Universidade Livre do Meio Ambiente
History
The Universidade Livre do Meio Ambiente (Unilivre) was inaugurated in 1991 on the National Environmental Day by city mayor Mr. Jaime Lerner, as a department of the City Hall of Curitiba. It is catered for the teaching of practices, knowledge and experiments related to environmental issues, mainly problems and solutions related to the disorganized growth of cities and as a center of information for professionals dealing with the environment.
The inaugural class was given to three hundred teachers of the city schools, at the environmental educational pavilion at Gutierrez Woods, temporary headquarters of the Universidade Livre do Meio Ambiente – or ULMA, as it was called at the time.
Lasting five days this first environmental educational course had speeches given by city mayor, Mr. Jaime Lerner, by congressman Rafael Greca, by architect Rafael Dely, and by Mary Alegrette, president of the Instituto de Estudos da Amazônia (Amazon Studies Institute), and also speeches given by experts from Curitiba City Hall, Mr. Nicolau Kluppel, Mr. Ricardo Smijtmk, and Maria Cristina Borba Braga;
Unilivre began to operate as an educational foundation catered to ecology, open to the society as a whole, maintained by grants given by the government, private donations, agreement with international entities, and its own revenue obtained from rendered services.
It was the beginning of Curitiba – Ecological Capital, and as its own mission Unilivre had to pass on to the community experiences related to environmental issues to create and to consolidate in people’s mind – with emphasis in those who formed opinion – conscience and bearing both environmentally correct, as a way of improving the quality of life in the world.
Starting way back in the 1970s, Curitiba was one of the first cities in the country to implement a process for the integration between planning and the use of soil, together with the many actions thus arising.
Upon implementing correct environmental actions, Curitiba became known in Brazil and in the world by its use of creative and innovative projects, which served as an example of a sustainable urban growth.
On July 22, 1992 Centro de Estudos Ambientais e Urbanos – CEAU became responsible for Universidade Livre do Meio Ambiente. CEAU is a non-governmental maintenance institution, legally constituted as a non-profit association.
And on July 1996, its name was changed to Universidade Livre do Meio Ambiente, a non-profitable private company, with a legal, administrative, and financial autonomy, and in full control of its own goods and resources.
In 2002, Unilivre became an entity of the Third Sect, qualified by the Ministry of Justice as an OSCIP – Organização Social Civil de Interesse Público (Social Civil Organization of Public Interest), for the Sustainable Urban Development and to improve the quality of life of people and cities.
The concept of Third Sector is originated from the development of private organizations, aggregating characteristics of the First Sector (Government and Public Administration), of the Second Sector (market), but away from state bureaucracy and market ambitions.
Inauguration
The inauguration on June 5, 1992 had the presence of the French oceanographer and maritime scientist Jacques Costeau, one of the main defenders of the environment in the world, who emphasized on his speech that “the preservation of the environment is a collective duty, and thus everybody must have access to information to do it. Upon referring to Unilivre, he said, “I have never seen an initiative such as this one in Curitiba, an example that should be imitated all over the world”.
