Scheduled for December in Paris, the COP-21 will attempt to reach a new, legally binding universal agreement on climate to limit global warming to less than 2 °C. This would be an unprecedented feat in the 20 years of climate negotiations under the aegis of the United Nations. Every year, the COP brings together the 195 signatory nations of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), created during the Rio-92 conference.

“The climate summit in Paris will be a date of no return, a D-Day, a Year 1000,” says Lezama. For him, the expectations regarding the 2015 conference are due to the possibility that its decisions might avoid a disaster of major proportions or an “apocalyptic end for humankind.”

However, as Lezama explained, the agreements and disagreements between nations follow a complex plot: they derive from “the political and economic logic of the relations between countries, the deep articulations and interdependencies between the developed and underdeveloped, between their elites, their poor and the ecosystems that support the socioeconomic and political systems of both worlds.”

An example of what he is referring to happened during the COP-15. Held in Copenhagen, Denmark, the 2009 meeting went down in history for the repression of the demonstrations organized by environmental NGOs and for the inability of Danish leaders to coalesce. At the time, the hosts dreamed of reaching agreement to replace the Kyoto Protocol, which was adopted at COP-3.

This is the second event that the IEA holds to discuss the prospects of the Conferences of the Parties. In late 2014, the Institute’s Research Group on Environment and Society organized the seminar “COP-20: What Can We Expect?”, coordinated by Pedro Jacobi.

The IEA, the Fernando Henrique Cardoso Institute (iFHC), the Istanbul Institute and the Brazil-Turkey Cultural Center are the organizers of the workshop New Social Movements in Turkey and Brazil, which will be held on September 7 at Ipek University, Istanbul.

Sergio Fausto, executive director of the iFHC, Bernardo Sorj, visiting professor at the IEA, and Martin Grossmann, director of the IEA, will be among the lecturers at the event, which will bring together experts from the two countries in digital media, journalism, history, politics and social movements.

The workshop will have three sub-themes:

• The cultural dimension of the new social movements: political culture, citizenship awareness and cultural changes that engender new demands (problems, solutions and suggestions);
• Case study: the nature of the new social movements within the context of the demonstrations at Gezi Park, in Istanbul, and in several Brazilian cities, the role of digital media and the governments’ response;
• The impacts of the new social movements on democracy and on the attitudes of governments (legal, social, cultural, political and economic dimensions).

Related material Events June 21, 2013 What’s Happening? Synthesis — The Street Demonstrations in Debate Video (in Portuguese)— Photos   July 3, 2013 What's next? Synthesis — The Meanings and Consequences of a Movement of Movements Video (in Portuguese)— Photos

Barbuy graduated in Physics from the University of São Paulo and earned a master’s degree in Astronomy from the IAG and a Ph.D. in Astrophysics from the Université de Paris VII (France). She is a full professor at the IAG, where she has taught for over 30 years, and was a visiting researcher at the Lick Observatory (United States), the Institute for Astronomy (UK) and the European Southern Observatory in Garching bei München (Germany), and worked regularly at the Observatoire de Paris (France). Barbuy coordinated the project “Evolution of Stars and Galaxies in the Age of Large Telescopes: Implementation of Instruments for SOAR and Gemini” for FAPESP and the Milênio Institute. She is member of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences (ABC), the Academie des Sciences and the Third World Academy of Sciences (TWAS). His studies focus on spectroscopy, color‑magnitude diagrams, globular clusters, population synthesis and stellar evolution.

From 2001 to 2005, she played an important role in a program hosted by the European Southern Observatory, which investigated the formation of the first stars, more than 10 billion years ago, and obtained detailed information on their chemical composition.

In 2009, Barbuy was named one of 100 most influential Brazilians by Época magazine. In the same year, she was one of five recipients of the L’Oréal-UNESCO Award for Women in Science.

The discussion of concepts and practices related to education for agroecology will involve representatives from various sectors: universities, social movements, and non-governmental and rural organizations.

