LAW, CULTURE AND SUSTAINABILITY

THE COMMUNITY LIBRARY A CASA AMARELA AS AN ECOSYSTEM OF SOCIAL INNOVATION

Abstract

This article investigates the Community Library A Casa Amarela as a concrete model of sustainable cultural governance, analyzing its capacity to operationalize, at the local level, the principles and guidelines that shape the contemporary global agenda of UNESCO and the G20. Based on a qualitative approach and the case study method—combining document analysis, participant observation, and interdisciplinary literature review—it demonstrates that the library constitutes an ecosystem of social innovation, where fundamental rights are realized through hybrid institutional arrangements integrating the State, the community, and the third sector. The research details how its socio-environmental pedagogical practices—such as recycling workshops, training of young community agents, and studies of local fauna—are interlinked with initiatives in solidarity-based creative economy and mechanisms of community management of common goods, generating social technologies with high potential for replication in urban peripheral contexts. The results show that the institutional model of Casa Amarela significantly transcends the traditional function of a library, becoming a strategic social infrastructure for sustainable territorial development, where culture, environmental education, and citizenship intertwine in experiences of meaningful learning. The study concludes that initiatives like this one point to the emergence of a new paradigm of cultural public policy—decentralized, participatory, and deeply rooted in local territories—where the right to culture, reinterpreted through the lens of sustainability and social innovation, reveals itself as an essential dimension in building more just, inclusive, and resilient societies.