Research

The objective of this project is to evaluate the effects of atmospheric CO2 increase on the resilience of the Amazon rainforest (a key factor to the likelihood of a “dieback”), and its potential economic implications. Subproject AMAZONFACE Program. https://amazonface.inpa.gov.br/

Based on a case study on the Biotechnology Center of the Amazon (CBA), this project aims to explain the forms of association and implementation of a socio-technical network. The general objectives are: a) to analyze how the legal and institutional framework of the Centre (currently a department of SUFRAMA) has been established, and to speculate about future scenarios either as a public company or as another model: foundation, non-state public organization, Social Organization (OS) or a Civil Society Organization of Public Interest (OSCIP), for example; b) to compare the CBA model with CEITEC and check the points of convergence/divergence between them, pointing solutions for the first based on the slightly more consolidated experience of the second; c) to analyze the technical configurations and regional policies that reinforce and stabilize interests and heterogeneous alliances of socio-technical networks through the CBA; d) to analyze the causes and effects of disruption of socio-technical networks involving this institution; e) to ascertain, through the empirical study of the CBA, how the relations between science, technology and innovation are linked to the development of sectorial public policies in the State of Amazonas; f) to examine how the State of Amazonas’ private sector is engaged as an actor in the consolidation of the CBA and as claimant of biotechnological services.

The project seeks to develop studies on cultivation and bioprospecting of Zingiber zerumbet (bitter ginger) and Curcuma zerumbet (bitter turmeric), which are used to produce extracts and essential oils, in order to strengthen productive chains by adding value to them, and to develop new herbal drugs, phytocosmetics and food products.

The Integrated Studies Center of the Amazonian Biodiversity (CENBAM) aims to integrate the biological research in the Amazon into efficient chains of scientific/technological output. Currently, the Amazonian biodiversity is not being maintained or operated efficiently for lack of scientific/technological knowledge. The few existing researches are concentrated in the vicinity of the largest population centers, Belém and Manaus. Regional centers face a vicious cycle, in which the lack of funds discourages from keeping qualified human resources in the countryside, and the lack of qualified human resources results in little scientific production, preventing entities from raising funds, which, in turn, hampers the training of local human resources. CENBAM operates in regional centers in Amazonas, Roraima, Amapa, Rondonia, Acre and Mato Grosso, promoting the training of local human resources at various levels, from field workers and parataxonomists to elementary and secondary school students, lab technicians, and graduate students, also allowing the adequacy of infrastructure, such as museums, herbaria, and living collections, the installation and recovery of equipment and laboratories, and the necessary exchange for the use of available resources. The planning and execution of these activities will be carried out in collaboration with the users of the information, such as biotechnology laboratories, managers of biological reserves, timber production areas, and entities responsible for environmental impact assessment and monitoring of areas of influence of large civil construction projects.

EU BON presents an innovative approach towards integration of biodiversity information systems from on-ground to remote sensing data, for addressing policy and information needs in a timely and customized manner. EU BON will provide integration between social networks of science and policy and technological networks of interoperating IT infrastructures, resulting in a new open-access platform for sharing biodiversity data and tools, and greatly advance biodiversity knowledge in Europe. EU BON’s 30 partners from 18 countries are members of networks of biodiversity data-holders, monitoring organizations, and leading scientific institutions. EU BON will build on existing components, in particular GBIF, LifeWatch infrastructures, and national biodiversity data centers. EU BON will 1) enable greater interoperability of data layers and systems through adoption of new standards; 2) advance data integration by new (modelling) technologies; 3) increase data mobilization via scientific communities, citizen scientists, and potential data users; 4) develop strategies for future harmonizing and mainstreaming of biodiversity recording and monitoring; 5) improve analytical tools and services interpreting biodiversity data; 6) support the science-policy interface by timely information and scenario development; 7) link integrated, customized information to relevant stakeholders, and 8) strengthen overall European capacities and infrastructures for environmental information management. EU BON’s deliverables include a comprehensive “European Biodiversity Portal” for all stakeholder communities, and strategies for a global implementation of GEO BON and supportingIPBES. http://www.eubon.eu

This project seeks to understand the new developments of Brazilian science, specifically those sciences that produce agro-environmental technology, in face of the challenges brought by the contemporary context of global society. Such context is distinguished by the awareness of globally distributed environmental risks, especially with regards to the issue of climate change. Such environmental risks have required scientific and technological responses that operate towards their reduction. These answers will give rise to what is already known as the “low carbon society”, as opposed to the one that makes intensive use of fossil fuels.

This research focuses on the scientific controversies mapped in the Federal District, with special attention to those that are institutionalized in the scope of committees within the Chamber of Deputies (Committee on Science and Technology, Communication and Information) and the Senate (the Science, Technology, Innovation Communication and Computing Committee), as well as in the National Bio-safety Technical Commission (CTNBio). It will also focus on socio-technical activism, performed by protest groups that emerge due to the practical application of science (GMOs, pesticides, aesthetics, communication), and on the controversies within research groups (UNB, EMBRAPA).