Iara Fonseca, member of the Working Group on Agroecology and organizer of the meeting, explains that the choice of speakers tried to take into account the different experiences of each one with agroecological practices, establishing a dialogue between the various kinds of knowledge.

The speakers will be:

• Psychologist Beatriz Stamato, professor of Agroecology at the State University of Paraíba;
• Forest engineer Fernando Silveira Franco, coordinator of the agronomy course with emphasis on agroecology and sustainable rural systems at São Carlos Federal University;
• Militant of Paraná’s Landless Movement Mirelle Gonçalves, member of the educational board of the Latin American School of Agroecology;
• Peasant Rosiéle Cristiane Ludtke, who works on the services provided by the Technical Assistance and Rural Extension (ATER);
• UNICAMP professor Sônia Maria Bergamasco, former advisor to the Ministry of Agrarian Development;
• Agronomist Valdemar Arl, consultant and founding member of the Ecovida Agroecology Network.

They will discuss the areas where agroecological education can now be found, the methodology used, the pedagogical foundations, the political orientation and the various contributions to the subject.

Currently, instruction on agroecology education takes place in formal education (technical, undergraduate and graduate courses), in informal education (courses provided by social movements, cooperatives and associations) and in rural extension work driven by agroecological principles (ATER’s services).

On three occasions this year, world leaders will decide about forthcoming decades. In July, the heads of state will gather to discuss how to finance development. In September, the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals will be adopted. In December, UN member countries will negotiate the new Global Climate Agreement.

To discuss difficulties imposed upon life on our planet in the recent past, global transformations and the prospects for biodiversity in the coming decades, the Intercontinental Academia invited biologist Vera Lúcia Imperatriz-Fonseca, from the Biosciences Institute of the University of São Paulo and coordinator of Ecosystems Services research group of the IEA.

On April 25, Vera Lucia gave the conference Biodiversity and Global Policies, in which she addressed the impact of human actions on the environment, highlighting the growing loss of biodiversity and the negotiations that could lead to the protection of ecosystems and to mitigating the effects of climate change on them.

Vera Lúcia adheres to the proposal that classifies our planet’s history from the onset of the Industrial Revolution, in the 19^th century, as a new epoch, the Anthropocene, which follows the Holocene that began 11,500 years ago, at the end of the last glaciation. The intense, human-induced transformations of the environment would be the defining feature of the Anthropocene.

Vera Lúcia also stated that several important indicators related to global change began to grow exponentially in the mid-20^th century, including total world population, use of previously virgin land, world Gross Domestic Product (GDP), river drainage, fertilizer consumption, water use, paper consumption, international tourism, use of motor vehicles and urban population. One consequence of this situation is that an enormous portion of the Earth’s surface is now occupied by urban areas, agriculture and livestock.

According to her, we should take notice of the huge amounts of carbon emissions that are “transferred” from country to country by the international trade of goods. The same applies to the use of water in the production of industrial and agricultural goods. She said that, in these terms, China is a major importer of water, “although it is also adopting various measures to restore the environment for future generations.”

She said that in 1700 the world population was 650 million and that less than 2% of terrestrial ecosystems had been altered, whereas the forecast for 2025 is that population will reach 8.2 billion and that more than half of the ecosystems will have undergone change.

Vera Lúcia reported that awareness of the environmental and sustainability issues has grown since the 1972 Brundtland Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development and subsequent forums on biodiversity and climate negotiation, such as Rio 92, Rio +20 and others.

She also mentioned the hurdles we face to adopt international policies for the benefit of the environment, such as the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA) initiative.

In 2000, the then-U.N. Secretary General, Kofi Annan, asked 1,360 experts to expound the importance of preserving nature. This survey resulted in the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, which assessed the consequences for human well-being of changes in ecosystems, as well as the scientific bases for actions needed to improve ecosystem conservation and sustainability.

