Cross-Cutting Training in Environment and Sustainability debuts this semester

07/03/2025 - 08h41

Córrego do Mascate, in Serra do Cipó: ICB group coordinates long-term CNPq project in the region to identify the effects of global changes on the diversity of mountain species.
Photo: Ricardo Solar | UFMG

The concept of sustainability is much broader than the mainstream media often suggests. The subject must be viewed from many perspectives, and there are many areas of knowledge that deal with environmental issues, each in its own way. This is the idea that inspired the creation of the Cross-Cutting Training (FT) in Environment and Sustainability, a new option for complementary training for undergraduate and graduate students.

In the first semester of 2025, academic curricular activities will be taught in areas such as ecology, economics, education, food and leisure. “Sustainability is necessarily a transdisciplinary topic. It is impossible to think only about ecology; it is necessary to consider people’s well-being, social justice and minimally dignified living conditions. There are multiple approaches, and UFMG is fully capable of offering them”, says the president of the training coordinating committee, Ricardo Solar, who is a professor at the Institute of Biological Sciences (ICB).

Rector Sandra Regina Goulart Almeida highlights that the new FT follows the path of the one that was inaugurated in the first semester of 2024, Family Farming and Agroecology. “Both are in line with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Sustainability is a complex concept, which involves science and politics, and has been used under different understandings and purposes”, says the rector. “It is essential to understand it in all its aspects, including so that we can mitigate the impacts of human communities on the environment and use natural resources sustainably. By designing this Cross-Cutting Training, UFMG, she says, reinforces its commitment to the broad, critical and civic education of its students”. The SDGs are defined by the UN as a global call to action to end poverty, protect the environment and the climate and ensure that people, everywhere, have peace and prosperity”, says the rector.

Critical and multifaceted perspective

The Transversal Trainings are complementary training structures organized around major themes, which provide in-depth studies from a critical and multifaceted perspective, involving the various fields of knowledge, according to the FTs website. The idea is for students to participate in activities proposed by professors from different academic units, who deal with diverse and, at the same time, convergent perspectives. “These works seek to transcend possible boundaries between areas of knowledge, dialoguing with major academic-scientific and social issues, relevant to the country and humanity”, the text states.

After a resolution by the Teaching, Research and Extension Council (Cepe), published in 2014 (read the article about the ten years of the FTs), which guided the operation of these training structures, the following Cross-Cutting Trainings were created over the years: Traditional Knowledge, Scientific Dissemination, Ethnic-Racial Relations: History of Africa and Afro-Brazilian Culture, Cultures in Movement and Creative Processes, Human Rights, Entrepreneurship and Innovation, Gender and Sexuality: LGBTQIA+ Perspectives, Accessibility and Inclusion, International Studies, Family Farming and Agroecology and, now, Environment and Sustainability.

The Vice-Rector of Undergraduate Studies, Bruno Otávio Soares Teixeira, reports that, over the past ten years, more than 15 thousand enrollments have been registered in Cross-Cutting Training activities, which has allowed professors and students from different areas of knowledge to discuss contemporary issues in Brazil and humanity in the same classroom. “Our goal is to expand the scope and offering of cross-cutting training. The new FTs in Sustainable Cities and Communities, Aging, and Digital Transformation and Artificial Intelligence will soon be presented,” he announces.

Like the others, the FT in Environment and Sustainability aims to ensure that UFMG students are aware of major global and local issues, emphasizes Professor Terezinha Rocha, coordinator of the Special Board of Cross-Cutting Training. “This new Training will provide students with the opportunity to analyze, reflect, and seek ways to deal with contemporary challenges related to climate change and the responsible use of natural resources,” she says.

Accession

Ricardo Solar reveals that the call for professors to participate in the FT had very positive feedback. “We hope that, over the next semesters, other activities can be proposed and offered by professors from various academic units,” says the coordinator.

