The roles, perspectives and limitations of environmental accounting in higher educational institutions: an emergy synthesis study of the engineering programme at the Paulista University in Brazil

Abstract

In an era of accelerating change around the globe, the roles of the Higher Educational institutions are an increasingly important part of the debate on the evolution of human society and its position in the biosphere. Emergy synthesis is a methodology that can concomitantly evaluate the integration of sustainability principles into curricula, and the campuses' operations to function with minimal environmental impact. Because of the importance of higher education in mankind's sustainable management of the biosphere, accurate estimates of the emergy of the human knowledge contributing to economic and social activities were performed to quantify the environmental, economic, and social costs and benefits of alternative policies. This study applies emergy synthesis to assess the engineering programme at Paulista University. Results were compared with those obtained from the Pharmacy and Business programmes, and used to visualize the entire system (information and resources), their relationships with the environment, and to evaluate subsystems in order to assist in decision-making for introducing SD concepts into curricula, and establishing targets for greening the campus. Energy and material flows used for construction and use of the campus were evaluated along with the information provided to students. The emergy investment to introduce two courses into the Engineering Programme was quantified and provided valuable information to guide senior university managers in the planning of new curricula that include sustainable development concepts.