However, Vera Lucia stated, when the effort was presented to UN member states, they did not embrace it, because they deemed it was an initiative of the UN Secretariat and not something negotiated and approved by the signatory countries of the organization.

According to Vera Lucia, after governments rejected the MA, a group of countries, with the active participation of then-French president Jacques Chirac, began to wonder if there might be new possibilities for dealing with biodiversity and they “eventually organized a panel similar to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).”

“Chirac believed that much was already known about climate change, and that similar work had to be carried out with regard to biodiversity.”

In the UK, there was talk of a “perfect storm,” characterized by population growth, sprawling urbanization and climate change, comingled with the goals of poverty reduction, namely, the need to provide more food, more water and more energy to those in need.

The proposal asked several questions, including whether 9 billion people can be fed equitably, sustainably and healthily, how to deal with the future demand for water, how to provide sufficient energy, how to mitigate the effects of climate change – and if all this can be done while preserving biodiversity at an acceptable level.

“Preservation is essential because biodiversity takes a long time to come about; furthermore, the morphology, anatomy and appearance of animals are very important aspects of genetic biodiversity – and we will need them if we hope to face the manifold upcoming transformations, especially those resulting from climate change. Molecular tools provide examples of how to identify populations, and how to assess if they are suited for thermal regulation or have the ability to live in harsh environmental conditions.”

Vera Lúcia recalled that the UN will adopt a new agenda in September, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), developed by researchers. “In this new paradigm, we have the economy at the center, the society around it and the system supports life on Earth surrounding both.”

This unified panorama comprises a set of six goals derived from combining the Millennium Development Goals with the conditions necessary to ensure the stability of the Earth’s systems.

The six goals are: better living conditions and livelihoods, sustainable food security, sustainable water security, universal clean energy, productive and healthy ecosystems, and governance for sustainable societies.

In the final part of the conference, Vera Lúcia spoke of a project in which she is directly involved, the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (EPBES), launched in April 2012. The platform was created by the international community as an independent intergovernmental body open to all UN members.

The initiative aims to provide politically relevant knowledge of biodiversity and ecosystem services to support decision-making, and currently includes 124 member countries, as well as several United Nations partner agencies: the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the Environment Program (UNEP) and the Development Program (UNDP).

Physicist José Goldemberg, former president of the University of São Paulo and former minister of Education, was the first speaker at the Intercontinental Academia (ICA) on the morning of April 20. He talked about the history of the university, its role in international education and research, and the challenges thrust upon it.

The conference was part of the ICA’s complementary program to discuss the future of universities. The issue will also be examined on April 24, during a morning meeting with the minister of Education, Renato Janine Ribeiro, and an afternoon seminar with presidents of state and federal universities in São Paulo.

Goldemberg recalled that universities came late in Brazil, partly because of restrictions imposed by the Portuguese Crown in the colonial period. He added that, unlike other centenary universities that developed naturally, the University of São Paulo was built according to a plan, at a time when industrialization was thriving and there was a need to restructure the educational system and to expand the supply of skilled labor.

According to him, the creation of USP in 1934 benefited from the fact that numerous European intellectuals were dissatisfied with the political direction their continent was taking. “They were persuaded to come and take part in establishing the university, which began with the existing schools of Law, Medicine and Engineering, and grew with the addition of other colleges.”

For Goldemberg, two facts were particularly relevant to the success of the initiative: the adoption of a full-time professorship regime and the total funding of the university by the state government.

80 years

In 2014, Goldemberg chaired the committee in charge of the celebrations of USP’s 80^th anniversary. One of his tasks was to organize a book on the occasion and, toward this end, a questionnaire was sent to 52 directors of education and research units, specialized institutes, and museums. One of the questions inquired what the unit had done throughout its history as a contribution to society. Goldemberg said some of these officers didn’t know how answer the question. To him, this shows how much the role of the university remains undefined for a large number of scholars.

