PUC-Rio Socio-environmental Agenda: New Steps …
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role that HEI represent for society. For this purpose, the institution needs not only
to exercise sustainability within its structure and influence transformation through
example, but also to cooperate with the local community—with the neighborhood,
the city—in actions and projects for its own transformation.
However, what is most striking when observing what happens with research in the
area is precisely that the same interdisciplinary character which may be an obstacle
to its expansion is also a huge potential for PUC-Rio. There is proximity among
departments, teachers and students of the different areas as a strong brand, positively boosting the interaction among the areas. This proximity is conditioned by the
physical characteristics of the main Campus, in the Gávea neighborhood, but it is
reinforced by the institutional guideline of maintaining all undergraduate programs
within the same Campus, forcing direct contact among the people of its community.
And this vocation is evidenced, for example, by the existence of the Interdisciplinary
Center for the Environment, created in 1999, whose main purpose is to gather the
wide diversity of knowledge and articulate interdisciplinary actions inside and outside the University, in order to encourage socio-environmental sustainability.
The very formation of the PUC-Rio community is, in itself, a promising opportunity for the successful implementation of the Agenda. The university is communitybased and offers some form of financial aid scholarship to approximately 50% of
its approximately 12,000 undergraduates. It results in a very diverse student population in terms of social groups, purchasing power, as well as geographical origin,
which goes beyond the borders of the country. This diversity is a fundamental ingredient not only for the quality of the Agenda, but also for its implementation, by
bringing together different economic and cultural backgrounds, life experiences and
experimentation with environmental challenges and previous solutions—knowledge
that naturally contributes to the discussions and proposals for the Agenda and its
implementation.
The combination of disciplinary plurality and socio-cultural diversity in the construction of the Agenda, which will potentially have a direct impact on its implementation process, proved to be challenging for the priority-setting stage that is central to
the effectiveness of the Agenda as an institutional management tool. The discussions
held in the seminars and workshops of the XXIII and XXIV Environmental Weeks
managed to gather many ideas for the sustainable transformation of the university,
projects and dreams that were not consistent enough in the prioritization of actions,
a task that was completed by the NIMA team.
In the profusion of ideas and projects proposed by the community in the collective
construction of the agenda, the greater emphasis was certainly given to the use of
new technologies for sustainability solutions in the ecological aspect, not excluding
the direct interference in the economic aspect. Therefore, the themes “biodiversity”,
“water”, “energy”, “waste” and even “mobility” and “constructed and interaction
spaces” received more concrete and emphatic proposals, such as the recovery and
expansion of green areas with ecological function, improvement of the quality and
reduction of water consumption, waste management, reduction of consumption and
local generation of energy, reduction of the use of automobiles, expansion of areas
of permanence, social interaction and study on campus, among others. Although the
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role that HEI represent for society. For this purpose, the institution needs not only
to exercise sustainability within its structure and influence transformation through
example, but also to cooperate with the local community—with the neighborhood,
the city—in actions and projects for its own transformation.
However, what is most striking when observing what happens with research in the
area is precisely that the same interdisciplinary character which may be an obstacle
to its expansion is also a huge potential for PUC-Rio. There is proximity among
departments, teachers and students of the different areas as a strong brand, positively boosting the interaction among the areas. This proximity is conditioned by the
physical characteristics of the main Campus, in the Gávea neighborhood, but it is
reinforced by the institutional guideline of maintaining all undergraduate programs
within the same Campus, forcing direct contact among the people of its community.
And this vocation is evidenced, for example, by the existence of the Interdisciplinary
Center for the Environment, created in 1999, whose main purpose is to gather the
wide diversity of knowledge and articulate interdisciplinary actions inside and outside the University, in order to encourage socio-environmental sustainability.
The very formation of the PUC-Rio community is, in itself, a promising opportunity for the successful implementation of the Agenda. The university is communitybased and offers some form of financial aid scholarship to approximately 50% of
its approximately 12,000 undergraduates. It results in a very diverse student population in terms of social groups, purchasing power, as well as geographical origin,
which goes beyond the borders of the country. This diversity is a fundamental ingredient not only for the quality of the Agenda, but also for its implementation, by
bringing together different economic and cultural backgrounds, life experiences and
experimentation with environmental challenges and previous solutions—knowledge
that naturally contributes to the discussions and proposals for the Agenda and its
implementation.
The combination of disciplinary plurality and socio-cultural diversity in the construction of the Agenda, which will potentially have a direct impact on its implementation process, proved to be challenging for the priority-setting stage that is central to
the effectiveness of the Agenda as an institutional management tool. The discussions
held in the seminars and workshops of the XXIII and XXIV Environmental Weeks
managed to gather many ideas for the sustainable transformation of the university,
projects and dreams that were not consistent enough in the prioritization of actions,
a task that was completed by the NIMA team.
In the profusion of ideas and projects proposed by the community in the collective
construction of the agenda, the greater emphasis was certainly given to the use of
new technologies for sustainability solutions in the ecological aspect, not excluding
the direct interference in the economic aspect. Therefore, the themes “biodiversity”,
“water”, “energy”, “waste” and even “mobility” and “constructed and interaction
spaces” received more concrete and emphatic proposals, such as the recovery and
expansion of green areas with ecological function, improvement of the quality and
reduction of water consumption, waste management, reduction of consumption and
local generation of energy, reduction of the use of automobiles, expansion of areas
of permanence, social interaction and study on campus, among others. Although the