Abstract

This presentation will consist on a historical account of the creation and development of the Brazilian Network for Environmental Justice (RBJA), as well as its conceptual and political basis. Operating since 2002, RBJA results from the initiative of social movements, workers' trade unions, NGOs, environmental organizations, ecologists, organizations of Afro-descendants and indigenous peoples and academic researchers. It is a forum for discussions, reports and strategic and political mobilizations, with the goal of formulating alternatives and promoting the resilience actions carried out by its members - social movements, environmental organizations, NGOs, residents' associations, trade unions, academic researchers and research/teaching institutions. The presentation will focus on contemporary examples from work groups and ongoing mobilizing processes which combine social movements with NGOs and academic groups, showing the contradictions and resistances to the hegemonic model of the economic and social development resulting from the Brazilian integration within the globalization process.

Biographic Note

Marcelo Firpo Porto is a principal researcher at the Centre for Work Health and Human Ecology Studies at the National School of Public Health (ENSP), Oswaldo Cruz Foundation for Research (FIOCRUZ), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. He has experience in the field of Collective Health, with special focus on Environmental Health and Work Health, being currently working on the following areas: risk integrated approaches; environmental justice and political ecology; social vulnerability; complexity, risks and uncertainties; principle of prevention; health promotion in vulnerable urban areas. He lectures at the Post-Graduate programme in Public Health at ENSP/FIOCRUZ, in the field of "Health-Illness Process, Territory and Justice". He is the author of, among other titles, the book " Uma ecologia política dos riscos: princípios para integrarmos o local e o global na promoção da Saúde e da justiça ambiental" [A political ecology of risk: principles for the integration of the local and global in the promotion of health and environmental justice]. He is, also, a consultant at the CES on-going research project "Science Engaging Society: Life Sciences, Social Sciences and Publics (BIOSENSE)”, coordinated by João Arriscado Nunes.

Organization: Doctoral Programme “Governance, Knowledge, and Innovation”