Although not yet a member of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Brazil is like a "family member" and partnerships with Brazilian institutions allow the organization to work with and for the country in building a more inclusive and resilient society, said the secretary-general Angel Gurría during his participation in the online meeting "OECD and USP: Reconfiguring the World from Knowledge," on May 6.

Among the OECD partner countries, Brazil is the one that has made the most of this relationship and has invested in several areas of public policies to approach the organization's standards, according to Gurría. As an example, he cited a project launched in October that is helping to align Brazilian policies with OECD's environmental criteria.

The online meeting with Gurría, who will leave the OECD later this month after three consecutive five-year terms, celebrated the beginning of cooperation between the organization and USP. He will soon become an IEA researcher. In addition to the secretary-general, the Brazilian delegate with international economic organizations headquartered in Paris, ambassador Carlos Márcio Cozendey, and the president of USP, Vahan Agopyan, gave presentations. Mediation was provided by the general coordinator of the International Economic Analysis Group (GACINT) of USP's Institute of International Relations (IRI), Alberto Pfeifer.

Guilherme Ary Plonski, director of the IEA, opened the event by pointing out that the cooperation between USP and the OECD is based on the common concern of both institutions in promoting the production of knowledge "to move towards a prosperous human society in harmony with nature."

He highlighted the significance of OECD's slogan "Better Policies for Better Lives" and the organization's concern with formulating international evidence-based references in order to find solutions to economic, social, and environmental challenges.

"The IEA is available to collaborate in the production of knowledge based on this cooperation and to contribute to the initiatives for Brazil to become a member of the organization," he said.

Ambassador Carlos Márcio Cozendey

"Even though not being a member of the organization, Brazil participates in almost all committees and working groups, and has already adhered to 99 OECD recommendations, according to Cozendey. "The country is interested in becoming a member to participate in all dimensions of the OECD, exchange experiences, and present public policies."

The partnership is part of this exchange of policy formulations, said the ambassador: "Having the University to establish and follow the interaction between public policies in Brazil and the OECD recommendations is an input for the organization's recommendations to also reflect the Brazilian reality."

For Agopyan, the internationalization present in the cooperation is a tool for USP to improve its levels of quality, "an essential search for all research universities."

In this century, all research universities seek to have ever greater interaction with society, he said. "USP is also doing this and it is natural that, for this purpose, universities seek partnerships with governments, entities, and international groups."

In June, at a meeting in Switzerland, Agopyan will defend the idea that universities are reliable sources of public policy. "If the OECD is concerned about this, USP and other research universities are at the disposal of the organization and national governments to develop proposals for public policies to be used by governments," concluded the president.

Effects of the pandemic

In his brief presentation followed by answers to questions from guests, Gurría commented that the COVID-19 pandemic reversed all the economic recovery achieved after the crisis that started in 2008, "but the prospects are improving and we expect a global economic growth of 5.6 %, with economy returning to pre-pandemic levels by the middle of this year." However, he warned that this projection depends on the rate of vaccination and the eventual spread of variants of the virus.

"Brazil was recovering from a recession when the pandemic a second recession came. The economic measures adopted by the government, such as emergency aid, supported millions of vulnerable families. Without these measures, the economic contraction would be even greater and the recovery in 2021 much slower than the projected GDP growth of 3.7%."

However, he stressed that the recovery must be guided by more just and sustainable growth. To that end, Gurría defended three lines of action, the first of which is to increase the effectiveness of social benefits to strengthen the population's first line of defense against economic shocks. "If well oriented, Brazil's conditional cash transfer system could be converted into a real social safety network," he said.

The second recommendation is to support professional qualification in order to allow workers to switch their jobs to better ones and for entrepreneurs to end unproductive and polluting activities. "In the long run, improving the quality and equity of vocational training reduces inequalities and poverty," according to the secretary-general.

His third suggestion is to link economic recovery measures to the sustainability agenda. "The most urgent task now is to vaccinate people quickly and protect us from further outbreaks of COVID-19, but the intergenerational commitment is to protect the planet," she said. For Gurría, the fact that the Amazon rainforest is the largest reserve of biodiversity in the world and 60% of it is in Brazil, makes the country a leader for the reshaping and reconstruction of the global economy in a more resilient way.

