Meeting at UFS discusses contemporary socio-environmental problems.

Sergipe 247 - The 2nd Interdisciplinary Meeting on Environmental Communication (EICA) will take place from May 27th to 29th at the Federal University of Sergipe (UFS), and aims to bring together professors, researchers, professionals, and students interested in debating and pointing out paths to address contemporary socio-environmental dilemmas. The initiative is from the Interdisciplinary Laboratory of Environmental Communication (LICA), in partnership with the Postgraduate Program in Communication at UFS, and has the financial support of the Foundation for Support of Research and Technological Innovation of the State of Sergipe (Fapitec-SE).

The program for the 2nd EICA will begin on the 27th, at 19 pm, with a conference on Nature, “green economy” and environmental justice: contemporary dilemmas, given by the Ecuadorian economist Alberto Acosta, professor and researcher at the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences (FLACSO) and author of the book Buen Vivir o Sumak Kausai. Former Minister of Energy and Mines of Ecuador – the first country to constitutionally recognize the rights of nature – Acosta helped prevent the exploitation of the oil reserves of the Amazonian Ishpingo-Tambococha-Tiputini (ITT) field, in the Yasuní National Park, estimated at one billion barrels.

The Meeting will also feature four thematic panels, to be held in the mornings of May 28th and 29th, with the participation of researchers, journalists, and environmentalists from various regions of the country and Latin America. The topics under discussion are: Post-Rio+20 environmental policies: what should the agenda be?; Environmental cinema and ecocriticism: opening the eyes of the present to guarantee the future; Biome networks: challenges to organization and network communication post-Rio+20; The post-Rio+20 environmental agenda: challenges for journalists and the media. In the afternoon, there will be two sessions of oral presentations of academic papers.

According to Sonia Aguiar, PhD in Communication and professor at UFS, general coordinator of the 2nd EICA, the recent climate-related catastrophes in Brazil and other parts of the world make it clear that the relationship between society and nature is undergoing a critical process. “This forces us to rethink the environment not only as a natural environment, but also as the built environment, the result of complex relationships developed over time and across spaces. In this context, the role of information, communication, culture, and media assumes a crucial place, which still requires reflection and action,” she states.

The purpose of the Meeting is to discuss and propose solutions to current socio-environmental dilemmas and to offer a professional development opportunity for journalists and communication professionals. Planned to be biennial, the EICA held its first edition in April 2011, with the participation of 110 registrants from 15 Brazilian cities, among whom 40 presented papers approved by a national scientific council. This time, in addition to PhDs from all regions of the country, the evaluation team will include researchers from Portugal and Colombia.