ABSTRACT
The incorporation of sustainability in higher education institutions in the region of IberoAmerica (Latin America, Spain and Portugal) is a relatively recent process. Among its most remote antecedents stand out the creation of the International Training Centre of Environmental Science (CIFCA, for its acronym in Spanish) in 1975 and, of particular interest for the purposes of this essay, the Seminar on University and Environment in Latin America and the Caribbean, held in Bogotá, Colombia, in 1985.1
CIFCA started its activities with an intensive programme that included a series of publications and seminars, such as the Seminar on Science, Research and Environment, also convened by United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) in January 1982 (Bogotá). Its main intention was to analyse the situation of basic and applied environmental research in the region, with emphasis on conceptual and methodological aspects of different disciplines, to observe and analyse the way they have been affected by the emergence of environmental problems (Leff 1986). A few years earlier it had released the first inventory of curricula related to the environment and natural resources offered by the universities in the region. It was called Panorama of Environmental Higher Education in Latin America (1977). Subsequently, the Seminar on University and Environment continued this undertaking,
emphasising the important role of universities in developmental processes in the region and, therefore, the imperative to link higher education with environmental issues. The seminar discussed two important documents (Ruscheinsky et al. 2014). The first one was ‘Ten Theses on Environment in Latin America’ by Fernando Tudela (1991) which states that the current
international economic order is the one that has determined, in Latin American countries, a development style that causes the degradation of ecosystems as well as an impoverishment of a vast part of the population. Diverse forms of exploitation of natural resources produce a deterioration that greatly exceeds the regenerative capacity of natural systems. The report also states that the region is endowed with sufficient natural resources to meet the basic needs of its population and also with an ecological and human potential to induce a sustained development process. Nevertheless an unfortunate mismanagement of resources has led either to the elimination or drastic alteration of natural ecosystems. In that document environment is conceived as a productive potential for an alternative,
equitable and sustainable development based on the integrated management of their ecological, technological and cultural resources so that solutions to specific environmental problems ultimately depend on a new organisational capacity of society as a whole based on community cultural values, people’s creativity and innovative potential. Such solutions cannot be located out of an adequate framework of political will that strives to break with the economic, ideological and technological dependence, and leads forward the conditions conducive to a participatory and democratic management of resources. The other document discussed at the seminar was ‘The Charter of Bogotá on University
and Environment in Latin America’ (González-Gaudiano 1989). It stated that the introduction of the environmental dimension into higher education requires rethinking the role of the university as a primordial institution in society, and in the context of the new world order, in which Latin American and Caribbean realities are configured. Therefore, it is necessary to insist on the deep significance and role of the university as a laboratory of contemporary reality considering the concrete conditions of the region in the global context. Hence the incorporation of environmental issues in university functions and the internalisation of the environmental dimension in the production of knowledge, restate the problem of interdisciplinary research and teaching, and in that context, the responsibility of universities in the process of development of our countries. The Charter of Bogota also emphasises that the environmental issues have generated new
interdisciplinary themes which require outstripping previous multidisciplinary efforts and methods. These issues are, among others, the need for the decentralisation of power and economic processes based on environmental criteria, and the generation of a more balanced development style in the region – ecologically sustainable, which allows a more democratic management of productive resources. It is in such a framework where complex and global problems such as the rationality of produc-
tion processes, food requirements of our peoples, the integrated management of our resources, meeting the basic necessities of the population and improving their quality life can be analysed.
