The book is made up of 10 chapters that address different issues in the region and outline paths for analysis, decision-making and action. The chapters are organized into three sections: the first looks at the vectors of degradation and large-scale impacts in the Amazon Basin; the second looks at inclusion and cultural diversity in the Amazon Basin, at both local and transnational levels; and the third looks at aspects related to local governance, participation and transdisciplinarity.

Register for the event at: https://fapesp.br/16413/lancamento-do-e-book-dialogos-amazonicos-contribuicoes-para-o-debate-sobre-sustentabilidade-e-inclusao

After the launch, the book will be available for free in Portuguese, Spanish and English on the website of the School and the Biota/Fapesp Program.

Download: AMAZON DIALOGUE: CONTRIBUTION TO THE DEBATE ABOUT SUSTAINABILITY AND INCLUSION

See below the themes of the Working Groups:

Group 1 – Does it make sense to continue building hydroelectric dams in the Brazilian Amazon?

Group 2 – How can the urban diversity of the Amazon be inserted in the global agendas for sustainability?

Group 3 – Zero deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon by 2030: is it possible?

Group 4 – Transdisciplinary science and the connection of different worldviews.

Group 5 – Increase in the use of pesticides in the Amazon Basin.

Group 6 – Mercury contamination in Pan-Amazonian indigenous communities and proposals for action from the Munduruku indigenous experience (Rio Tapajós, Pará, Brazil).

Group 7 – Strengthening the local perspective on drought mitigation and adaptation in the Amazon Basin.

Group 8 – Inclusion and permanence of indigenous students in universities, focusing on suggestions for the Amazonas State University (Brazil).

Group 9 – Strengthening of community initiatives in Amazonia as a tool to face the uncertainties of climate change.

Group 10 – The relationship between land rights and environmental conservation, focusing on the demarcation and recognition of indigenous and quilombo communities lands in Brazil, Ecuador and Suriname.

Lecture in Portuguese.

“Cattle ranching has taken over as the main economic activity in place of activities that used to be directly linked to the forest and rivers”, emphasizes Ane Alencar, “it is important that we keep in mind that this ends up diminishing the diversity of ways in which people relate to the territory and that the solution for the future of the Amazon is diversity”. For this, it is necessary to find ways to highlight the potential of the Amazon’s diversity and address public policies assertively.

Another central point in Ane Alencar’s lecture was about Brazil’s role in the discussion about the climate issue in relation to the Amazon. The researcher presents alarming data: 40% of the natural environments burned in Brazil in the last 30 years belong to the region, and 13% of these burnings are forest fires, which should not exist. Again, a large part of this problem is related to changes in land use, especially for agricultural use.

Also on this day, the participants had the possibility to talk with Professor Luís Eugênio Mello, Fapesp’s Scientific Director. The main topic of discussion was the funding of research for the Amazon region and the establishment of researchers in the region.

For Mello, the Amazon + 10 Fund is an example of great success for research funding because it is based on cooperation among different funding agencies in the country. The initiative brought together 10 State Research Support Foundations around the development of science, technology and innovation in the Legal Amazon. “This School was proposed in the scope of the Amazon Initiative, bringing together researchers from Brazil and other Amazon countries,” points out Mello, “and it also has this perspective of provoking the possibility of settling researchers such as the participants of this School in the Amazon region.

Finally, Mello highlights that Fapesp is open to hear proposals resulting from the work done at the School, preferably those that are multi-institutional and multinational. “It is essential that we have good proposals. The idea is that you can articulate yourselves and then get in touch with the Scientific Directory of Fapesp to start a discussion. And, from this discussion, Fapesp can carry these demands to seek co-funding with the development institutions of other countries.

About the São Paulo School of Advanced Science Sustainable and Inclusive AMAZONIA

The São Paulo School of Advanced Science Sustainable and Inclusive AMAZONIA was born focused on the Amazon from a transdisciplinary point of view. During two weeks, questions about the Amazon territory, its inhabitants, and the protagonists of biodiversity and climate change mitigation will be addressed. “We set up the school to provide a vision of the different dimensions of the Amazon, but we know that there are still gaps, such as food security and health”, explains Carlos Joly, the school’s coordinator.

The participants will organize themselves into groups and develop themes that have affinity with each other. “The proposal is to co-construct themes that will be treated at the school and that are of interest to the participants,” explains Joly. At the end, the written material will be transformed into an e-book.

The group’s proposal is to think about how to synthesize the existing information and think of solutions for the region’s issues. “It is important to stress that there is not just one solution, but many solutions, and solutions with different scales, both local and global,” explains the researcher.

Paulo Moutinho, from IPAM, highlighted the work of third sector institutions in the Amazon, bringing different work experiences built from dialogues with local communities, allied to data and maps of the region. One of these highlights was the SOMAI platform (https://somai.org.br/), a system that brings together scientific information to support indigenous peoples in confronting climate change.