In the last 10 years the district of Moatize, located in Tete Province, Central region of Mozambique, has been undergoing structural changes caused by the increase of mining projects of mineral coal, in holding the open skies, and loading and unloading of coal in dry port. The changes underway are the result of state policy, together with the capital and in accordance with “development projects” which, together, have an effect on the dynamics sociocultural and natural sites. Next to the intensification of mining and its specific forms of access, there is a (re)organization of the territory (access, meanings and uses of the environment and its “resources”) and particular effects on the entity (air, water and land) shared that puts into question the existence of local forms of meaning and use. The thesis aims to study the dynamics, (re)configuration and transformations (a conflicting or not) places taking as part of analysis the specific processes of modernization and its “arrays of rationality” in confrontation with the forms and “arrays of rationality” in the context of mining. Taking into account the various schemes for the production of nature and its particularities, the central question is to ask (i)How these schemes are produced, they enter into dispute and that redefine the proposals and experiences of the actors in conflict around the mega-project of the company Vale in Moatize and (ii)What are its constituent processes on the socio-cultural, economic and natural dynamics based on the place. Moreover, given that the question arises from the privilege of a certain “model of nature” and its matrix of rationality on the models and local matrices of, according to Arturo Escobar, historical subjects of cultures, private economies and ecology, particular producers of knowledge, individualities and/or collectives committed to the game of living in landscapes and other specific ways. It is worth inquiring also, at last (iii) as the local forms of nature and its “resources” are triggered, remeand and negotiated in the conflict.

Drawing from a decade of studies on the relations between environment, society and development, and focusing on the debate around the concept of environmental conflict and its implications for a political sociology of environmental conflicts, researches have pointed to the analysis of climate change not as an “environmental problem” but rather as inherently linked to the approach to environmental conflicts and disputes over development. In view of this, this research project gathers researchers and partners involved with the critical analysis of climate change in the perspective of the Social Sciences, aiming to examine the constitution in the national scenario of a socio-technical network on climate change that brings together nongovernmental organizations, scientists, social movement activists, entrepreneurs and government bodies, as well as technical reports, evaluation reports, videos, numerical modeling and other documents. The analysis focuses on how climate change is formulated as a grammar, not only through the incorporation of an object into a stabilized structure, but rather through an ongoing process of reflection and re-elaboration of the categories and entities, in which the terms of analysis are themselves put at stake and reformulated so that to encompass the whole complexity of the issues.

This project seeks to contribute to the current moment of renewal and qualification of the field of studies on social movements in Brazil, by addressing one of the central themes of contemporary international literature on social movements: the relationship between communication and information technologies and processes of contentious social mobilization. Through a comparative study of four social mobilization processes of contestation in four different locations in Brazil, it will be sought to form the evidence base needed to answer the following research problem: Whether and how/why the increasing dissemination of ICT changes the mechanisms – relational, interpretive, of action and organizational – that have traditionally conformed the social mobilization processes of contestation? In addition, this project aims to develop appropriate research methodologies for the collection and analysis of data generated by information and communication technologies, enabling a breakthrough in a research field hitherto little explored by Brazilian social sciences.

Despite scientific controversies and communication difficulties, climate changes have been present in different spheres, from the formulation of public policies to the demands of social movements, and have demonstrated potential for putting into question the conceptual critical arsenal traditionally mobilized to think about society (and society-nature relations), demanding new conceptions of political action. It is within this context that issues such as environmental justice, environmental conflicts and geopolitics of the nature begin to gain relevance, even though the theoretical reflections and practical proposals in this area remain generally incipient. Bearing this in mind, the Debate Series “Climate Change: What do we have to do with it?” is proposed as a multidisciplinary forum for discussion and engagement of the academic community, both of UFRGS and from outside this university, on this topic, and in particular on the 21th Conference of the Parties to the Climate Change.

This project aims to propose a social research on the formation, characterization, and possible consolidation of socio-technical networks in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, by means of a comparative study between the companies CEITEC SA, based in Porto Alegre and HT MICRON located in São Leopoldo. Both these companies develop projects, services and products in microelectronics, integrated circuits or, in general, the entire line of devices and encapsulation related to the use of integrated circuits. The proposed research seeks to develop a comparative analysis between these two companies, which have very similar operations in the market, and have capability for structuring extended socio-technical networks (regional/national/international); and also seeks to reaffirm the relevance of theoretical and conceptual approaches stemming from the Social Studies of Science and Technology (SSST) for the understanding of specific cases of production of technological knowledge and its ways of circulation within complex institutional structures.