2026 Lemann Dialogue: Six Biomes, Multiple Realities, One Country - Day 1

Andelot Professor of Demography, chair of the Department of Global Health and Population, director of the Brazil Studies Program of the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies (DRCLAS) at Harvard University, associate faculty of the Harvard University Center for the Environment, and faculty member of the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies.

Her research focuses on the development and use of multidisciplinary approaches to identify the determinants of infectious disease transmission in different ecological settings to inform control policies. She has more than 20 years of research experience in the Brazilian Amazon, with a strong record in conducting household surveys and thorough knowledge of the local culture. Furthermore, she has more than 15 years of collaboration with Brazilian researchers, health secretariats, and the ministry of health, particularly related to infectious diseases. Currently, Castro has projects on malaria, COVID-19, arboviruses, infant/child mortality and development, and climate change in the Brazilian Amazon. Specifically, she has been assessing the spatiotemporal pattern of COVID-19 spread in Brazil, mortality and fertility changes due to the pandemic, risk factors for mortality, and vaccine effectiveness.

During recent public health emergencies, such as the Zika virus epidemic and the COVID-19 pandemic, Castro made important contributions. At the World Health Organization, she served as co-chair of the Technical Consultation on The Burden of and Response to Malaria in Urban Areas in 2021 and as an advisor of the Evidence Review Group on border malaria in 2017. She serves on several advisory boards in Brazil, including the Institute for the Studies of Health Policies (IEPS), the Science Center for Early Childhood (NCPI), Instituto Todos Pela Saúde (ITpS), and Instituto Cactus. She is a columnist for Folha de São Paulo and an elected member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Curator of the Museum of Tomorrow (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil), where he is also the chairholder of the Unesco Chair in Futures Literacy. He is Professor of Ecology at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, and fellow of the Linnean Society of London. He has served the UN scientific panels on climate change (IPCC) and biodiversity (IPBES), and has held lead executive positions at the Botanical Gardens of Rio de Janeiro and at the NGOs Conservation International and Brazilian Foundation for Sustainable Development (FBDS). Prof. Scarano has received prestigious Brazilian literature prizes in the field of natural sciences, including for his book “Atlantic Forest: A History of the Future” (Edições de Janeiro, 2014). His most recent book is “Regenerative Dialogues for Sustainable Futures” (Springer Nature, 2024).

Professor of Brazilian Environmental History at the Institute of History, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, where he is also coordinator of the History and Nature Laboratory. He was a member of the Global Faculty of the University of Cologne (Germany) for the period 2024-2025. Since 2025, he has been president of the Latin American and Caribbean Society for Environmental History (SOLCHA). He was part of the creation team and is a member of the scientific board of the Museum of Tomorrow, which opened in Rio de Janeiro in 2016. He is a fellow of the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society, Munich, since 2014. As a specialist in environmental history and environmental policy, he has given lectures and courses, as well as participated in fieldworks, in more than forty-five countries. He has published and organized several books and articles, both in Brazil and abroad, including Land Use: Handbook of the Anthropocene in Latin America 1 (2024).

CEO of the Arapyaú Institute, where she leads efforts to advance systemic solutions for sustainable development and climate action in Brazil. She is a lawyer with a Master’s degree in Environmental Law and executive education from Harvard Kennedy School and Schumacher College. She co-founded the network Uma Concertação pela Amazônia and led the incubation of MapBiomas through the Arapyaú Institute — a global platform now active in more than 14 countries. Renata serves on the boards of GIFE, the Brazil Climate, Forests and Agriculture Coalition, the ESG Committee of C&A, and Brazil’s Presidential Council for Economic and Social Development (CDESS). She is also a columnist for Estadão, one of Brazil’s leading newspapers, and has been recognized by institutions such as Chambers Latin America and the ABRAPS Prize.

Co-founder and chairperson of re.green, a company committed to restoring one million hectares of tropical forest. The initiative promotes biodiversity and carbon capture, using scalable, research-driven methods to generate significant environmental and social benefits.

