Márcia Azevedo Coelho

Brazil has an extensive river network and many rivers shared with other nations. These rivers, known as transnational, play a vital role in the country’s geographical and socio-economic landscape while posing a series of challenges and complexities with neighboring nations, such as the need for cooperation and diplomacy.

Rivers like the Amazon, Paraná, Paraguay, and Uruguay cross borders, requiring agreements and joint policies for the sustainable management of water resources. Negotiating agreements on water use, navigation, energy generation, and conservation of riverside ecosystems are essential conditions to ensure sustainability and avoid conflicts of different kinds. Hence, managing conflicting interests, often between nations and even within sectors of the country, is one of the major challenges in managing water resources.

Sectors such as agriculture, industry, public supply, and environmental conservation often compete for access to water and its use, creating tensions. Agriculture, one of the main users of water resources in the country, faces competition for water, especially due to significant demand for irrigation. The industry also plays a crucial role in this context, demanding large volumes of water for productive processes, cooling, and other purposes. The excessive use of water from these sectors can negatively impact environmental conservation, triggering debates about sustainable water resource management and the need to balance human demands with the preservation of aquatic ecosystems.

Therefore, the challenge lies in seeking management strategies and public policies that promote efficient and sustainable water use, considering the demands of all sectors and the conservation of natural resources. This requires a delicate balance between human needs, economic activities, and environmental protection, aiming to ensure equitable access to water and preserve the health of rivers and ecosystems for future generations.

The topic is complex, and the challenges are numerous, but one undoubtedly lies in the culture of collaboration—a word derived from the Latin term “collaboratio,” composed of “com,” meaning “together,” and “laborare,” referring to “work.” This etymological context highlights the idea of working together, sharing efforts to achieve a common goal.

Countless thinkers throughout history, from Aristotle, who emphasized the importance of community life for the common good, to Rebecca Solnit in the present day, advocating that cooperation and collaboration are essential to overcome crises, be they natural, political, or social, emphasize how the unity of efforts and solidarity among people are fundamental to promoting positive changes and achieving collective well-being. However, we cannot consider that the lesson has been or is being effectively learned.

In the contemporary context, water management seems to intensify, largely due to the inability to act for the common good. In the educational context, collaboration is one of the competencies targeted as essential for basic education, aiming to shape individuals who can competently contribute to the world they live in.

Yes, at this point, education, not only in Brazil, has greatly failed. On the other hand, there remains doubt if only well-developed skills, such as the ability to dialogue, would solve effective problems when it comes to economic interests. In this sense, it seems that what is relevant is the formation in fundamental values, such as promoting a full life for all, a utopian ideal in capitalist societies structured for supremacy.

Nevertheless, it is known that for there to be collective paradigm shifts, there must necessarily be an investment in the initial formation of new generations, and from this perspective, society in general, but particularly schools, plays a preponderant role. Furthermore, being more specific, as projects relate to methods and these to formative intentionality, it is more than expected that currently, expository classes have already been replaced by activities that encourage critical reflection on the importance of dialogue in problem-solving and the creation of collaborative environments. Schools proposing project development, requiring collaboration among students, fostering dialogue to achieve common goals, are urgently needed.

Without this daily exercise, no adult will reach leadership acting differently from what they have always experienced. By cultivating social awareness allied with daily practices, education prepares future generations to manage impasses of different kinds more efficiently than what we have seen until this second decade of the 21st century, including environmental issues such as those of transnational rivers.

Preparing new generations is fundamental to facing the challenges of the contemporary world and consequently the management of transnational rivers. Educating young people about the importance of shared water resources, the impacts of human actions on aquatic ecosystems, and the need for international cooperation is essential. Including the theme of transnational rivers in educational curricula, promoting environmental awareness programs, and civic engagement from an early age can ensure a future generation that is more informed, responsible, and active in preserving these vital resources is part of an education that is not only constituted by information but also by the construction of values and awareness of the importance of life in society.

Basic education plays a crucial role in shaping individuals to ethically deal with complex challenges. Therefore, the development of soft skills during the formative path of children and adolescents in basic education must be strengthened through effective proposals, such as the development of integrated and multidisciplinary curricula that address social relevance themes, such as environmental studies and geopolitics, considering water resource management, environmental impact, and international relations not only from an economic perspective but fundamentally from an ethical and social one.