An Environmental Management Experience Within the Project: Improvement of Educational Opportunities in Rural Environmental Management in Sarapiqui and Guapiles’ Schools

A very important aspect of worldwide education and, particularly for Costa Rican education, is the environmental management as an educational strategy. For this reason, this article describes the experience of the project Mejora de la Oferta Educativa en Gestión Ambiental Rural (MOE-GAR) during its first stage in 2009. The population was comprised by teachers from different areas of the rural school districts of Guapiles and Sarapiquí. As a part of this project, we worked with teachers, different government and nongovernment institutions, throughout the 2009 school year; obtaining as a result, a process of knowledge development in environmental management. Based on this, several proposals were developed in different educational institutions.

Towars a chemical reagents and residues management at the teaching laboratories of the Chemistry School of the Universidad Nacional

The academic activities carried out at the School of Chemistry make indispensable to develop actions oriented toward the consolidation of a reagent and residue management system, especially in the teaching laboratories. The project “Management of reagents and residues in the teaching laboratories of the School of Chemistry” works under the Green Chemistry values which designs products and chemical processes that reduce or eliminate the use and production of dangerous substances, to benefit the environment. With a preventive vision, a change from the  laboratory practices is looked to select those with less environmental impact. Additionally, residue quantification is made and its management protocols are developed for each practice. The project has several stages: diagnose, action implementation, student, teacher and administration personnel training and evaluation during the process and at the end of it. The article describes methodological aspects of the project operation emphasizing on reagent and residue quantification through flow diagrams.

INDICADORES SOCIOAMBIENTAIS PARA AVALIAÇÃO DE IMPACTO: SISTEMA ESPECIALISTA AMBIENTAL COMO INSTRUMENTO GESTÃO AMBIENTAL

This article aims to present the relation between the selected socio environmental indicators used to make the expert system environment (SEA) as tool for automate the process of viability consultation for implementation of new constructions, which tends to increase the agility of the public administration within the control of use and occupation of municipal land. The development of this tool is justified since the urban growth in most Brazilian cities has promoted sociospatial segregation, marginalization of the poor and degradation of natural environments. To elaborate the conceptual model of the SEA, the present study has selected socio environmental indicators and, also, has used parameters of environmental law and land use. For each indicator was determined a value that is measured by a checklist procedure and for the analysis of the legislation and crossed with the city’s basemap. Thus, it was made a connection between the characterizations of the environment versus the type of work in viability, resulting in a graph which allowed measuring the significant environmental impact. The implementation of the environmental modeling system encounters the instrumentalization of the municipal administration, which will feature modern land management tool.