Continuity and relations

The questions from the guests to Gurría addressed the continuity of programs implemented in his management, mainly those related to environment and education, the organization's relationship with sub and supranational organizations, and prospects for Brazil's entry into the OECD.

Vahan Agopyan, president of USP

Jacques Marcovitch, former president of USP and former director of the IEA, asked whether OECD's emphasis on environmental issues will continue and what the weight of the environmental issue will be for Brazil's intentions to become one of the organization's members.

"Gurría said that the future secretary-general, a former finance minister in Australia, assured member countries that the OECD will continue its environmental policies. As for joining the organization, he said that Brazil has a huge advantage over the other five current candidates (Argentina, Peru, Romania, Croatia, and Bulgaria): "Brazil is already in the family, like a cousin who is already in the kitchen of the organization, because instead of waiting to be accepted, the work with the OECD has already started."

Cláudia Costin, a member of IEA's Board and director of the Center for Excellence and Innovation in Education at the Getulio Vargas Foundation (FGV), expressed concern about the continuity in the new management of education programs, such as the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). There is no risk of interruption, according to Gurría: "The PISA is a brand of the organization and will constantly evolve. It is becoming not only a reference, but also an instrument for comparison and ranking, not to indicate who is better or worse, but to measure the fundamental issues, and indicate what is good or bad and what can be improved."

"Still in the field of education, Roseli de Deus Lopes, deputy director of the IEA, wanted to know what the OECD recommendations for Brazil are, since recent evaluations indicate a drop in school performance and greater inequality in education. The secretary-general argued that something very important is the acquisition of digital skills by young people. "We know that the future will be much more digital because we had to act almost entirely digitally due to the pandemic. To be able to reintegrate into the labour market, it is necessary to have digital competence, but only 50% of the countries' workforce has ability to act in a technological environment."

Vinicius Mota, editor in chief of the newspaper Folha de S.Paulo, asked if threats to democracy in Brazil could weigh on OECD's decision to accept the country as a member. Gurría said that problems with the quality of democracy are not on the agenda in relation to Brazil's entry. "I do not know anyone who says that Brazil is not a democracy. That is the great advantage of the country: to be recognized as a democracy". Problems with democracy "are no one's monopoly," he emphasized, recalling recent changes in electoral legislation in Georgia, USA, which make it difficult for some publics to participate in the local elections.

"The director of IRI, Janina Onuki, wanted to know what benefits can be expected from OECD partnerships with subnational governments, as in the case of the government of the state of São Paulo. These partnerships are increasingly important, said Gurría, "because everything is happening at the local level and it is necessary to go where the action takes place." He added that the OECD works with many states, provinces, and cities in many countries. "The world today is urbanized. Countries like Mexico and Brazil have become urban without becoming rich and all the problems arising from the growth of cities have arisen."

The relationship between the OECD and the World Trade Organization (WTO) was the subject of the question by USP professor emeritus Celso Lafer, another member of IEA's Board and former Minister of Foreign Affairs. For the secretary-general, the organizations complement each other: "Although the WTO has a lot of technical capacity to deal with problems of jurisdictional systems and conflicts of interest, it does not have the technical capacity to carry out analyzes and comparisons, leading to the extraction of information for public policies."

"For him, there is a methodological problem, as the OECD has 37 members (soon 38 with the entry of Costa Rica) and the WTO has 200 countries. "We work with almost every UN body. They know that we have 37 members, but they do not come to us for the sake of universality, yet rather because of the globalizing impact of the OECD recommendations."

Photos: IEA-USP

Fogo consome vegetação no Mato Grosso

Quando o Pantanal passou por fortes queimadas em setembro deste ano, verificou-se que o rato selvagem estava saindo das zonas desmatadas em busca de alimento nas cidades, invadindo residências e expondo as pessoas ao Hantavírus, causador de uma doença ainda mais perigosa que a covid-19. Em uma situação ainda mais cotidiana, o brasileiro tem enfrentado a proliferação de mosquitos como o Aedes Aegypti, transmissor de pelo menos três doenças graves, devido ao aumento das temperaturas.

