Field Environmental Education for Biocultural Conservation and Sustainable Tourism

The Field Environmental Philosophy Training-of-Trainers Workshop organized by the Omora Ethnobotanical Park is a cross‐cultural, interdisciplinary workshop focused on connecting environmental education pedagogies with practices. The overall focus of the workshop will be to connect and empower existing education programs at ecological research sites and non‐profit organizations in Chile’s northern, central, and austral macrozones.

Workshop participants will include education managers, educators, ecotourism professionals, and student from each of the macrozones. The workshop will be conducted by expert facilitators in education and philosophy from Chile and the U.S.A.

The team of the Omora Ethnobotanical Park in Puerto Williams, together with the expert facilitators will present new methods and best practices to engage students and communities with scientific research and environmental education.

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We anticipate three major outcomes: 1) Facilitate greater connectivity among long-term socio-ecological research and education sites in Chile, and among their personnel; 2) Establish of 2-4 common activities or methodologies (e.g. regional adaptations of the successful Ecotourism with a Hand Lens activity) that will broaden the impact of scientific research and provide new ways to communicate the research and conservation that participants will implement in at least one session with their respective communities within a year; and 3) Synthesize findings in a book that will be published in 2021 with Springer’s Ecology and Ethics series.

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This Field Environmental Philosophy Workshop is funded by a grant of the Enbassy of the United States of America in Santiago, Chile and the Department of State of the United States of America (FAIN SCI80020GR0025). The opinions, findings and conclusions of the workshop are those of the organizers and facilitators and do not necessarily reflect those of the United States Department of State. The workshop also will be conducted with the in-kind support from the Omora Foundation, University of North Texas, Universidad de Magallanes, Biocitizen-Chile, and the Corporación Parque Mahuida, and the Institute of Ecology and Biodiversity.