Episode eighty - four: Lula And The Amazon Rainforest

This week we’ll head south, to Brazil, where voters narrowly elected Lula Da Silva as the country’s next president. Lula previously was president of Brazil from 2003 to 2010 and won in Sunday’s run-off election against incumbent Jair Bolsonaro. Many were watching the race because of policy regarding the deforestation of the Amazon Rainforest. As today’s guest will tell us, president-elect Lula views deforestation in a different way than Bolsonaro; in fact, Lula has pledged to stop deforestation of the Amazon altogether. A day after the election, I recorded my interview with climate scientist Carlos Nobre. He works with the University of São Paulo, the Federal University of Espírito Santo and the State University of São Paulo regarding the Amazon and its impacts on earth systems. He also co-chairs the Science Panel for the Amazon and directs the Amazonia 4.0 project, which promotes extracting wealth from the rainforest in sustainable ways to promote a standing forest bioeconomy. He was also a lead author of the 2007 IPCC report that won the Nobel peace prize. We’ll learn how the Amazon acts as the “carbon sink” of the world, the effect of deforestation on the ecosystem, more sustainable ways to extract wealth from the Amazon, and how Lula’s administration will work to stop deforestation.

Ezra
-

Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/newsnerds/message