Brazil

Established in 2001, CGEE is a non-profit organization under the supervision of Brazil’s Ministry of Science and Technology.CGEE funds research and analyses to support decision-making and the formulation and implementation of public policies in science, technology and innovation. It supports the diffusion of this new information across the science, technology and production sectors.

Professor Carlos A. Nobre, Secretary for R&D Policies and Programmes, Ministry of Science and Technology, Brazil is the Council Member for Brazil. Professor Nobre is a climatologist with research interests in climate science, climate change and the Amazon.

Key Relationships and Collaborations

• Petróleo Brasileiro S.A. (Petrobras) Rio de Janeiro
• University of Sao Paolo
• National Institute for Space Research (INPE) Brazil
• Equipe de Conservacao da Amazonia (ACT) Brazil
• Brazilian Reference Center on Biomass (CENBIO) Brazil
• Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Select Research Highlights

While Brazil, through CGEE, has only recently joined IIASA collaborations have been occurring over a number of years. Following are examples of research activities relevant to the IIASA - Brazil relationship.

Energy and climate change research:

• The Global Energy Assessment: Brazil is a significant partner in, and contributor to, the Global Energy Assessment (GEA). The GEA is a major initiative seeking to redefine the global energy policy agenda. José Goldemberg, former Secretary for the Environment of the State of Sao Paulo, Brazil, administrator of Brazil’s participation in the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, and currently Professor at the University of Sao Paulo, is the Co-President of the Global Energy Assessment Council and a long-term collaborator of IIASA’s on issues associated with energy and sustainable development. Celso Fernando Lucchesi from Petrobas, Brazil is a GEA Council Member, while Suani T. Coelho, from the Brazilian Reference Center on Biomass, and Suzana Kahn Ribeiro, from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, are members of the GEA Executive Committee. Brazil also contributes several analysts and convening lead analysts to the GEA.

Forestry and land management:

• In 2008 IIASA scientists together with colleagues from Brazil and the US published a study that shows paying land-owners to reduce tropical deforestation is a cost effective way of cutting greenhouse gas emissions compared to other current options, such as carbon capture and storage from coal power plants. The REDD (Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation) approach also protects bio-diversity, regulates rivers, maintains the environment of some of the world’s poorest people, and brings other important environmental benefits.
• IIASA applied its global land-use model GLOBIOM to predict price changes for land and forest products and to determine afforestation and deforestation patterns in Brazil. IIASA estimates the global average cost efficient carbon price to be 25$-tC-1 causing sequestration of 15 Gt of carbon per 50 years in aboveground phytomass. The top five countries by potential of sequestration of additional carbon and cost competitiveness are Brazil, Zaire, Indonesia, Bolivia and Tanzania.
• In 2007 IIASA completed a study on the ‘Global Impacts of Forest Sector and Land Use Development in Emerging Economies’. This research addressed the global impacts of the forest sectors in China, India, Brazil, Congo Basin, and the Koreas, showing that globalization has resulted in dramatically increased consumption of bioenergy, food, and forest fibers, leading to increased competition for land. IIASA also completed an assessment of the sustainability of sugar cane for ethanol production in Brazil.
• The IIASA led ELOBIO ‘Effective and Low-Disturbing Biofuel Policies’ study identified successful and unsuccessful biofuel policies in several EU countries, the USA and Brazil, including their impacts on food, feed and other markets.

Air quality and GHG mitigation:

• The IIASA GAINS Greenhouse gas-Air pollution Interactions and Synergies model was developed by IIASA to identify cost-effective emission control strategies that meet air quality and greenhouse gas emission targets. GAINS has been applied in the international negotiations of the Convention on Long-range Trans-boundary Air Pollution and the European Union (EU); it has analyzed mitigation efforts for the climate negotiations under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), and for environmental assessments under the UN Environment Program (UNEP). The model aims to respond to the needs of national decision makers in individual OECD and BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) countries that deal with resource planning, technology development and deployment, urban planning, land use, as well as restructuring existing tax and incentive schemes.

Population and demographic studies:

• ‘Climate Change, Adaptation and Formal Education: The Role of Schooling for Increasing Societies' Adaptive Capacities: A IIASA study explored the factors that determine people's capacity to cope with and adapt to adverse climatic conditions. The study examined the influence of formal education in determining the adaptive capacity of residents of two low income settlements: 'Los Manantiales' in San Salvador (El Salvador) and 'Rocinha' in Rio de Janeiro (Brazil), where climate-related disasters are recurrent. In both case study areas it was found that the average levels of education were lower for households living at high risk, as opposed to residents of lower risk areas. The study was published in 2011 and is available on the IIASA Web site.
• Educational Attainment in Brazil: This IIASA study analyzed the rates of educational attainment in Brazil for people 15 years and older, between 1970 and 2000, by age groups and sex. For the oldest age groups, a growth in formal education resulted in an increase in the ratio of people with a primary education. For the youngest age groups, the increase in the ratio of people with secondary and tertiary education is more significant. The biggest increases in secondary and tertiary education are found within the youngest cohorts and for women.

Capacity Building

IIASA’s annual Young Scientists Summer Program (YSSP) offers advanced level PhD candidates the opportunity to work with IIASA scientists over a 3-month period, with the explicit aim of refining or extending their research skills in the area of systems analysis. Since the first Brazilian participant in 1999, 7 Brazilians have completed the program.

Special Awards

Each year two or three participants of the YSSP receive an Award that provides them with the opportunity to return to IIASA for an additional three months of research. In 2008 Italo-Brazilian Flora Piasentin of the Federal University of Brasilia was the recipient of the Peccei Award.

During her time in the YSSP, Flora completed a study entitled “Assessing the Suitability for Cacao in Bahia State (Brazil) by combining the Farming Systems Approach and the Agro-Ecological Zones Methodology.” Her research assessed land suitability for different cacao agroforestry production systems in Bahia. According to reviewers her research was “...of direct relevance to the targeting of cocoa management, development and policy interventions ...the application of the combined Farming Systems-AEZ approach to tree crops in general and cocoa in particular is novel and valuable ...the research topic acts on an important, but not sufficiently studied subject."

European Forestry Masters Program

Since 2005 IIASA has participated in the European Forestry Masters Program, a training initiative for advanced university students. As part of the EU sponsored program candidates work for a 3-month period at IIASA to further their studies. Two Brazilian students participated in the program in 2007. Alberto Biscaia studied the uncertainties associated with agriculture development in the Amazon Forest, while Anke Salzmann – (a dual German & Brazilian national) researched forest plantations for climate change mitigation.

In recent years IIASA researchers have participated in many workshops and conferences in Brazil, select examples include:

• Presentation on Methane hydrates at the "1^st Bioenergy Workshop of the Earth System Science Partnership" organized by Global Carbon Project (GCP), Brazil 2008.
• Presentation on market conditions for renewable energy versus fossil fuels at the "Global Renewable Energy Forum" organized by UNIDO and the Federal Government of Brazil, 2008.
• Keynote address on "A benefit assessment of GEOSS with respect to the social benefit areas, biodiversity and ecosystems" Brazil 2009.

Last edited: 03 September 2012