and 03. Design a pilot of three research-based Multilingual, Inclusive Teaching Sequences (MITS) to tackle FSS, DEF, and ECOT within the indigenous school. To achieve these aims, MultiSEAT will empower young people from the school through participatory research, engaging them in collecting quantitative and qualitative socio-ecological and ethnographic data. Analysing indigenous perceptions of environmental issues will provide insights into the complex relations between people, language, and nature. Also, by considering language as a plurilingual praxis in the design of the MITS, we will focus on what people do and can achieve with their multilingual resources as eco-linguistic capital. At project end, the scientific community will have an empirically based, comprehensive understanding of how the triangle ‘people-language-nature’ works. We will also provide expertise and guidance to non-indigenous local and global communities, policymakers, SMEs interested in bioeconomy, teachers, private/public funders, and stakeholders engaged in sustainability in Amazonia in the implementation of interdisciplinary methods to operate changes through multilingualism, education and environmental research.
Fields of science
Keywords
Programme(s)
- HORIZON.1.2 - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) Main Programme
Funding Scheme
HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-PF-GF - HORIZON TMA MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships - Global FellowshipsCoordinator
13572 Marseille
France