Serra do Mar Bioregion
The largest remaining continuum of Atlantic Rainforest in Brazil, Serra do Mar holds extraordinary ecological scale, living memory, and watershed connectivity.
Hydrological and topological study of satellite images of the “Serra do Mar” Bioregion. Courtesy: @pedalhidrográfico
Serra do Mar Bioregion
Unique continuum stretching across mountains, valleys, and coastal slopes. Global biodiversity hotspot that represents the 5% to 7% left of Atlantic Rainforest in Brazil.
Morretes / PR
A territory shaped by strong culture, history and tourism. Has served as key place for pre and post colonial trading routes, both my sea and land. Key position across conversation zones.
Marumbi Watershed
The local basin where forested slopes gather water, feed springs, and sustain the Marumbi River. Home to 6 different rural neighborhoods. Near Pico do Marumbi State Park.
Weaving a Bioregional Learning Ecosystem
In this territory we are weaving an expanding network of distinct actors, planting the seeds of bioregional resilience.
Fostering practices in regenerative education, agroforestry, ecology research, and place-based technological experimentation, we explore how living ecosystems can meaningfully inform community organizing, identity, cultural imagination, hope, and materiality.
Community Associations
Deep ties with local residents and grassroots organizations across the territory.
Public & Private Partners
Collaborations with local government and private actors amplifying impact.
University Collaborations
Academic partnerships grounding practice in research and shared knowledge.
Local Food Cooperative
A community-owned food system reinforcing territorial resilience and sovereignty.
Terra Escola: A Living Community School
🌿 Accredited PreSchool (4-6 yrs old)
Community-based early childhood education located at a community association, with expansion into primary education underway.
🤝 Community-Woven Curriculum
The wider territory community is woven into curricular and extra-curricular activities, strengthening local resilience. Fostering partnerships with municipality and public schools.
🌊 The River as Teacher
The Marumbi River is recognized as a living being whose vitality organizes all conditions for life in the region.
Regenerative Agroforestry
Cultivating food forests that restore the watershed while teaching ecological reciprocity.
Ecology and Permaculture
Place-based inquiry that connects children directly to the living systems around them.
Integral Learning
Mind, body, spirit are cultivated in the school through play, meditation, movement and arts.
The Marumbi Avatar
A technological experiment exploring how a river's dynamics can inform community organizing and identity.
It seeks to apply frontier technologies towards the creation of an expression medium for the Marumbi River, so its wellbeing and will become more visible and present in the community's daily lives.
Anchored in Terra Escola and partnered with the Municipal Education Secretariat of Morretes, the Marumbi Avatar begins as a relational pedagogy. It spans three rural school sites across the watershed, seeking to learn who the River is in the eyes of the local children.
Cultivating a MetaRelational Culture through territorial tech
Feeling
Sensorial walks and presence-based observation — body meets river before mind categorizes it.
Thinking
Conceptual and technical discourse grounded in prior embodied encounter.
Probing
Environmental sensors integrated with ancestral knowledge and local memory.
Creating
Children co-create physical and symbolic avatar forms; project culminates in public community celebration.
COLIPA
Nascent agroecology food cooperative congregating diverse producers across the Paraná Coastal Region towards local quality food sovereignty
Structuring commercialization and exchange opportunities
The "Marumbi SymbioHub"
Bioregional Learning Center
Rather than scaling through expansion, we are actively cultivate a watershed-scale prototypes that can be fractally adapted to other headwater territories in the larger Bioregion.
Our current dream is to evolve into the Marumbi SymbioHub — a Bioregional Learning Center consolidating what is already emergent.
As such, we hope to inspire the larger Serra do Mar Bioregion towards a living blueprint for repatterning how we live.
Pragmatically
- Terra Escola's new building
- The Dandelion Strategy
- 1,000 BLCs by 2035
Aspirationally
The entire Serra do Mar Bioregion — a living blueprint for repatterning how we live, relate, and make sense.
Thank you
Danilo Olivaz
danolivaz@proton.me
Samara Tanaka
samaratanaka@gmail.com
terraeduca@proton.me
As the world feverishly composts into something unknown, what should Children and Communities be learning?