The Pantanal is the world's largest freshwater wetland, located in the geographical centre of South America. It is relatively well conserved, and features unique landscapes, ecosystems, and traditional cultural practices, shaped by the dynamic interaction of climatological, hydrological, geological, ecological, and anthropogenic factors. Its ecological integrity is increasingly threatened by human activities, particularly, in the wider catchment area, for example, deforestation, agricultural intensification, and construction of hydropower plants, with implications for local people's livelihoods. We present a synthesis of current literature on physical, ecological, and human dimensions of environmental change in the wetland, outline key research gaps, and discuss environmental management implications. The literature review suggests that better integration of insights from multiple disciplines is needed and that environmental management could be improved through a better grounding in traditional practices and local perspectives. We conclude with four recommendations: First, future environmental change research should build more strongly on the positive example of a small number of case studies where traditional and local knowledge of the environment was put into a dialogue with scientific knowledge and techniques. Second, we recommend a more explicit consideration of longer temporal scales (>10 years) in environmental change research, making use of oral and written histories, as well as palaeoecological techniques, to understand system responses to different magnitudes of human and climatic pressures, and ultimately, to inform future adaptation activities. Third, we suggest that enhanced stakeholder participation in conceiving and implementing research projects in the Pantanal would strengthen the practical relevance of research in addressing environmental management challenges, livelihood needs, and advocacy processes. Fourth, we call for a more systemic and integrative perspective on environmental education, which encompasses engagement activities between researchers, policy-makers, and citizens, to foster environmental awareness, scientific literacy, and public participation.

This is a review article on environmental education. The focus of the discussion is the relationship between environmental education and Biodiversity concern and the emergence of the concept of Biodiversity education. The position described here configures as a disagreement of the insertion of these innovative terminology, defending the maintenance of the term environmental education and its general framework, reserving to Biodiversity concern a position of one issue to be coped by environmental education. The general framework for environmental education arises from documents of the main international conferences, such as The Belgrado Charter, resulted from the international workshop on environmental education, the recommendations of the intergovernmental conference on environmental education held in Tbilisi and the treaty on environmental education for sustainable societies and global responsibility, in Rio de Janeiro. The present discussion also reject the criticism that environmental education is not enough socially relevant and interdisciplinary and it brings back those recommendation from the conference of Tbilisi which addressed goals for environmental education. These highlighted goals are relative to the encouragement of those ethical, economic and aesthetic values, the provision of a wide range of practical skills required in the devising and application of effective solutions to environmental problem, by linking educational processes to real life. Ecological literacy is considered limited if analyzed in its isolated form and it is defended that environmental education should go beyond a simple ecological literacy. Some concepts such as empowerment and some theoretical-methodological approach such as dialogical problem-posing can help environmental education to correctly accomplish its goals and principles. A Brazilian experience on production of a didactic material known as Probio-EA for its Ministry of Environment is commented in means of the accomplishment to this theoretical proposition.

O Sistema de Licenciamento Ambiental de Propriedades Rurais (SLAPR) foi implantado no estado do Mato Grosso, no ano de 2000, num processo de descentralização da política florestal para os estados. O principal objetivo do SLAPR era a redução dos desmatamentos ilegais no estado e causou grande expectativa nos elaboradores/gestores de politica pública na época de sua implantação. Este artigo quantificou e qualificou os resultados dos desmatamentos ocorridos dentro do Sistema, bem como do nível de sua regularização que a política conseguiu provocar no estado até o ano 2007. Para elaborar o trabalho, foram utilizadas ferramentas de Geoprocessamento, extraindo os vetores dos limites das propriedades da base digital da Secretaria de Estado do Meio Ambiente de Mato Grosso (SEMA-MT) até 2006 e da dinâmica de desmatamentos entre 2000 e 2007. Também foram utilizados documentos informando o número de desmatamentos autorizados no período. Entre os resultados, verificou-se que o sistema licenciou, no período, grandes propriedades rurais (média de 1.500 ha) havendo altas taxas de autorização de desmatamentos. A quantidade de 1.420.500,50 hectares foram desmatados em propriedades rurais licenciadas em todo o estado do Mato Grosso, no período de 2000 a 2007, representando um incremento de 32% em relação ao acumulado no período anterior, entre 1995 e 1999. A maior parte desse desmatamento contou com autorização legal. O estudo também concluiu que houve desmatamentos em reserva legal dentro das propriedades licenciadas, apesar de que tal infração tenha sido menor em relação às propriedades fora do sistema. A autorização de desmatamento caiu drasticamente após 2005, mostrando que o sistema funcionou melhor quando todo estado estava com altas taxas de desmatamento e com polígonos maiores de desmatamento. O estudo sinaliza para cuidados na análise dos dados numéricos de desmatamento no SLAPR, indicando em que aspectos a euforia apresentada na época de sua implementação veio ou não a se confirmar, apontando as armadilhas e vicissitudes desse tipo de instrumento de políticas públicas ambientais.