He said the University of São Paulo consumes 5% of state taxes, equivalent to approximately US$ 2 billion, and that the average student costs US$ 2,000 per month. “Even if there are many excellent courses and others not so good, regardless of the resources invested,” he considers that a wholly State-funded university might be a good template for developing countries.

With regard to international comparisons, Goldemberg relied on the Times Higher Education ranking, where USP appears among the 201-225 best-rated institutions. He agreed that this position is not extraordinary, but “considering the number of countries with higher ranking universities than USP, we find that there are 150 countries in the world that do not have a similar university, and this says a lot.”

For him, USP’s ranking shows that the university has the ability to educate well-informed individuals about the world and which technologies are being tested or need to be developed.

Goldemberg exemplified this with the pursuits of certain schools, such as ethanol research headed by Luiz de Queiroz Agricultural College (ESALQ), in Piracicaba, “which made it possible for half the gasoline Brazil needs today to be replaced by sugarcane ethanol.”

During his exposition, Goldemberg displayed graphs of Brazil’s and USP’s scientific production, and concluded that the number of papers published abroad has increased. “This could be an excellent growth indicator of our output; however, the impact of the articles is still low, a little over 0.6 for Brazil and 0.7 for USP if we take ‘1’ as an international average” [being the number of citations an article receives].

He recalled that in addition to the contributions to applied natural sciences and engineering, one must also highlight a number of other relevant contributions to society that are not properly computed in the ratings. He mentioned as an example the contributions of Law School professors, which have become reference in many trials and legal opinions, and played a decisive role in drafting proposals that turned into laws, such as the Consumer Protection Code (Law No. 8078/90).

Another outstanding feature of the University of São Paulo, in his view, is the role of numerous professors in political, institutional and social activities, such as the creation of political parties, work in the first echelon of federal, state and municipal governments (even as head of the Executive branch), and special initiatives, such as the Truth Commission that aims to elucidate crimes committed by the military dictatorship.

At the end of his exposition, Goldemberg made an analogy between the ICA’s interdisciplinary and interactive academic proposal, and the role of the IEA, created during his tenure as USP’s president: “The IEA was created to stimulate interaction between the various groups of the university, in all scientific areas.”

Debate

During the ensuing debate, biologist Eduardo Almeida, one of the young participant scholars, asked Goldemberg if by taking part in projects such as the ICA (which are interdisciplinary and difficult to assess by the usual evaluation procedures) young scholars might not be swimming against the current and producing less than they might in their area of research. Goldemberg’s answer was succinct and to the point: “I don’t agree. Being in contact with scholars from other fields leads to greater creativity in one’s own area.”

Asked by physiologist Carolina Escobar which strategy could be adopted to encourage low-production professors to produce more, Goldemberg said that usually administrative statutes do not allow their dismissal and that, therefore, it is up to department heads to be more active in demanding productivity.

To a question from statistician Caio Dantas, former dean of Undergraduate Studies at USP and currently a researcher at the IEA, on how to evaluate scholars who don’t have a significant production papers but are very active in stimulating the work of research groups and the development of students, Goldemberg said that one of the ways might be the institution of awards, as occurs in other areas of knowledge, such as the arts.

Martin Grossmann, director of the IEA, asked what Goldemberg would recommend to young researchers participating in the ICA. The answer came in one word: “Aggressiveness.”

The opera is the result of an international and cross-cultural cooperation effort involving Brazilian researchers, German artists and Yanomami Indians from the Watoriki settlement, on the border with Venezuela, and chronicles the future of the Amazon forest both from a Western, technoscientific perspective and from a shamanic, mythological viewpoint.

According to Santos, a professor at the Sociology Department of the State University of Campinas (UNICAMP), the aim of this artistic experiment was to bring together two distinct visions of the future of the Amazon rainforest – one based on magical thinking, the other on rational thought – and find common ground on which produce the piece. The opera was produced from 2006 to 2010 in a partnership between the Goethe Institute, the Munich Biennale, the ZKM Center for Art and Media in Karlsruhe, and the Hutukara Yanomami Association, and was presented in 2010 at the International Festival for New Music Theatre of the Munich Biennale and at SESC Pompéia, São Paulo, and in 2013 at the Out of Control Festival in Vienna (Austria).