This semester, two subjects will be taught by ICB professors: Sustainability: concepts, uses and applications, by Francisco Barbosa, and Ecology of climate change, by José Fernandes Bezerra Neto. The idea of the latter is to show how accelerated changes in the climate alter dynamics in environments such as rivers and lakes.

The Ecological Economics discipline will address the notion of ecosystem services, that is, how a preserved environment has value, generates cost reductions and even monetization. Sustainability and Food will address, among other aspects, organic production and agroforestry. Food and contaminants, in turn, will show the harmful effects of elements present in the environment or introduced by humans, such as metals in water. The other disciplines are Education and Sustainability and Urban Parks: Uses and Applications, which is justified because the environment can also be a source of well-being and a good quality of life. In the coming semesters, disciplines such as Human Ecology, Building Sustainable Cities and Animal Behavior and Welfare will be taught.

The teachers in this first academic semester of 2025 are, in addition to Francisco Barbosa and José Fernandes Bezerra Neto, Flávia Beatriz Custódio, Leiliane Coelho André, Maria José Paiva, Renata Adriane Labanca (all from the Faculty of Pharmacy), André Braz Golgher (Faculty of Economic Sciences), João Valdir Alves de Souza (Faculty of Education) and Maria Cristina Rosa (School of Physical Education, Physiotherapy and Occupational Therapy).

Enrollment

Undergraduate students must enroll in academic activities for the FTs on March 13 and 14, through the Integrated Academic Management System (Siga). Graduate students must submit a request to the Secretariat for Cross-Curriculum Training by March 17, according to the guidelines. For the general public, the request must be submitted, also by the 17th, together with the documentation listed in a specific information sheet.

Questions about any aspect can be clarified at the FTs secretariat, which is located in room A105 of the Center for Didactic Activities 3 (CAD 3), on the Pampulha campus, and can be reached by email at transversal@prograd.ufmg.br and by phone at (31) 3409-6590.

See the table with detailed information about each Cross-Curriculum Training.

Francisco Barbosa: ‘We need to consider the idea of degrowth’

When he developed the proposal for Cross-Cutting Education in Environment and Sustainability with professors Ricardo Solar, his colleague at ICB, and Ana Paula Teixeira, from the Chemistry Department at ICEx, professor Francisco Barbosa had in mind the notion that the world is transdisciplinary and that undergraduate and graduate students at UFMG need to have this understanding, which is not yet generally the case in universities, which, according to him, are very much based on disciplinary education.

“Our new education focused on the environment and sustainability has a strong transdisciplinary basis, which will help students from different areas understand issues such as environmental and social governance (ESG) and the UN Sustainable Development Goals,” says Barbosa, who is retired and works on this project as a volunteer teacher.

Author of research focused on aquatic biodiversity and water governance, among other topics, Barbosa comments that the concept of sustainability is already facing some wear and tear and is not easy to convey. Therefore, the goal is to offer a vision of the complex relationships between man and nature that is comprehensive and as close to reality as possible. “To discuss sustainability, it is necessary to consider the idea of degrowth. Human societies have grown too much, exceeding limits to where they must, in some way, return. To do this, it is necessary to understand what the concept means for biologists, economists, engineers, and social scientists,” explains Francisco Barbosa. He says that the subject has been widely discussed in the last two years by a research group led by professor and former dean Francisco César de Sá Barreto at the Institute of Advanced and Transdisciplinary Studies (Ieat) at UFMG.

For Barbosa, the understanding of sustainability depends on who is addressing the issue. “Miners dare to talk about sustainable mining, as do agribusiness agents, despite the excessive amount of water used in this activity,” he states. The expectation for graduates of the FT in Environment and Sustainability, says the professor, is that they leave with a broad view of current environmental challenges. “As we explained in the FT project, graduates must be able to effectively contribute to technical-scientific projects aimed at sustainability and propose actions and practices for the rational use of natural resources and environmental conservation, considering the impacts resulting from climate change and the adaptations needed to face them,” concludes Francisco Barbosa.