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Environmental Management Systems (EMS) have been implemented on a large scale to improve companies' environmental performance and to certify their achievements. More recently, universities are following this trend, which has been brought forward by the debate about campus sustainability. This empirical international research investigates EMS development and implementation processes in universities around Europe, providing an overview about European higher education institutions with EMS implemented at their campuses, and focuses on a comparison of top-down versus participatory implementation approaches. In addition to regional differences, this article discusses in which aspects an EMS at the campus can be seen as a tool that goes beyond operational aspects to tackle campus sustainability. Furthermore, it provides implications for the professional practice.

Participatory approaches can be seen as a requirement, but also as a benefit to the overall paradigm change towards sustainable development and contribute towards the integration of sustainability concept into the university culture. So far, there have been comparatively few research studies on participation within sustainability implementation at university level, and a more differentiated understanding of these processes is still missing, both in the practice of conducting a participatory process and in the sustainability assessment. This paper addresses some of the failures and successes experienced within participatory approaches in campus sustainability initiatives, and deduces a set of critical success factors and emergent clusters that can help to integrate the dimensions of participation more inclusively into sustainability assessment. Following a qualitative approach and inspired by the Delphi method, semi-structured expert interviews (N¼ 15) and four focus group discussions (N¼ 36), with participants coming from twenty different countries in total, were conducted and compared according to qualitative content analysis. Findings give empirical evidence to some of the characteristics related to stakeholder engagement, and associate higher education for sustainable development to empowerment and capacity building, shifting away from a previous focus on environmental sustainability. The success of participatory approaches is interdependent with structural institutional conditions and the persons engaged, highlighting the importance of specific skills and participatory competencies. A better integration of the dimensions of participation into sustainability assessment practices can help in defining and establishing participatory approaches on institutional level and fostering a culture of participation in the transition to sustainable universities. .

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Purpose-The main aim of this work is to analyze the current state of implementation of sustainability development (SD) in Portuguese Higher Education Institutions (HEIs). Design/methodology/approach-A questionnaire was developed to measure the level of implementation of SD practices in HEIs as well as the number of rankings, certifications and declarations of these institutions. The questionnaire was sent by e-mail to all rectors, presidents, directors of faculties, departments and schools of Portuguese universities and polytechnics. A sample of 53 leaders was obtained. Findings-Portuguese HEIs are mainly engaged in the social dimension of sustainability. The economic dimension emerges in second place and the institutional in third; the environmental dimension is the least developed. Except for a few specific topics (e.g., related to research on SD, and the offer of degree courses in SD), there are no significant differences between universities and polytechnics in the implementation of SD practices. Only 11% of HEIs are innovators in the implementation of SD practices, and the majority of HEIs have implemented less than 34% of the SD practices studied. 2 Research limitations/implications-This research has a national scope and the results should be interpreted only in the Portuguese context. Future studies should include a larger range of institutional actors within the faculty. Practical Implication-This study provides valuable insights and theoretical and methodological guidance for future implementation processes supporting the transition to sustainability in HEIs. Originality/value-This is the first study conducted in Portuguese HEIs with the aim of determining their efforts to implement and promote sustainability.