To achieve this synthesis between shamanic and technoscientific cosmologies, a cross-cultural dialogue was established between the Indians and the “white man,” based on a symmetrical relationship and mutual respect. “It was necessary that the two visions converse and preserve their essence, without one submitting to the other. The idea was to integrate, not erase the differences between them,” he said.

The speaker compared the process of creating the opera to that of establishing the ICA. According to him, both initiatives involve bringing together players from different cultures and integrating their cosmologies, perspectives and worldviews towards a common goal. “It is not a matter of overcoming misunderstandings, but of turning them into productive misunderstandings,” he said, paraphrasing the French anthropologist Bruce Albert.

The choice of a multimedia and cross-cultural opera was a wager that emotions might help raise society’s awareness of the problem of deforestation in the Amazon region. The focus, Santos insisted, was to address the issue through art, using the unconventional strategy of appealing to reason by means of technoscientific information, generally restricted to data, numbers and graphs. “We wanted to reflect why, even though we know we must stop deforestation, we do not.”

THE OPERA

Exhibiting excerpts from the opera, Santos explained each of its three parts. The first, “Tilt,” was inspired by the letter Walter Raleigh wrote to Queen Elizabeth I, in which the explorer recounts his expedition to the Orinoco River region, near the territory of the Yanomami in Venezuela, and claims to have discovered the legendary place the Spanish called “El Dorado.”

With a soundtrack of urban noises, this introductory section refers us to the past, more specifically to the perspective of the first discoverers of America. But it takes place in the future, at a time when the forest has been totally devastated and no longer exists. According to Santos, “Tilt” shows that the future of the forest was sealed in the distant past, with the arrival of the Europeans. The “white man,” embodied in Raleigh, would be the spokesman for the coming destruction.

“The Sky Is About to Fall,” the second part of the opera, deals with the future of the forest from the mythical perspective of the Yanomami. Pervaded by indigenous chants and natural sounds heard in the woods, the narrative depicts the triumph of Xawara – the evil spirit that symbolizes the “white man’s” greed – over the shamans. The outcome of the clash results in the apocalypse, which Yanomami mythology refers to as “the fall of heaven.”

The last part, “Amazonas Conference,” is divided into three scenes: 1) “Paradise,” which uses mathematical data and models to explore the biochemical processes that ensure the equilibrium of ecosystems and biodiversity at the molecular level; 2) “Conference,” where scientists, politicians, shamans and economists discuss the future of the forest and reach the conclusion that it’s too late to stop the devastation; and 3) “Entropy”, which tells of the collapse of paradise, as announced by the Yanomami and by westerners, with the destruction of molecular chains essential to nature’s life cycles, and of the resulting destruction of the forest.

In Santos’ assessment, the opera reveals that, although modeled on very different types of logic, shamanic cosmology and technoscientific rationality are in agreement about the future of the forest: given the current rate of deforestation, the end is inevitable. “This is a death foretold,” he noted.

Related

Participants of the Intercontinental Academia Become Acquainted with São Paulo’s Multifariousness

Pictures

The contrasts between the central region and the outskirts of the city of São Paulo were made clear to participants of the Intercontinental Academia (ICA) who took the scientific and cultural tour “Centralities ↔ peripheries” on Sunday, April 19. The tour also included an exposition on the relationship between migration flows and interculturality in São Paulo.

The tour began downtown, at the Pateo do Collegio, São Paulo’s founding landmark, continued at USP’s Law School in São Francisco Square and the Sé Cathedral. In the second part, participants visited some of the surrounding  area and learned a little about specific features of the Pacaembu and Canindé neighborhoods, where they visited the Kantuta Square. The itinerary of the third part included the outskirts – or “periphery” as it’s more commonly called – and, specifically, the Vila Madeiros district, in the North Zone, with a lunch stop at the Mocotó restaurant. Participants also visited USP Leste (the East Zone campus of the University of São Paulo), in Jardim Matarazzo, and the Nutritional Education and Recovery Center (CREN) in Vila Jacuí.

