The Center for Latin American Studies and the Program on Global Environment at the University of Chicago are organizing a major conference to look at environmental and policy issues in the Brazilian Amazon. The conference, “Environmental Policy, Social Movements, and Science for the Brazilian Amazon,” will be held Thursday, Nov. 5 and Friday, Nov. 6 in Swift Hall.
Conference participants will review the past 20 years of social movements, new projects and developments in science and technology, and their impact on the region.
As participants look back to the United Nations’ 1987 report by the Brundtland Commission, the social-environmental activism of Chico Mendes until 1988, and the U.N. conference on Environment and Development ― the Rio Earth Summit ― in 1992, they will question the effectiveness of policies that grew out of those events. What new issues have emerged since then as strategically crucial for solving the intertwined problems of poverty, forest conservation and development? How are the stakeholders acting today on these issues?
“We will confront the growing emphasis on market-oriented solutions to conservation and development problems, and explore the challenges of articulating traditional knowledge with modern science in developing alternative strategies for education, health and economic development,” said conference organizer Manuela Carneiro da Cuhna, Professor Emerita in Anthropology and the College.
Scientists, politicians, anthropologists, economists and leaders of non-governmental organizations from Brazil and the United States will gather to analyze the positive changes and policy shortcomings of developing conservation strategies that will affect the future of the Amazon region and beyond.
At the close of the conference, representatives of indigenous and other social movements will join the conversation to address the viewpoints of the organizations they represent. Roundtable participants will compare the historical and contemporary models of development in the Brazilian Amazon, as well as examine the perspectives and contradictions for sustainability in the region, today and in the future.
More information about the conference is available at: http://amazonia.uchicago.edu/.
—Prof. Chuan He