About the São Paulo School of Advanced Science Sustainable and Inclusive AMAZONIA

The São Paulo School of Advanced Science Sustainable and Inclusive AMAZONIA was born focused on the Amazon from a transdisciplinary point of view. During two weeks, questions about the Amazon territory, its inhabitants, and the protagonists of biodiversity and climate change mitigation will be addressed. “We set up the school to provide a vision of the different dimensions of the Amazon, but we know that there are still gaps, such as food security and health”, explains Carlos Joly, the school’s coordinator.

The participants will organize themselves into groups and develop themes that have affinity with each other. “The proposal is to co-construct themes that will be treated at the school and that are of interest to the participants,” explains Joly. At the end, the written material will be transformed into an e-book.

The great concern is that the forest reaches the tipping point. According to the researcher “this point is not defined, some researchers say 40% of the forest, others say 20-25%. The central issue is that going beyond this point affects not only the Amazon itself but the entire global climate.

For Fearnside, the big immediate threats to the Amazon are the reopening of roads (such as the reconstruction of the BR 319 between Manaus and Porto Velho) and the implementation of hydroelectric dams (there are plans to build three dams in the region in the next few years). “We have to understand that next year we will have a congress even more ruralist than the current one, we need to follow these plans closely in order not to allow areas of traditional and protected populations to be affected”, concludes the researcher.

The second lecture was by Thiago Motta Cardoso, from UFAM, who brought a historical overview of the conservation policies for protected areas and indigenous territories in Brazil, drawing attention to the period between 1974 and 1985, with a boom in the creation of protected areas. “This large number of units created can be understood as part of the military geopolitical process of occupying the Amazon, the protected areas are part of this planning,” explains the researcher, “which is why it is important to understand history: if today these areas are seen as antagonistic to the current development project, at the time they were created they were part of the current project.

Cardoso also calls attention to the emergence of the Extractive Reserves in the 1980s and the creation of the Forest Peoples Alliance. For the researcher, the advance of national and international environmentalism was important for the advancement of the creation of protected areas, especially the sustainable use units and indigenous reserves. It is only after the 1988 Constitution that the indigenous people leave the guardianship of the state and become subjects of law, which strengthens the indigenous struggle.The big question left by Cardoso for the participants of the SPSAS Amazon was: “How to protect when the rule is to destroy?” , drawing attention to the constructions and deconstructions of environmental and indigenous policies in the country.

The relationship between biodiversity and infectious diseases was the theme of researcher Marcus Lacerda, from the Carlos Borborema Clinical Research Institute. The areas of ports and estuaries and agriculture based on monoculture are two of the great vectors for the dissemination of diseases in the region. Malaria, for example, increases in areas with development projects that do not refer to the site. For the researcher, two aspects are essential to think about the dynamics of infectious diseases in the Amazon: the plurality of the populations that inhabit it and the region’s economic cycles.

And, ending the day, Marlúcia Bonifácio Martins presented the Goeldi Museum and its importance for research in the Amazon region, calling attention to the importance of science communication and scientific collections in the institution.

About the São Paulo School of Advanced Science Sustainable and Inclusive AMAZONIA

The São Paulo School of Advanced Science Sustainable and Inclusive AMAZONIA was born focused on the Amazon from a transdisciplinary point of view. During two weeks, questions about the Amazon territory, its inhabitants, and the protagonists of biodiversity and climate change mitigation will be addressed. “We set up the school to provide a vision of the different dimensions of the Amazon, but we know that there are still gaps, such as food security and health”, explains Carlos Joly, the school’s coordinator.

The participants will organize themselves into groups and develop themes that have affinity with each other. “The proposal is to co-construct themes that will be treated at the school and that are of interest to the participants,” explains Joly. At the end, the written material will be transformed into an e-book.

The soaring of the Andes, during the Cenozoic, also played a decisive role in altering the Amazon rainfall regime and generating the enormous biological diversity it harbors. “The diversification of birds, mammals, insects and amphibians was boosted especially 10 million ago with the new drainage configuration established.”

De Oliveira also called attention to the marine influences that affected the area during the Miocene (about 20 million years ago). “One evidence is the presence of the beach apple in the Amazon, a plant that is typical of the coast,” De Oliveira explained. The similarity between the DNA of the Amazon and Caribbean porpoises is also another clue to the great marine incursions that happened in the region millions of years ago.

The hydroclimatic system of the Amazon along with water recycling and climate regulation in the Amazon was the topic addressed by Marcos H. Costa, from the Federal University Viçosa. The professor explained the process of precipitation formation and how deforestation can alter this characteristic so striking of the Amazon region. “Atmospheric moisture is the basic element for the formation of precipitation, in deforested areas there is less moisture and water cycling which reduces the precipitation rate increases the temperature of the soil surface, reduces evapotranspiration, increases the reflection capacity of radiation, the albedo”

Luiz Aragão, from INPE, presented data showing that the degraded areas (forest edge, burned areas, isolated fragments) have already surpassed the area of deforested forests in the Amazon. “The functioning and species of these forests are different from a natural forest,” explains Aragão. Knowing the heterogeneity of the structure of Amazonian forests is fundamental to calculate the total carbon balance, because degraded forests reduce the amount of carbon that a primary forest stores. “We often see that these forests can recover the average height, but not the biomass, because the species that colonize the area after the disturbance are ‘light forests’,” adds the researcher.

