UNIVERSITIES AND THEIR COMMITMENT TO SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

Universities should give a qualitative boost the development of their academic programs. This requires a strategy to strengthen the role of universities in environmental training, so it is necessary to become the main protagonists of the professional environmental education, activating a process to harness the potential of universities and institutions higher education, strengthening centers of excellence, creating specialized course and graduate at the highest level in different environmental themes. This paper presents an implementation of greening college through four aspects: environmental education for sustainability, curriculum greening, education and participation and research. Investment in quality education should be top priority in the allocation of public resources and incentives must be designed to stimulate private investment in this sector. Continuous learning throughout life can become a lifestyle. The main challenge of sustainable development is to initiate an evolutionary change in an unsustainable world. The evolution of integrated systems involves renovating, make transitions and meet the needs of a growing population increasingly prosperous. This will require the teaching of sustainable development at all levels through all types of learning: forma, non formal an informal. Finally, we analyze global and regional vision of Latin America and the Caribbean of the environment and sustainable development, economic, social, environmental protection and development of information technology and how it could widen the gap between developed countries and developing countries.