In the year in which it completed two decades of existence, the Postgraduate Program in Environment and Society (PPGA&S) – in partnership with the Center for Environmental Studies and Research (Nepam) – started this Monday (4), at Unicamp, for the Inaugural Week of the Doctoral Course in Environment and Society. Between March 4th and 8th, experts will discuss the climate emergency and its environmental and social implications and the future of environmental sciences. The event – open to the entire community – is supported by the Institute of Philosophy and Human Sciences (IFCH) at Unicamp.
Organized by the coordinator of the PhD course in Environment and Society, Ana Paula Bortoleto, and by a team of researchers and employees from Nepam, the event will promote debates, lectures, round tables and presentations about the postgraduate program, with the participation of researchers, professors, University students and guests.
“I am absolutely certain that Unicamp is the Brazilian university that looks at the environmental issue with the greatest diversity of angles, stances, activities and achievements”, said rector Antonio José de Almeida Meirelles, present at the opening of the event. “And we do this because we are able to coexist with this enormous diversity of perspectives”, he added.
For the rector, the socio-environmental challenges are great, but there are solutions. According to Meirelles, from a technical point of view, society is capable of responding positively to demands, but more is needed than that. For him, a political commitment in favor of the solution is necessary. The rector said that Brazil can play an extremely important role in global environmental solutions and believes that Unicamp can contribute strongly to the country's efforts in this regard.
Bortoleto recalled the 20 years since the course was created and reaffirmed the original intention of this itinerary: to train researchers capable of working in an interdisciplinary way, taking into account the binomial environment/society. “This journey to date has not been easy. The 20-year success of this program comes from the continuous effort of its faculty and students and everyone who makes up our community in search of academic excellence”, said the professor in the opening session.
She recalled that the program's main focus is to promote academic debate around sustainability and the impacts caused by climate change. And she made an appeal. “We urgently need in academia to go beyond the diagnosis and prognosis of the environmental situation. We need to unite with society, in what is humanity’s main challenge [today],” he stated. “I would venture to say that the solution – or solutions – to the socio-environmental emergency in which we find ourselves depends on wise minds, working consistently and collectively. It will not be individual actions or spectacular technology that will create a just society. The time for this collective movement is now and not tomorrow”, warned Bortoleto.
The coordinator of Nepam, professor Cristiana Simão Seixas, said that the planet is going through a period of multiple and diverse crises. She cited, for example, the crises of inequality, health, migration and also the environment. She assesses that, to face these crises, it is necessary to discuss “new ways of doing science”. For her, it is necessary for there to be “transformative changes” in society that require changes in structure and practices and that act on the underlying causes of these crises.
“We need to train transdisciplinary researchers, who can meet society’s demands, in dialogue with society”, he argues. “The way we have done science until now has not been sufficient, for example, to deal with climate change.” The teacher said she believes that “there are other possible development trajectories”.
The IFCH postgraduate coordinator, Nashieli Rangel Loera, stated that environmental issues have social, public and political importance and highlighted the multidisciplinary nature of the topic.
“Undoubtedly, this theme challenges the classifications and categorizations of different disciplines, as is the case of the binomial environment and society. In some way, reflection on the environment needs to look at broader relationships and involves all types of beings, beings with whom we share life on this planet”, he added.
Postgraduate Program in Environment and Society
PPGA&S was born in 2004. Score six next to Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel (Capes), this postgraduate is one of the most successful environmental science programs in the country.
PPGA&S comprises 25 professors who carry out research in various areas of environmental sciences. The program produces frontier scientific research on the topic of environment and society and trains researchers and professionals for academia, research centers and institutes and for the provision of planning, consultancy and advisory services in public bodies, civil society associations and companies.
