The Role of Latin American Universities in the Face of the Environmental Crisis and Climate Change

Abstract

This work exposes the unsustainability of the economic growth model framed in the current capitalist mode of production. To do this, it is explained that progressive material growth as the basis of the support of societies manifests an extreme dependence on fossil materials and energies that seriously deteriorate the environment and requires for its continuity a constant and increasing endowment of planetary resources that are finite. Related to the above, is made a critical analysis of the conventional way in which societies determine the advancement of well-being, which has been limited almost exclusively to the use of the gross domestic product as an indicator to measure it. Likewise, a criticism is made of this propensity also practiced by international bodies, organizations, governments, and educational institutions, when they abstractly determine that economic growth is the basis for solving problems such as unemployment, poverty, and hunger, as it observes with the Sustainable Development Goals, which lack internal coherence seen as a whole because the economic goals are opposed to the environmental goals. On this basis, the role that Latin American universities should play as committed entities in the formation of a critical and purposeful citizenry and as institutions that have a moral obligation to increase their commitment to combat the environmental crisis is analyzed. For this, it is essential to consider the particular circumstances of this region, with regard to cultural, human and social contexts, which are different from those of the societies that are the headquarters of the hegemonic centers and that have historically determined the paradigms in all fields of thought, including the field of environmental concerns.