Universidade pública e desenvolvimento regional: os impactos socioeconômico-ambientais do Campus Universitário do Tocantins-/Cametá-UFPA na percepção dos atores locais

Abstract

A higher education institution, when implanted in each territory, more than ensuring the attendance to this level of education, can determine socioeconomic and environmental impacts on the region. In this sense, the regional unit Campus Universitário do Tocantins/Cametá of the Universidade Federal do Pará constitutes a vector for regional development in the economic, social, and environmental dimensions through its institutional actions of teaching, research and extension and its other forms of interaction with local players, such as cooperations and commitments, thus distancing itself from a vision restricted only to economic growth. The objective was, therefore, to analyze this State institution as a source of change in individual behavior for the search of a more equitable development that lessens the aggravation of environmental problems, also prioritizing the appreciation of preferences in the process of historical production. Through a historical neoinstitutionalist approach, based on the contributions of Thelen and Steinmo (1992), Immergut (1996), Hall and Taylor (1996), Théret, B. (2003) and Peres (2008), and based on the contributions of Rolim and Serra (2009), Santos (2013), Goebel and Miura (2004), Lopes (2001), (2003), Rocha (2018) and Silva (2017), the study was configured as descriptive and analytical for the contemplation and understanding of this phenomenon. For this, it was necessary to resort to bibliographic and documental sources and semi-structured interviews as data collection. The Cametá Campus is the locus of research and, as participants, the subjects who headed the management of some of the main entities and organizations of Cametaense civil society, in the segments of development, during the years 2008 to 2016. As a result, it was found that there was a contribution of the UFPA Campus Cametá for socioeconomic and environmental development in the proposed period, and that these implications occurred in a direct and indirect way. In addition, the work also revealed deeper impacts of the Campus, in the collective discernment of a more sustainable development proposal, an issue that brings out new possibilities for the study of the theme.