Paulo Artaxo, from USP and member of the IPCC, updated the group on the most recent data from international bodies that assess and monitor climate change. The UN’s World Meteorological Organization (WMO) released a report at the beginning of the COP27 in Egypt that pointed out that the global CO2 average is rising. Among greenhouse gases, CO2 continues to lead with 66% followed by 16% methane.

Brazil is seventh in CO2 emissions, sixth in historical emissions and fourth in per capita emissions. “It is possible that Brazil will also have to split the bill for climate change,

The change in the concentration of greenhouse gases generates many systemic changes on the planet. Among them, the researcher highlighted the change in the planet’s natural energy balance. “Three hundred years ago, all the energy that went in, came out. Now it doesn’t. We are changing the rate of return.” So far, the planet’s average temperature increase has been 1.2 degrees. However, as the researcher explains, this occurs because most of the surfaces are water, which takes longer to heat up, unlike the continent, which already coexists with average temperature increases above the limit of 1.5 degrees, the target set in the Paris agreement.

The increase in temperature, changes the circulation of water vapor in the atmosphere. It changes the flow of water vapor, and hence the rainfall regime. “Imagine that just one gas was able to greatly change the energy balance of the planet.” For Artaxo, everything indicates that we are leading the planet towards a warming that should vary between 3 and 4.5 C.

And he ends with the provocation “Is there a global tipping point?”, in other words, could it be possible to reach an irreversible point of restoration of the planet?

Finally, Simone Vieira, from Unicamp, brought information from the Atlantic Forest as a counterpoint of a tropical forest historically overexploited and occupied. The Amazon has more above-ground biomass than the Atlantic Forest, mainly due to the size of the trees in the Amazon that can reach 40 to 50 meters, but the Atlantic Forest has incredible dimensions considering the conditions of the region. “The Atlantic Forest is an unexpected forest, because it grows on a sloping terrain, with shallow, nutrient-poor and very acidic soil. But these forests have a great potential to store carbon in the soil, unlike the Amazon which stores a lot of carbon in the trunks.”

And all the carbon that is stored in the soil can easily go into the atmosphere. The increase in temperature, increases the decomposition rates and causes the release of this carbon stored in the soil to the atmosphere. “We have a carbon pump in the soil of the Atlantic Forest. As long as it is stored it is great, but this stock is also very sensitive to temperature variation” complements Professor Carlos Joly, from Unicamp and coordinator of the School.

The interface between science and politics, interdisciplinarity and an economic model without deforestation and with social inclusion. These were the themes that opened the first day of discussions at the São Paulo School of Advanced Science Sustainable and Inclusive AMAZONIA, in São Pedro (SP). The School takes place from November 21st to December 5th and brings together 80 students from Brazil and abroad.

Marcos Silva, from the Inter-American Institute for Global Change Research (IAI), inaugurated the School by talking about the different international bodies that deal with the relationship between science and decision making and how the IAI seeks to contribute to favoring this dialogue by organizing and training young researchers in science diplomacy.

Anita Hardon, from the Social Science and Humanites cluster of the NWO (Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research) and Wageningen University, spoke about multiple aspects of transdisciplinary research, such as the importance of conversation, of respect especially when the research involves different actors.

Carlos Nobre, from the Institute for Advanced Studies at the University of São Paulo, began his speech by commenting on the recently concluded COP27 on Climate (which took place in Egypt from November 6th to 18th), which he believes was more important for Brazil than for the world.

The researcher has been studying the Amazon for over 40 years and brought data about the biological wealth of the region and the relevant role of the biome for the regulation of the planetary climate. In addition, he discussed the threats and impacts, especially the risk of reaching the tipping point of the biome, that is, the loss of the forest’s regeneration capacity. As a virtuous alternative, Carlos Nobre defended paths for a development with the forest standing, such as, for example, through forest restoration of the deforestation arches (in the southern Brazilian Amazon) and the bio-economy, which involves resources from the Amazon, inclusion of local people and technology.

Materials about the lectures can be found on the School’s website https://spsas-amazonia.biota.org.br/.

About the São Paulo School of Advanced Science Sustainable and Inclusive AMAZONIA

The São Paulo School of Advanced Science Sustainable and Inclusive AMAZONIA was born focused on the Amazon from a transdisciplinary point of view. During two weeks, questions about the Amazon territory, its inhabitants, and the protagonists of biodiversity and climate change mitigation will be addressed. “We set up the school to provide a vision of the different dimensions of the Amazon, but we know that there are still gaps, such as food security and health”, explains Carlos Joly, the school’s coordinator.

The participants will organize themselves into groups and develop themes that have affinity with each other. “The proposal is to co-construct themes that will be treated at the school and that are of interest to the participants,” explains Joly. At the end, the written material will be transformed into an e-book.

One of the great objectives of SPSAS Amazonia is to promote these meetings to encourage the joint construction of proposals for a sustainable Amazonia based on science and valuing indigenous and traditional knowledge.

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