Event details

Princeton researchers will gather with Brazilian scientists, policymakers, environmental leaders, business innovators and social entrepreneurs for the international conference “Amazonian Leapfrogging: Tackling the Climate Crisis and Social Inequality With Nature-Based Solutions” to explore nature-based solutions that foster environmental conservation and socio-economic development of the Brazilian Amazon, without which the chances of reaching the Paris Agreement climate commitments are greatly imperiled. A schedule of public events is below.

Txai Suruí, the young Indigenous leader who represented Brazil’s Amazonian peoples at COP26 in Glasgow, will open the conference by emphasizing the need to listen to the Earth as we try “to open up different paths for global change now.”

Register to attend in person (PUID only) or livestream on the Brazil LAB YouTube channel.

Hosted by the Princeton Brazil LAB and co-sponsored by the High Meadows Environmental Institute (HMEI), the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies (PIIRS), the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs, Amazônia 2030, the University Center for Human Values, and the Program in Latin American Studies at Princeton.

2-2:30PM | Welcome

• Joaõ Biehl, Brazil LAB Director and the Susan Dod Brown Professor of Anthropology, Princeton University
• Gabriel Vecchi, Director of HMEI, Professor of Geosciences and the High Meadows Environmental Institute
• Stephen Kotkin, Director of PIIRS and the John P. Birkelund ’52 Professor in History and International Affairs, Princeton University
• Beto Veríssimo, Senior Researcher and Co-founder, Amazon Institute of People and Environment (Imazon) and Amazônia 2030
• Screening of the short film, “Amazon: The Tipping Point”

2:30-2:45PM | Opening Remarks

• Txai Suruí, Indigenous and climate activist, Member of the Paiter Suruí people. Introduction by Amaney Jamal, Dean of the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs and Edwards S. Sanford Professor of Politics

2:45-4PM | The Amazonian Nexus in the Planet’s Green Shift

• Tasso Azevedo, Environmentalist, Social Entrepreneur and Coordinator of MapBiomas
• Stephen Pacala, Frederick D. Petrie Professor in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Princeton University
• Ane Alencar, Director of Science, Amazon Environmental Research Institute (IPAM)
• Marina Hirota, Assistant Professor of Meteorology, Federal University of Santa Catarina/Serrapilheira)
• Moderator: João Biehl, Brazil LAB Director and the Susan Dod Brown Professor of Anthropology, Princeton University

4:30-6PM | Drivers for an Amazonian Leapfrogging

• Juliano Assunçã, Professor of Cconomics at the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro and Executive Director of the Rio office of the Climate Policy Initiative
• Beto Veríssimo
• Discussants: Jennifer Widner, Professor of Politics and International Affairs, Princeton University; and Arminio Fraga (Gávea/IEPS/IMDS)
• Moderator: Adriana Petryna, Professor and Director of the M.D.-Ph.D. Program in Anthropology, University of Pennsylvania