The Construction of an Environmental Management Model Based on Sustainability Indicators on a Higher Education Institution in Mexico

Without depreciating the importance of environmental regulations directed to university environmental managements systems in this country, nowadays, the instruments of international importance like the Sustainable Development Goals or ONU's 2030 Agenda; as well as those of domestic nature, like sustainability indicators proposed by the Mexican Consortium of University Environmental Programs for Sustainable Development (Complexus) to measure the contribution of Higher Education Institutions to sustainability (HES), and those indicated by the Interinstitutional Committees for Higher Education Evaluation (CIEES) and the organisms that make up the Council for the Accreditation of Higher Education (COPAES), pose great challenges to universities as institutions that form human capital who are aware of their relationship with nature. This forces the university to rebuild its sustainability view based on the premise that all activities relative to its substantive functions are related to socio-environmental issues on the region. Due to this, Universidad Autónoma de Baja California (UABC), coherent to its environmental management institutional plan, defined in the Institutional Development Plan, must structure a series of indicators which allow the evaluation of its sustainability policy. The purpose of this research is to develop an environmental management model bound to performance indicators that allow UABC to progressively assume the task of answering the environmental challenges posed by its surroundings, trying to strengthen its curricula, in order for its programs to be more relevant and appropriate with social, economic, cultural, and environmental priorities.