Ekologos Public Lectures
Our Ekologos Public Lectures series offers a platform for senior and junior scholars alike to address a public gathering with the results of their research. This allows for focused critical engagement in a public setting, fostering discussion on critical climate change issues. The themes of the lectures will cover a wide range of topics including indigenous knowledge, climate change adaptation strategies, and innovative research methodologies.
The Imminence of Crossing Tipping Points in the Amazon Rainforest: The Decisive Decade
Wednesday, 6 September, 2023
10:15 AM - 12:00 PM
Mandela Auditorium, Centre for Peace Studies / Nedre Lysthus, UiT The Arctic University of Norway
EKOLOGOS, in close cooperation with the Departments of Religion, and Social and Visual Anthropology at UiT, are honoured to present Professor Luiz Marques from the State University of Campinas, Brasil (UNICAMP) who will delve into the urgent topic concerning our planet's largest tropical rainforest - the Amazon.
Professor Marques will address two pressing questions central to the current scientific and political discourse:
- Have the most degraded regions of the Amazon rainforest already surpassed a critical tipping point?
- How perilously close are the healthier regions to this pivotal threshold?
In the vast expanse of the Amazon, a tipping point signifies the moment it loses its resilience, succumbing to destructive human activities in an ever-warming world. Understanding these concerns is imperative for regional, continental, and global decision-making, as the state of the Amazon impacts not only its immediate vicinity but the entire world's ecological balance.
Join us for an enlightening session that aims to bring these pivotal issues to the forefront of our collective conscience. Every decision we make today impacts the future of our planet.
I report and analyze in this lecture two questions that increasingly mobilize the scientific community and that should occupy the center of the regional, continental and global political arena: (1) to what extent have the most degraded parts of the Amazon rainforest already passed a tipping point? (2) how close are the least degraded ones to crossing this threshold? In this gigantic tropical biome, a tipping point refers to its inability to continue sustaining itself, once a limit of destructive anthropic interference in a warming world has been exceeded.
Luiz Marques is Associate Professor (retired) in the Department of History at the State University of Campinas, Unicamp, Brazil. In 2018, he was a visiting professor at the University of Leiden, in the Netherlands. He published Capitalism and environmental collapse (Springer, 2020). In 2023, he published "The Decisive Decade. (São Paulo, Editora Elefante). He is currently senior professor at Ilum School of Science at the National Center for Research in Energy and Materials (CNPEM), Campinas, Brazil
Luiz Marques is Associate Professor (retired) in the Department of History at the State University of Campinas, Unicamp, Brazil. In 2018, he was a visiting professor at the University of Leiden, in the Netherlands. He published Capitalism and environmental collapse (Springer, 2020). In 2023, he published "The Decisive Decade. (São Paulo, Editora Elefante). He is currently senior professor at Ilum School of Science at the National Center for Research in Energy and Materials (CNPEM), Campinas, Brazil