SCIENCE-CITIZENSHIP, TRAINING AND ENCOURAGEMENT OF VOLUNTEERING IN BRAZILIAN NATIONAL PARKS

Abstract

Community-based surveys and monitoring are notable for the importance of results related to natural resource management and conservation, as well as representing desired and effective interactions between environmental managers, researchers and the lay public. Faced with this need, the term Science-citizen, which describes partnerships between scientists and lay volunteers, has the potential to participate effectively in collecting and / or analyzing scientific data when applied to public interest topics. Based on this perspective, the ConsCiencia-Cidada program, a partnership between university, NGO and ICMBio, with the support of CNPq and FAPESP, was developed with the objective of contributing to the training of people, especially residents of the national parks (NP) to act as a citizen-scientist and to encourage volunteering. Three courses were carried out, from the point of view of science-citizens, which sought to stimulate, through various teaching strategies, scientific training, engagement in socio-environmental activities and improvement of the NP's natural spaces.