Marcelo brings extensive finance and entrepreneurship experience. He founded an industrial company before transitioning to banking in Brazil where he spent most of his executive career. Marcelo was one of the founders of Banco Capitaltec and later became a partner at Banco Garantia, one of Brazil’s largest investment banks. In 2003, he formed Lanx Capital, an investment firm that has both invested in and led diverse transactions ranging from large private equity deals to technology startups.
At Harvard, Marcelo will design and lead a workshop that convenes scientists, policymakers, and business leaders to tackle the thorny question of how to measure, value, and scale carbon-dioxide removal. By linking discussions to COP30 decision-makers and supplying real-world data from re.green, he will ensure the workshop generates actionable recommendations and stronger cross-sector networks for climate-mitigation action.

Full researcher in the field of climate justice and just energy transition, Center for Sustainable Development at the University of Brasília (CDS-UnB). Lecturer in Water Resources Management and Regulation Program (FUP-UnB). Coordinator of “LABSolar: just energy transition as a strategy for climate justice” (Climate and Society Institute/CDS/UnB). Postdoctoral researcher in sustainable development with an emphasis on the energy, water, food, and environment nexus (CDS-UnB). PhD in Sociology, Gender, and Development, University of Brasília (SOL-UNB) and Doctoral Internship at Cultures et Societés Laboratory - Paris 8 (Centre National de Recherche Scientifique-CNRS). Master's degree in Political Science, with an emphasis on state-society relations: participatory management of water resources through river basin committees, University of Brasília (Institute of Political Science -UNB).

History Professor at the Federal University of Ceará, in Brazil. Research interests include the history of drought, poverty and migration in northeastern Brazil. Main books published: Campos de Concentração no Ceará (2002); Isolamento e Poder (2011); Engenhos da Memória: Narrativas da Seca no Ceará (2012).

Geologist and Full Professor at the State University of Feira de Santana (UEFS), Brazil, and a leading expert in the application of geospatial technologies to the study of Brazil’s semi-arid environments. His work focuses on the Caatinga biome, with particular emphasis on land degradation, desertification processes, land-use and land-cover change, and environmental modeling under climate change. Since 2015, he has served as Coordinator of the MapBiomas Caatinga initiative, leading multidisciplinary efforts to generate high-resolution, long-term datasets that support environmental monitoring, public policy, and sustainable development strategies in the Brazilian semi-arid region. With extensive experience in remote sensing, GIS-based modeling, and territorial planning, Prof. Franca-Rocha has coordinated and contributed to numerous national and international research projects addressing ecosystem resilience, vegetation dynamics, carbon stocks, and socio-environmental vulnerability in dryland regions.

Nieman Fellow at Harvard University (1998) and Knight-Wallace Fellow at the University of Michigan (2012), Marcelo Leite is a science and environment columnist with Folha de S.Paulo, leading Brazilian daily newspaper. He writes the blog Virada Psicodélica (Psychedelic Turnaround) for Folha. Psychedelics are the subject of his most recent books, Psiconautas – Viagens com a Ciência Psicodélica Brasileira (2021), and A Ciência Encantada de Jurema (2025), both by Fósforo Editora. Marcelo Leite studied journalism at the State University of São Paulo (USP). He holds a Ph.D. in Social Sciences from the State University of Campinas (UNICAMP).

Gilson Barros is an agronomist, with a degree from the Federal Rural University of Rio de Janeiro. He has been a farmer for 37 years in the Pantanal region, the Director of a rural consulting company, and former President of the Rural Union of Corumbá.

Mercedes Bustamante is Full Professor of Ecology at the University of Brasília. She is the author of the chapter “Agriculture, Forestry and Other Land Uses” in the 5th and 6th Assessment Reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (2011–2014; 2019–2022).

She coordinated the chapter “Terrestrial and Continental Aquatic Ecosystems” in the report Adaptation to the Risks of Climate Change in Ibero-American Countries by RIOCCADAPT, and the chapter “Drivers of Change” in the Regional Assessment for the Americas by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services.

Bustamante served on the Scientific Committee of the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (2007–2012) and on the Independent Science Panel of the Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security Program (2015–2017). She has also held several leadership roles in Brazil, including General Coordinator of Ecosystem Management (2011–2012), Director of Policies and Thematic Programs at the Ministry of Science, Technology, and Innovation (2012–2013), Director of Programs and Scholarships in Brazil (2016), and President of Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel (2023).

She is an elected member of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences, The World Academy of Sciences, and the National Academy of Sciences. Her honors include the National Order of Scientific Merit (2018), Honorary Fellow of the Association of Tropical Biology and Conservation (2020), and the Conrado Wessel Award (2025).

