Environmental Seminar 01 April - Professor Jean Paul Metzger

How good are Brazilian environmental policies, and how bad they can be?

Abstract

The effective implementation of environmental policies has a huge effect on the conservation of biodiversity and in the ecosystem services provided by native vegetation. However, policies are volatile and can change according to the socio-economic and political situation. Currently, Brazil is facing an important political transition that can impair environmental policies, affecting biodiverse regions and restoration policies, with negative impacts around the world. The main objective of this talk is to provide a critical evaluation of Brazilian environmental policies (how good they were), and to discuss future political scenarios (how bad they can be). A particular emphasis will be given to the new Brazilian Forest Code, the main law that protects native vegetation in private properties. 

Biography

Jean Paul Metzger is a full Professor of Ecology at the University of São Paulo. He obtained his MSc and PhD in Landscape Ecology at the University of Toulouse, France. In the last 20 years, he worked with landscape ecology and biodiversity conservation in highly fragmented landscapes, essentially in the Brazilian Atlantic Forest region. His main research focuses are related with landscape connectivity, ecological thresholds and time-lag responses to landscape changes, and conservation planning. More recently, he is exploring the relationships between landscape structure and ecosystems services. He has published over 130 papers in various journals that include Science, Nature, Landscape Ecology, Ecological Applications, Journal of Applied Ecology, Ecography, Oikos, Biological Conservation, among others. Those manuscripts have accumulated more than 6800 citations, resulting in an H-index of 42 (January 2018, Scopus database). He has supervised 27 M.Sc. dissertations, 14 doctoral theses and 13 post-doctoral projects. He was the founder of the Brazilian Chapter of the International Association for Landscape Ecology (IALE-BR) and vice-president of IALE. He was Associate Editor of “Biological Conservation” (2005-2010), and currently is member of the editorial board of “Landscape Ecology” and “Current Landscape Ecology Report”, and Editor-in-Chief of “Perspectives in Ecology and Conservation”. He was Lead Author in three assessments of The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES): “Models and Scenarios of Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services”, “Land Degradation and Restoration” and “Americas”. He is also co-chair in the Brazilian Assessment (https://www.bpbes.net.br).