Sustainability in Brazilian higher education: some elements based on the practice of environmental education in universities

Abstract

The inclusion of environmental issues in the university emerges as an important center of gravity within the environmental theme, particularly within Environmental Education. Humans’ ability to reverse the still growing levels of environment degradation, prevent greater catastrophes, and recover long-term global sustainability will depend, in part, on the environmental awareness of future professionals, trained in universities. In addition to their traditional teaching and research functions, socially responsible Brazilian universities traditionally have active university extension programs. Given the environmental degradation and the many unresolved problems in the social field, the university has expanded its social responsibility to include environmental responsibility which, in the Brazilian context in particular, requires an effort to transform attitudes and improve the material and cultural conditions. It is observed that most of the initiatives for a "sustainable university" in Brazil have so far focused on ‘environmentalizing’ the curricula and increasing environmental research, with little backing from key decision makers, and a virtual absence of inclusive public policies on education and sustainability. Given the broad transversality inherent to the environmental approach, it is considered that the various aspects, actors and levels of university ‘environmentalization’ should be based on people who are committed to change, or at least not resistant to it, within an institutional structure that is transversal, with integrated processes and objectives, open to metamorphoses, and capable of reflecting shifts of paradigm, from the upper administration, right down to the level of the classroom. This work is based on data from bibliographic and participatory research carried out by the authors in Santa Catarina, and data obtained through the authors’ experience of the implementation of environmental projects and Environmental Education, especially in the university environment, centered on the Universidade do Sul de Santa Catarina (UNISUL).