A sustentabilidade ambiental na Universidade Federal de Mato Grosso : uma análise de benchmarking ambiental utilizando Data Envelopment Analysis

Abstract

The universities, since its creation in the Renaissance period of the twelfth century, constitute as reference of the highest level of intellectual knowledge of a society, demonstrated in all its technical and, mainly, teaching staff. In this way, these entities can and should demonstrate their environmental concern both in the training of their graduates and in their routine administrative activities. The objective of this work is to identify the environmental sustainability practices of the Universidade Federal de Mato Grosso (UFMT) in relation to the activities developed in other Brazilian federal universities. Specifically, it is intended to identify environmental sustainability actions developed in national and international universities, to understand the importance of environmental benchmarking in reducing the environmental impacts generated by these institutions and to identify the sustainability practices developed in Brazil’s federal universities. Several methodological procedures were used to achieve these objectives. First, an analysis was carried out in the scientific literature on the environmental sustainability practices developed in national and international universities. Later, a questionnaire was elaborated with the contributions of the scientific literature and sent to the universe constituted by 63 Brazil’s federal universities. After analyzing the answers obtained through the questionnaires and the institutional documents, an analysis was performed using Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), a tool that allows the relationship between inputs and outputs to detect benchmarks and their distance from other institutions . The results demonstrate the existence of three very distinct groups in relation to the treatment of the environmental issue: a small proactive group, a second prominent set of institutions whose main characteristic is the reactivity in the treatment of these issues, and this includes the UFMT, and a group that does not have the most basic practices of environmental sustainability researched. In addition, among the activities planned or elaborated by the top management of the Brazil’s federal universities, what was effectively accomplished in environmental sustainability actions was verified.