AN EXPERIENCE OF SPAIN-BRAZIL COLLABORATION IN DESIGNING AND DEVELOPING A NEW POSTGRADUATE PROGRAM IN ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT ASSESSMENT

Based on previous collaborations in the fields of Education and Research between the Universitat Politècnica de Valencia, Spain (UPV) and the Universidade Regional do Noroeste do Estado do Rio Grande do Sul in Ijuí, Brazil (UNIJUI), a new project has been carried out along the year 2011 in the line of designing and developing a new postgraduate program in UNIJUI. This project has been possible thanks to the continuous relationship among these two Universities within a collaboration agreement that was signed in 2010.
While talking about environmental impacts and laws in a meeting, a group of teachers from both universities realized that environmental laws were notably different in Brazil and in Europe. This conversation allowed us to find a new line to work in the field of interchanging environmental educational and professional experiences in Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA). As the laws were different, it was easy to do a compilation of differences and create a research work to identify pros and cons of each one of the legal systems.
Due to this previous work, in January 2011 there was a proposal from UNIJUI to work together in designing a post graduate course in Environmental Impacts Assessment to be offered to all the Graduates in any Engineering and also in other Graduates such as Biology, Medicine, Pharmacy, etc. In this way we can meet the growing demands of a clear and summarized program to explain the different ways and procedures to do an EIA both in Brazil and in the UE.
A group of teachers were selected to carry out the design and development of this post graduate program called “Curso de Avaliação de Impactos Ambientais” that was first given in UNIJUI in April, May and June 2011. This course consisted on five different sections of contents:
Section 1) Environmental Laws: A comparison between the environmental assessment laws in Brazil and in Europe with a special view of the Spanish and Valencian laws case.
Section 2) Description of the Project: How to write down in a document an accurate description of any kind of human activity that may lead to any perceptible environmental impact.
Section 3) Identification and Assessment of Environmental Impacts: Procedures and strategies to carry out a systematic identification of the perceptible Environmental Impacts and their effective assessment.
Section 4) Reviewing EIA Cases: Some examples of the main human activities that may lead to environmental impacts and a review of their main environmental problems and how to identify and assess them.
Section 5) A case study: This is work-in-group case study. The students select a human activity between those identified in their region and they have to develop a complete EIA that will be supervised by the teachers and finally explained at class to the whole group of students.
The first edition of this course was successfully developed with a higher demand than the expected. In the end, both students and teachers showed their satisfaction with this program and, in addition, UNIJUI has declared that the course is in its schedule for the next academic course and the goal is to offer this program yearly.