A Concretizing Research on Making Higher-Education Sustainability Count

Preliminary Research on the Sustainable Determinants of Taiwanese Ecotourism with the International Standards

To analyze Taiwanese ecotourism with international standards, this research employed the social learning theory (SLT) to identify the determinants of Taiwanese community ecotourism with the international standards. This basic theory of social psychology comprehensively assays the interplays and interconnections among the three analytical perspectives (ecotourism tours, destinations, and accommodations), the four essential issues (management, social, cultural, and environment) of the Global Sustainable Tourism Council, the six assessed dimensions of ecotourism resolution from the WCC, and the twenty-nine assessed indexes of the KES ecotourism evaluations. It was then possible to comprehensively explore the sustainable determinants of Taiwanese ecotourism with the international standards through the FA of quantitative and qualitative analyses in combination with the highest research validity, reliability, representativeness, and accuracy. After analyzing the evaluated measurements, the empirical and valuable conclusions and findings are (1) these analytical perspectives, appraised attitudes, evaluated criteria, and sub-criteria positively advance Taiwanese ecotourism with the international standards (PITEEICIS); (2) the sustainable determinants of Taiwanese ecotourism with the international standards include the Support for Capacity Building of the Local Community (SCBLC), Cooperation with the Local Community (CLC), Supports for the Local Enterprises (SLE), Local Participation and Benefits Sharing Duties (LPBSD), Tourist Management (TM), and Responsible Tourist Behaviors Inducement (RTBI). Importantly, the majority of ecotourism industrialists and experts still focus on the economic benefits, such as supporting the local community and enterprises, rather than tourist behavior inducement to stimulate ecotourism participation in order to promote and advance the Taiwanese ecotourism to the international standards; (3) in order to promote Taiwanese ecotourism to the international conventions, the Taiwanese government and organizations in ecotourism should contribute toward the local welfare and create and design various training programs and courses to enhance local community's awareness and capability of ecotourism development in order to establish a complete system that stimulates the ongoing planning and decision making of local community participation and regularly monitors, records, and reflects their opinions, based on the area's history, culture, and natural attributes, to develop and sell sustainable local products by creating fair trade principles and valuable products.

Sustainable University: From the Worldwide Conception to the Brazilian Amazonia

Higher Education as a transforming instrument in societies raises the need for universities and Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) as a whole to be leaders in the current paradigm of the time. The objectives of this study are to verify and analyze the movement and actions around the world that drove and started the conceptual model of Sustainable University (SU), as well as these ideas that started in Brazil and their implications for the reality of the Brazilian Amazon Region. A timeline has been sketched and provides additional theoretical insights into universities’ involvement in events before and after the sustainable development process. The methodological procedures were based on a wide literature review in scientific databases that gather journals with satisfactory impact factors; with the refinement of the searches, 87 scientific articles supported the analysis of this study. The results show that universities have played a prominent role on the world stage since 1950, in the post-war period. In the 1970s, HEIs sought to engage in the design of the new paradigm, and in the 1980s it is enunciated as Sustainable Development and conceptualized by the Sustainability approach. Universities, which had been active in discussions and events related to sustainability from the late 1980s onwards, began to organize themselves more effectively and promote sustainable initiatives to become examples of sustainability. Currently, many HEIs from countries in Europe and North America stand out in the initiatives. In Brazil, according to a global classifier, some HEIs seek to align themselves towards the SU model. Until 2019, no university in the Brazilian Amazon region had integrated the ranking, but in 2020, two appear in the list. It appears that information on the sustainability of universities inserted in the context of the Brazilian Amazon is still incipient.