The tour was hosted by Sylvia Dantas, coordinator of IEA’s Intercultural Dialogues research group and professor at UNIFESP; Ana Lydia Sawaya, coordinator of IEA’s Nutrition and Poverty research group and professor at UNIFESP as well; Fernando Aith, councilor for the UNESCO Chair on Education for Peace, Human Rights, Democracy and Tolerance (based at the IEA) and professor at USP’s Medical School; and Suzana Pasternak, professor at USP’s School of Architecture and Urbanism (FAU).

INTERCULTURALITY

Dantas explained that São Paulo was built with the help of immigrants from all over the world, especially those of Japanese and Italian descent, who arrived in the first half of the 20^th century to meet the demand for agricultural and industrial labor, and who exerted great influence in the city’s cultural milieu.

According to her, in recent decades the city has been experiencing new immigration flows, particularly of Bolivians, who already number more than 300,000. Attracted by the growth of the Brazilian economy, these immigrants come to São Paulo in search of jobs and a better life. Many of them are in the country illegally and are submitted to degrading working conditions, low pay and exhausting work in clothing sweatshops in the Bom Retiro and Brás districts.

The ICA participants had the opportunity to learn more about the universe of these immigrants in Kantuta Square, where a Bolivian street market attracts nearly 3,000 people every Sunday to enjoy typical foods, crafts, folklore and dances from different regions of Bolivia. Rodrigo González, vice-president of the Padre Bento Bolivian Gastronomic, Cultural and Folklore Association, which organizes the market, spoke to the researchers about the importance of the weekly event to pass on Bolivian culture to newer generations, already born in Brazil, and to promote  cultural exchanges with Brazilians and with other Latin American immigrants.

THE LAWFUL CITY VS. THE UNLAWFUL CITY

As they passed through the Pacaembu neighborhood, Martin Grossmann, IEA’s director, explained the architectural plan of the region. Based on the “garden city” concept, the project was inspired by British architecture of the Victorian era and sought to respect the natural topography, resulting in sinuous streets and houses with large lots and ample gardens.

Grossmann noted that this type of urban development, in a neighborhood reserved for São Paulo’s elite, contrasts with the precarious housing in the city center, where drug addicts and the homeless sleep on sidewalks or squat empty buildings, resisting the movement to expel low-income residents from downtown.

Aith stressed that the contrast is one of the effects of São Paulo’s accelerated growth, especially since the 1950s. Over this period, the process of uncontrolled urbanization was intensified, with a chaotic occupation of urban spaces splitting the city in two different worlds: a “lawful” city, benefitted with urban planning, regular housing and public services such as transport, water mains, electricity, schools and hospitals; and an “unlawful” city, always growing towards the periphery, in the midst of great poverty, giving rise to slums and to all kinds of substandard housing.

According to the councilor, in the lawful city, the difficulty of having access to regular housing, derived from São Paulo’s deep socioeconomic inequalities, pushes the poor to ever more distant places, with inadequate adequate transportation, health, sanitation and educational infrastructure.

In these remote areas, the people occupy land that belongs to others (private owners or the State) and embark on “self-constructions” – houses made of cheap material and built with the labor of friends and neighbors. Aith stressed that only when these illegal occupations are already at an advanced, irreversible stage does the State take action to “legalize” them by means of redevelopment projects.

THE PERIPHERY

The transition between the lawful city and the unlawful city was observed as the tour advanced towards the outskirts. In Vila Medeiros, the ICA researchers found an example of an urbanized suburb, an entire neighborhood that had actually begun as an irregular occupation. In the vicinity of USP Leste, they saw ramshackle houses built inside an ecological park, where construction is supposedly forbidden by environmental laws.