Marcelo Spinelli Elvira is a lawyer specializing in Environmental Law (PUC/SP) and Culture of Peace (Autonomous University of Barcelona), whose practice focuses on the implementation of socio-environmental public policies through advocacy within the Executive, Legislative, and Judicial branches. He currently serves as Executive Secretary of the Forest Code Observatory, a network of 48 Brazilian civil society organizations working collaboratively to implement the Native Vegetation Protection Law. He is also the founder of the Pazciência Institute, an organization dedicated to advocating for the formulation and implementation of public policies for peace.

Daniela Nogueira is a full researcher in the field of climate justice and just energy transition at the Center for Sustainable Development at the University of Brasília (CDS-UnB). She is also a lecturer in the Water Resources Management and Regulation Program (FUP-UnB) and coordinates LABSolar: Just Energy Transition as a Strategy for Climate Justice (Climate and Society Institute/CDS-UnB).

She is a postdoctoral researcher in sustainable development with an emphasis on the energy, water, food, and environment nexus (CDS-UnB). Nogueira holds a PhD in Sociology, Gender, and Development from the University of Brasília (SOL-UnB) and completed a doctoral internship at the Cultures et Sociétés Laboratory at Paris 8 University (Centre National de Recherche Scientifique–CNRS).

She also holds a master’s degree in Political Science from the University of Brasília (Institute of Political Science–UnB), with a focus on state–society relations and the participatory management of water resources through river basin committees.

Renata Piazzon is the CEO of the Arapyaú Institute, where she leads efforts to advance systemic solutions for sustainable development and climate action in Brazil. She is a lawyer with a Master’s degree in Environmental Law and executive education from Harvard Kennedy School and Schumacher College. She co-founded the network Uma Concertação pela Amazônia and led the incubation of MapBiomas through the Arapyaú Institute — a global platform now active in more than 14 countries. Renata serves on the boards of GIFE, the Brazil Climate, Forests and Agriculture Coalition, the ESG Committee of C&A, and Brazil’s Presidential Council for Economic and Social Development (CDESS). She is also a columnist for Estadão, one of Brazil’s leading newspapers, and has been recognized by institutions such as Chambers Latin America and the ABRAPS Prize.

Vanda Witoto is an Indigenous leader with a degree in pedagogy from the State University of Amazonas. She is currently the Executive Director of the Witoto Institute, a social impact organization led by urban Indigenous women from the Amazon. She created a school of ancestral knowledge that strengthens and reclaims Indigenous culture and languages ​​in the outskirts of Manaus, and launched an Indigenous clothing brand to generate dignified income for Indigenous women and help them escape cycles of domestic violence and economic vulnerability. In addition, she is a powerful voice in the fight for climate justice at UN global conferences, bringing the realities of Indigenous populations in Brazil to the forefront.

Andelot Professor of Demography, chair of the Department of Global Health and Population, director of the Brazil Studies Program of the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies (DRCLAS) at Harvard University, associate faculty of the Harvard University Center for the Environment, and faculty member of the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies.

Her research focuses on the development and use of multidisciplinary approaches to identify the determinants of infectious disease transmission in different ecological settings to inform control policies. She has more than 20 years of research experience in the Brazilian Amazon, with a strong record in conducting household surveys and thorough knowledge of the local culture. Furthermore, she has more than 15 years of collaboration with Brazilian researchers, health secretariats, and the ministry of health, particularly related to infectious diseases. Currently, Castro has projects on malaria, COVID-19, arboviruses, infant/child mortality and development, and climate change in the Brazilian Amazon. Specifically, she has been assessing the spatiotemporal pattern of COVID-19 spread in Brazil, mortality and fertility changes due to the pandemic, risk factors for mortality, and vaccine effectiveness.

During recent public health emergencies, such as the Zika virus epidemic and the COVID-19 pandemic, Castro made important contributions. At the World Health Organization, she served as co-chair of the Technical Consultation on The Burden of and Response to Malaria in Urban Areas in 2021 and as an advisor of the Evidence Review Group on border malaria in 2017. She serves on several advisory boards in Brazil, including the Institute for the Studies of Health Policies (IEPS), the Science Center for Early Childhood (NCPI), Instituto Todos Pela Saúde (ITpS), and Instituto Cactus. She is a columnist for Folha de São Paulo and an elected member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.