ID: 1572
Presenting Author: Verónica Giberti
Session: 648 - Breaking the Academic Silence in LATAM : Communicating Environmental Assessment
Status: pending
Deficit in environmental content; addressed through cross-cutting training and practical pathways that unify standards and enable integration into EIA teams, improving governance.
The project examines how environmental misinformation can arise when university curricula do not incorporate environment, environmental management, or sustainability. Using the National University of Pilar (Argentina)—Biotechnology, Food Science and Technology, Automation and Control, and Software Development—as a founding case, it identifies the opportunity to install cross-cutting, embedded environmental education from the start.
A curriculum review shows that Biotechnology includes sustainability explicitly, whereas in the other programs the environmental component is insufficiently integrated. This confirms that coherence does not emerge on its own; it requires deliberate institutional decisions. In response, an elective on basic environmental and sustainability concepts—transversal to the entire Faculty of Production and Technology—was introduced, and Formative Accredited Experiences (EFA) were established to connect teaching, practice, and mandatory extension.
This foundation strengthens Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) by developing professionals who can immediately join project analysis for EIA, applying unified, rigorous criteria to identify, communicate, and manage impacts across technical teams, competent authorities, consultancies, and industry. The UNPilar experience suggests that a new university can build academic and public trust by preventing misinformation through well-structured education, offering a practical, replicable framework to improve EIA quality, environmental governance, and cross-professional communication.
Environmental scientist (BSc, MSc), Dean of UNPilar and professor at FAUBA; specialist in Environmental Impact Assessment and environmental management; former IAIA board member.