Protected and conserved areas (PCAs) are increasingly recognized as essential tools for their effectiveness in conservation and the benefits they provide. However, their challenges are still significant. The concepts, legislation, and governance surrounding PCAs are the results of social contexts. Due to the evolution of scientific knowledge, human rights, and diversified demands, new approaches are necessary to fulfill their functions. To better understand the context and possibilities, a study group was established to evaluate the current research, exchange experiences, guide dialogues, and identify lessons from experiences. The core of the experiences and cases considered and the reflections developed focused on the Brazilian context. This article analyzes the collected information and reflections related to several themes associated with challenges. The results reinforce the importance of PCAs but warn about the limitations of current conservation strategies to respond to social actors’ expectations, the needs of the vulnerable social groups, and evolving demands. The complexity of PCA systems is evident in view of the multiplicity of interests, potential contributions, and possibilities for participatory arrangements. There is a need to improve management and governance conceptions to promote the reconnection between society and nature. Therefore, the concept of collaborative conservation is proposed as an instrumental approach to advance towards inclusive and effective conservation strategies.

The objective of this study was to contemplate the role of critical environmental education in Latin America from a socio-environmental perspective and explore how environmental problems associated with justice in territories and communities face the dynamics of the complexity of the effects of climate change. They modify the economic and social dynamics that little by little strip communities of their identity and deepen inequality. Selection and recovery of the articles in the bibliographic review, published between 2018 and 2022, used to determine the state of the question were carried out with the search chain integrated by the following keywords: critical environmental education, territory, and social innovation, which make up an analysis carried out using hermeneutic phenomenology from a socio-environmental perspective. The main finding is that critical environmental education in Latin America reveals historical distortions, forms of colonization, and modes of production associated with the exploitation of nature that deepen extreme poverty. On the other hand, the region’s contradictions contribute to understanding the territory and identifying processes of social innovation that favor community life, recognizing new ways of being and living together in Latin America, whose cultural dimension and belonging follow the logic governed by the principles of binomial biodiversity and economy.