Sustainability and Higher Education in the Amazon: A Study Based on the Institutional Development Plan (IDP) of the Federal University of Western Pará

Environmental concerns have become a challenge for society since the scientific and technological advances. The article presents the results of the research in progress that has been developed in the Ph.D. Course Environmental Sciences in the Postgraduate Program in Society Nature and Development at Federal University of Western Pará. It is a qualitative research that relied on bibliographical and documentary research (Lakatos Marconi 2003; Gil 1999). The Federal University of Western Pará (Ufopa), located in the North of Brazil, in the Amazon region. The Institutional Development Plan (IDP) and annual reports served as the basis of these document analyses. The adoption of ‘sustainable development’ is presented in the IDP, along with specific actions for campus greening, but it also was necessary to consider the conceptual, philosophical and epistemological aspects of this term. This paper is important because these analyses pointed to the need for further study of and attention to curricular greening, as discussed in this study’s conclusions.