Animal trafficking, New Urbanism, habitat conservation, the Amazon…This is a wonderful selection of TED conferences that offer an overview of the main essential environmental topics and issues in Brazil, according to people that understand deeply the main interests and angles involved. All of them have English captions (in case of need, just hit the cc touch on the bottom right of the screen).
1 – Amazon anti-logging activist Zé Claudio Ribeiro describes his struggle and reveals that he was as menaced as Chico Mendes and Sister Dorothy, both killed by loggers and landowners due to their social and environmental activism. Last may, six months after this conference, Zé Claudio and his wife, Maria, were murdered in Nova Ipixuna, a small town in the state of Pará. I understand the police still didn’t identify the murderer.
2 – Paulo Saldiva, that I had the pleasure of interviewing a few times, is one of the main Brazilian specialists in air pollution and its health impacts, which affect in different ways the many layers of society.
3 – Biologist Juliana Machado Ferreira explains how the pet market feeds the illegal wildlife trade in the country, compromising the lives of 38 million animals every year in the country. She is working in a doctorate in Conservation Genetics at Universidade de São Paulo.
4 – Renowned urbanist and serial former mayor of Curitiba, capital of Paraná state, Jaime Lerner discusses the reinvention of metropolitan spaces and how this can improve the quality of life.
Also check these other cool TED conferences: 10 brains you will love