This thesis focuses on environmental education, recognized as a commitment to social transformation. Environmental education fits within the horizons of the Political Constitution of Colombia (1991) and is pertinent to the new conception of the country, which is transitioning from a State of Law to a Social State of Law. The country is on a path towards becoming a unitary, democratic, participatory, and pluralist republic, which incorporates the problem of the environment and development in its statements and structure, as the basis of collective rights and the environment (title II, chapter 3). This formation of a sustainable environmental culture for the country is one of the challenges facing environmental education.

We present the construction of a historicity that, based on the institutionalization of environmental education, promoted by the Ministry of National Education’s Environmental Education Program and its training-research strategy, describes the origin and evolution of the Policy’s strategies aimed at incorporating environmental education in territorial development. In particular, this refers to the Interinstitutional Technical Committees for Environmental Education CIDEA strategy, which is the object of our research, in twelve of the country’s departments (objectives and scope of the thesis).

We present the study’s guiding paradigms, approaches, and perspectives, and the strategic instruments used for their development. Qualitative research and the critical-social perspective are highlighted as axes of critical reflection and interpretation of the CIDEA Program’s training experience and its incidence in their characterization. The thesis is positioned as “a research that emerges from the development of such strategy”, associated to the needs of the actors that make up these committees and to the singular position of the research/researcher: her double role as narrator and interpreter (historicity of the experience), and as trainer and researcher, located in the center of the strategy, whose gaze and axis of mobility transit “inside and outside” of this strategy (Chapter II).

We present the concepts associated with environmental education, public policy, and institutionalization, in relation to the theoretical approaches, which contribute to further explore the training experience of the CIDEAs, and to expand the paradigmatic views and their projection in strengthening them, to incorporate environmental education in territorial development. The study employs a history of the present time as the theoretical approach to the historicity of the committees, in relation to the historical trajectory of the Program-MEN, and of its strategy. This involves concepts such as “situated experience”, “narration” and “event”, characterized by their critical view of the historical facts in “short periods of time”, associated to current social realities, as is the case of the CIDEA experience (Chapter III).
We also present the construction of the historicity of the Program-MEN, the origin of the Environmental Education Policy, and of the emergence of the CIDEA. The latter is relevant for the appropriation of environmental education, and strategic for Policy’s implementation in the country’s institutional and territorial development. These aspects serve to interpret phenomena associated with environmental situations and environmental education, in relation to public policy. They respond to the country’s “contemporary and urgent” problems, such as the environmental and development crises.

The Program and its CIDEA training-research strategy serve to journey into the history of a process with important implications in the historicity of the Environmental Education Policy and that of the CIDEAs themselves. It is based on this that the stages of the Program are defined, carrying privileged information for the CIDEAs’ history and characterization and for the confirmation of Program ↔ Policy ↔ CIDEAs coexistence. This thesis therefore presents an unpublished history of this institutionalization process and its experiences in the territory (Chapter IV).

The CIDEA experience (situated experience) is presented, circumscribed in the historicity of the Program, based on the specific relationship that they establish with their training-research strategy, to further their knowledge in environmental education and their projections of incorporation into the country’s institutional and territorial development. This is an issue of interest for the objectives of the thesis, because of the implications of this relationship on the characterization of the CIDEA and in that of the strategy itself. This creates a reciprocal transformation performance dynamic.

It is in this context that the specific training strategy for the diversity and plurality of institutional and non-institutional actors that make up the CIDEAs is consolidated as the transcendental event in the institutionalization of environmental education in Colombia. And, consequently, as an indispensable factor for the evolution and strengthening of the sine qua-non conditions of these committees, for the concretion and appropriation of the Environmental Education Policy in Colombia (specific object and objective of the thesis) (Chapter V).

Finally, we present the theoretical-conceptual elements that, in relation to the empirical field of the CIDEAs, allowed us to characterize them as small emerging social systems that incorporate the environmental dimension as their axis of mobilization and projection, in the transformation of environmental realities, and environmental education in the country. One of our important findings involves our approach to a system of characterization of the CIDEAs in Colombia, which consolidates the aspects taken from the historicity and interpreted based on the inductive approach that was instrumental in the final results. This finding transcends the objectives and scope of the research and opens a privileged space for the definition of new projects both in Colombia and abroad, focusing on the deepening of this investigative-historical view of environmental education. 11. Sustainable cities and communities 16. Peace, justice and strong institutions 17. Partnerships for the goals