Addressing the relationship between the built and the natural environment, Birkeland (2008) proposes the concept of "positive development". This concept includes the transition from current vicious cycles to future virtuous cycles through the design of the built environment. From the perspective of the built environment, sustainability is a design problem, since most negative impacts are caused by physical and institutional design practices. Some solutions to specific problems associated with sustainable development can also be reversed by design. Most institutional environmental management tools that seek to solve problems are part of systems planning, design and management that undermine or discourage good practice. These tools are still paying attention to the symptoms of the problems, such as pollution and waste, instead of addressing the causes of those problems and correcting them through appropriate design systems.

The redesign of the built environment needs decision tools to promote diversity, adaptability and reversibility (Millenium Ecosystem Assessment (2005) in Birkeland, 2008). According to the author, the built environment is responsible for the largest share of energy consumption, a large proportion of raw material extraction, toxic landfills, production of packaging waste and the emission of greenhouse gases. Also, the built environment contributes to the strengthening of problems such as deforestation, climate change, soil erosion, air pollution, water scarcity and biodiversity loss, all of them related to the quantity of resources, space and energy needed for today and for the future.

With this research, it is expected to bring an overview on the scopes and challenges that diferent “sustainability on campus” initiatives are facing and bring them as a comparative analysis to the current european context. The conceptual framework of the analysis circulates around the Education for Sustainable Development -ESD- approach, which aims to empower people with knowledge, skills, values, attitudes and behaviors to live in a way that is good for the environment, the economy, and society (UNESCO, 2025).   

To disaggregate this analysis into positive and negative impacts, the research question aims to address “What are the main scopes and challenges of higher education institutions in the implementation of sustainability on campus initiatives?”. A cross-case analysis has been designed taking into consideration that initiatives to implement “sustainability on campus” in higher education institutions have grown in recent years across the world but the structure and content of these initiatives (conceptualization, definitions, interpretations, and implementation strategies) vary from one university to another (Garrido-Yserte and Gallo-Rivera, 2020).  

Deleye (2024), conducted a topic modelling-assisted discourse analysis on the “sustainable university” conceptualization that addressed the relationship between the university, higher education and sustainability. The author identified three dominant discourses and defined them as the “sustainable university discourses framework”: Firstly, the sustainable higher education institution, where sustainability is embedded all over the organizational structure layers and management and institutional strategies represents a relevant role. Secondly, the engaged community, where the university is not considered as an institution but as a community of people that are engaged with sustainability. And thirdly, the green-tech campus, which results as a combination of the previous two with emphasis on the university as creator of sustainable technological innovations. This research considers the third discourse as the starting point for the definition of university campus, which includes its operations and physical infrastructure, its focus on technology and the involvement of students as users of the campus (Deleye, 2024). However, the conceptual framework of the cross-case analysis is broadly immersed within the whole sustainable university discourses framework proposed by Deleye (2024).

Cross-case analysis is a method for in-depth exploration of similarities and differences through cases in support of conceptual generalizability and theoretical predictions, it facilitates the comparison of commonalities and differences in events, activities, and processes of the units of analyses (Yin, 1994). According to Dawson (1997), Snow & Thomas (1994) and Wolfgramm (1997) in Chaves and Weiler (2016), as an empirical investigation that studies a contemporary phenomenon within its real-life context, a cross-case study searches to expand and analyze a theory (analytical generalization) rather than enumerate frequencies (statistical generalization). The units of analysis of this cross–case study are seven different universities of the Latin America region. The data collected from each unit of analysis has been related to the sustainable university discourses framework to visualize what are the main scopes and challenges that these higher institutions are facing on their path to sustainability on campus transformations. This analysis includes a combination of data collection techniques, such as interviews, institutional documents, webpage revision and collaboration with experts. The analysis criteria is based on sustainability science, education for sustainable development, sustainable university campus initiatives, living laboratory and sustainable development. Through the analysis of qualitative data and cross-sectional analysis in the selected seven universities, 25 interviews have being counducted to a diverse audience that includes the following key institutional positions or stakeholders: (a) Director/authority of sustainability campus planning; (b) Faculty member involved in sustainability initiatives; (c) University facilities/operations manager; (d) Student sustainability leader or sustainability involved researcher; and (e) Sustainability department staff. The structure of the analysis comes out of the role and experience of each participant and the general understanding of the university in sustainability practices. Thereafter, the sustainability implementation has been addressed through the sustainability campus operations and infrastructure, the academic integration of sustainability practices, the community participation, governance mechanisms, innovation, technology, resource management and challenges and opportunities in the mid and long terms. Considering the main concerns of ECER 2026, such as the climate crisis, the dismantling of democracy, pandemics, wars and conflicts, the refugee crisis, the radical impact of artificial intelligence, and the massive accumulation of wealth in the hands of the few, this reseach is looking forward to contribute into the dialogue and discussion of challenges, knowledges, methodologies and practices by providing relevant insights to the question of “How should Environmental and Sustainability Education address this situation and (re)articulate itself?”.

From a quantitative perspective, the most relevant characteristics of sustainability on campus initiatives belong to a wide set of variables mainly located in the environmental dimension. Among these variables, there is a high predominance of initiatives related to energy management, waste management (collection, transport classification and treatment of office, laboratory, clinical and food waste), sustainable procurement (acquisition of goods and services), sustainable mobility (business travel and commuting of staff and students), environmental system (campus air quality, smoke pollution control on campus and green transport planning), environmental management (energy conservation), water management, climate change, climate risk, ecological footprint, green labs, green and energy-efficient buildings and landscape and biodiversity management (Martek et al., 2022; Fissi et al., 2021; Sáez de Cámara et al., 2021; Wu, 2021; Yusoff et al., 2021; Garrido-Yserte and Gallo-Rivera, 2020; Rivera and Savage, 2020; Kılkış, 2017; Zen, 2017). From a qualitative perspective, a “sustainable campus community” (Zen et.al. 2016) is an institution that operates over its local and global responsibilities with focus in the enhancement of health and wellbeing of humans and ecosystems, including the acquired knowledge of a university as a living learning community that aims to address its ecological and social challenges (Cole, 2003 in Zen, 2017). The expected outcome of this study is to characterize the quantitative and qualitative variables that are being implemented in seven university campuses and contextualized them within the scope and challenges that current practices are facing in the implementation of sustainability on campus initiatives. Based on a system´s modeling of dynamics and interactions of the selected variables, it is expected to articulate the European scientific debate towards a conceptual framework that includes the institutional, environmental, social and economic dimensions of a socio-ecological system (IARNA, 2009), the sustainable university discourses framework (Deleye, 2024) and UNESCO´s (2025) ESD approach.

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