Social & Environment Thematic Group event
Amazonian deforestation and fires must be stopped. Otherwise, the 2015 “Paris” global climate goals, including climate stability on the South American continent, cannot be achieved. Some 20% of Amazonia have been deforested. While Amazonia has enormous potential as carbon sink, it has become a huge emitter of CO2 instead.
Amazonia’s outstanding biodiversity goes up in flames. This year again, we see fires more disastrous than ever, severest droughts, and „black rain“. Due to widespread illegal mining practices, rivers rich in flora & fauna are polluted with mercury. Indigenous Communities suffer – most of all the Yanomami in Roraima. In some areas, regional „tipping points“ have been passed, turning high rainforests into permanent savannahs.
So what, if anything, can and must be done? Adding value to standing forests and flowing waters in Amazonia is the objective of the „Amazonia 4.0 Program“ conceptualized by Maritta Koch-Weser and Carlos Nobre since 2019 at the Institute of Advanced Studies of Sao Paulo University, in cooperation with outstanding colleagues across Pan-Amazonia.
The Amazonia 4.0 program research & development strategy features the build-up of the Amazonia Institute of Technology, a Rainforest Business School Network, and a program for a decentralized socio-bioeconomy industrialization, that adds value to local rainforest products.
The Speaker
Maritta Koch-Weser’s experience in Amazonia spans more than four decades. She joined the World Bank in 1980 as one of its first Social Specialists. At the time, she was drawn into the very first World Bank financed projects in Rondonia, Mato Grosso (POLONOROESTE), and in the States of Para and Maranhão (Carajás). As project officer, she was later responsible for development of the World Bank financed „Plano Nacional do Meio Ambiente“ programs in Brazil. She participated in the elaboration of the World Bank’s first social and environmental directives, and in the formulation of new lending instruments, such as the Learning and Innovation Loans (LILs) and Adaptable Lending. She was the Director for Environmentally and Socially Sustainable Development in the Latin America and Caribbean Region
After her World Bank career, Maritta became Director General of IUCN -The World Conservation Union in Geneva, Switzerland. Then she was the Founder and President of Earth3000, a non-profit organization (www.earth3000.org), and member of several Boards across a range of leading international environmental organizations, among them the German chapter of WWF. She is also President of World Heritage Watch, an international platform serving some 200 Civil Society Organizations worldwide who engage in the conservation of their respective UNESCO World Heritage sites (www.world-heritage-watch.org).
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