The group obtained a more detailed picture of living conditions in the periphery from Sawaya’s exposition on the work of the CREN in Vila Jacuí, a neighborhood that emerged from the illegal occupation of an area of fountainheads that is part of an ecological reserve.

Although it has been “reurbanized,” Vila Jacuí still lacks public infrastructure and services, and is overwhelmed by drug trafficking. With one of the lowest Human Development Index (HDI) in São Paulo’s East Zone, the district’s CREN is one of the few instruments to improve the population’s quality of life.

The CREN operates there since 1993, combating and preventing both malnutrition and obesity in children and adolescents, offering nutritional assessment programs, development and learning evaluation, treatment for infections, education, and insertion into the world of culture. To these ends, it has a day hospital that treats nearly 100 children, offering them five balanced meals a day.

Besides contributing to the nutritional and educational recovery of children and adolescents, the CREN is also a place for family gatherings and the practice different activities. Computers are available to the community, as well as a fully equipped playroom and the infrastructure for physical and cultural activities (music, theater, dance and sports).

Sawaya, who is former coordinator and current scientific director of the CREN, stressed the importance of the project as an initiative to develop youth participation and provide opportunities for children and young people to move away from crime. According to her, of the people who attend the center, 60% have a family member in prison and 70% have a relative addicted to drugs or alcohol.

She also pointed out that over its 23 years of operation, the project has helped 3 million children and contributed to substantially reduce the number of murders in the environs.

Report by Flavia Dourado
Translation by Carlos Malferrari

The minister of Education, Renato Janine Ribeiro, who is a member of IEA’s Scientific Committee in the project, stressed the significance of this initiative to integrate people with various cultural and academic backgrounds at a time when words like “knowledge” and “wisdom” have acquires various meanings and when “there are so many doubts about what to do with knowledge, and wisdom is no longer a constant in science.”

The president of the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq), Hernan Chaimovich, who is also a member of IEA’s Scientific Committee, said that the ICA is an example of “non canonical” activity that must play a greater role in the training of scholars: “The choice of one subject to be analyzed by people from different cultures and backgrounds has an extremely rich intellectual relevance; it is an example of how to overcome interdisciplinarity and achieve an academically competitive transculturality anywhere in the world.” Chaimovich also stressed the quality of the scientific profile of the young scholars selected for the project.

USP’s dean of Research, José Eduardo Krieger, represented the president of the university, Marco Antonio Zago, at the ceremony. Krieger, who is chairman of IEA’s Scientific Committee, said the project contributes to leverage the most productive formats of scientific collaboration networks. He also drew attention to the fact that the ICA is characterized by interdisciplinarity and the integration of young researchers, “who will play an important role in the society of their home countries.”

Carsten Dose, from the Institute of Advanced Studies of the University of Freiburg (Germany), general secretary of the project, congratulated all participants on behalf of all the institutes for advanced study that comprise the Ubias network (University-Based Institutes for Advanced Study), ICA’s mother organization. He said the materialization of the proposal that emerged in 2012 is a clear demonstration of how Ubias’ member institutes can work together. Dose also paid tribute to the former director of the IEA, César Ades (1943-2012), who attended the meeting that established Ubias in October 2010 and impressed everyone with his enthusiasm for the new entity.The director of the IEA, Martin Grossmann, presented the history and characteristics of the project, explaining that side by side with reflections on the concepts of time in various sciences, other activities and discussion topics were also included, such as a discussion on the future of the university and the development of a MOOC (Massive Open Online Course), a free course about time to be offered via the Web.

Dapeng Cai, from the Institute for Advanced Research (IAR) at Nagoya University (Japan), a partner of the IEA in the implementation of the ICA, highlighted the efforts to bring about this project and the importance of the final product being a MOOC about time. In his view, the creation of a MOOC shows that the ICA, in addition to enabling the sharing of knowledge among all scholars involved, is also concerned with sharing results with the public at large.

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