Special lectures by our guest speaker: Dr. Carlos Nobre

Lectures by guest speaker, Dr Carlos Nobre

The Center for Latin American Studies, the Tropical Conservation and Development Program, Department of Geography, Florida-Brazil Linkage Institute, and UF Biodiversity Institute welcome Dr. Carlos Nobre to the University of Florida from 26-30 March 2018.

Dr. Nobre will give two talks and be involved in several informal discussions during the week, and will be based in 380 Grinter Hall.  We welcome you to the various talks, discussions and social events.  If you would like to meet individually with Dr. Nobre, please email loiselleb@ufl.edu or stop by his office (380 Grinter) during the week of 26 March to arrange a time. You can learn more about Dr. Nobre from his Bio provided below.

TCD Tropilunch Talk: “The Amazon Third Way Initiative” 

Tuesday, March 27th – 376 Grinter Hall (12:45-1:45 pm)

The talk will be followed by an Open Discussion (1:45-2:45 pm, food and beverages provided)

Short abstract: For many decades, the effort to develop the Amazon has been torn between two rather opposed–and hard to reconcile–views: conservation (that we call ‘First Way’) versus resource-intensive development (that we call ‘Second Way’). There has been considerable efforts by governments and NGOs to reconcile those two views through agricultural ‘sustainable intensification’,  but with meager results. We argue that there may be a ‘Third Way’ for sustainable development of the Amazon based on utilizing the modern technologies of the 4th Industrial Revolution to harness the biological and biomimetic assets of Amazon’s biodiversity. This Third Way has the potential to support a standing forest-flowing river bio-economy and be socially inclusive. The determinants for implementation of the Third Way will be discussed.

Geography Master Class talk: “Risks to the Amazon from Deforestation and Climate Change”

Thursday, March 29th – 3108 Turlington Hall (10:30 am)

Short abstract: Is there a tipping point for the Amazon forest? Recent results will be presented that lend support to the idea that the whole Amazon system might flip to a second stable climate vegetation equilibrium, with degraded savannas covering most of the central, southern and eastern portions of the basin. The drivers of such change are deforestation, climate change and increased forest fires. Given the simultaneous and synergistic impact of these drivers of change, it is proposed that we should not let total deforestation exceed 20% to 25% to avoid a potentially irreversible tipping point to be transgressed.

Short Bio:

Carlos Nobre is currently Science Director of the Research Project “National Institute of S&T for Climate Change”, Senior Fellow of WRI Brazil and chair of the Brazilian Panel on Climate Change. He was a Senior Scientist at the National Institute for Space Research (INPE) of Brazil. He is the creator of Brazil’s National Center for Monitoring and Alerts of Natural Disasters and INPE’s Center for Earth System Science and was Director of INPE’s Center for Weather Forecasting and Climate Studies (CPTEC). Nobre’s work focused on the Amazon and its impacts on the Earth system. He chaired the Large Scale Biosphere-Atmosphere Experiment in Amazonia (LBA), an international research initiative designed to create the new knowledge needed to understand the climatic, ecological, bio-geochemical, and hydrological functioning of Amazonia, the impact of land use and climate changes on these functions, and the interactions between Amazonia and the Earth system. He has been also a member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), He was National Secretary for R&D Policies at the Ministry of Science, Technology & Innovation of Brazil and President of Brazil’s Agency for Post-Graduate Education (CAPES). He was a member of UN Secretary-General Scientific Advisory Board for Global Sustainability. He is a foreign member of the US National Academy of Sciences, and member of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences and World Academy of Sciences.