Esses dois exemplos foram apresentados no seminário Mudanças Climáticas e a Pandemia: Quais Decisões Devemos Tomar Agora para o Futuro?, realizado no dia 4 de dezembro, para mostrar a estreita relação entre a saúde humana e os problemas com o clima. O evento, que repercutiu o relatório The Lancet Countdown de 2020, lançado no dia anterior, foi organizado pelo Grupo de Estudos Saúde Planetária do IEA.

A publicação é resultado de uma colaboração de pesquisas internacionais que fornece uma visão global da relação entre as mudanças climáticas e saúde pública, com dados e recomendações de políticas para mitigar as consequências do aquecimento global. Alice McGushin, representante da revista The Lancet no evento, alertou: “Governos do mundo todo preparam sua recuperação econômica [após a covid-19], mas se as medidas não forem alinhadas também ao desafio das mudanças climáticas, vão falhar”.

Sandra Hacon, da Fundação Oswaldo Cruz (Fiocruz), concorda. “Não resta a menor dúvida que as mudanças climáticas causam riscos à saúde, sejam eles direta ou indiretamente”, disse. O relatório trouxe dados de que as mortes por ondas de calor aumentaram 53,7% em idosos com mais de 65 anos, entre 2000 e 2018. O aumento da temperatura também causou a perda de 100 bilhões de horas de trabalho no mundo todo, em relação às horas trabalhadas nos anos 2000. Só no Brasil foram mais de 4 bilhões de horas potenciais não trabalhadas em 2019. “Na Europa, devido à baixa adaptabilidade da população, os efeitos à saúde das ondas de calor são mais evidentes, sendo o principal a mortalidade”, comentou Sandra.

Da esquerda para direita, de cima para baixo:Daniela Vianna (Procam/USP); Paulo Saldiva (IEA-USP), Mayara Floss (SBMFC) e Alice McGushin (The Lancet)

Ela também chama atenção para os elementos que tornam a saúde humana vulnerável. “O ser humano possui vulnerabilidades naturais, por exemplo, idade e gênero. No entanto, há as vulnerabilidades sociais, como a qualidade e o acesso aos serviços de saúde, as desigualdades, as infraestruturas da saúde pública, a intensa mobilidade e os conflitos existentes”. O aumento das doenças mentais, da desnutrição causada pelo excesso de carne vermelha e doenças não transmissíveis, como cardiovasculares, respiratórias e alergias, são consequências das mudanças climáticas, segundo Sandra.

Outro grande alerta do Lancet Countdown é o aumento da capacidade de transmissão vetorial de doenças por mosquitos. O relatório mostra que as altas temperaturas permitiram a adaptação climática da transmissão da dengue. O médico Paulo Saldiva, ex-diretor do IEA, acredita que esse processo já esteja acontecendo. “Nós já estamos mudando a geografia das febres transmitidas por vetores. Antes era preciso tomar a vacina da febre amarela para ir às regiões norte e centro-oeste. Em 2017, tomava-se para ir à região norte da cidade de São Paulo, porque era perto do Horto Florestal. A febre amarela só não se tornou uma febre urbana devido ao cinturão vacinal feito pela vigilância epidemiológica e campanhas de vacinação”, disse Saldiva.

O desmatamento das florestas, somado à elevação das temperaturas, preocupa os pesquisadores da saúde também por causa dos seus impactos na transmissão de doenças patogênicas. “70% das doenças infecciosas circulam entre animais e humanos (zoonoses). Dentro disso, 72% são causados por patógenos na vida silvestre. Então, quando os ecossistemas são abalados, apresentam maior risco de transmissão de patógenos para humanos”, afirmou Sandra. Dessa forma, os incêndios florestais do Pantanal e o intenso desmatamento da Amazônia representam um perigo para o surgimento de novas doenças.

Para o pesquisador colaborador do IEA Carlos Nobre, “todos os elementos para uma nova pandemia estão na Amazônia”, pois a floresta apresenta a maior biodiversidade do mundo, com a maior parte das espécies de vetores e agentes de doenças infecciosas desconhecidos. Além disso, seu ecossistema tem sido alvo de constantes perturbações por causa da ação humana.

Segundo Nobre, seis novos vírus já foram encontrados na floresta amazônica e dois deles são transmissível entre humanos. Um deles é o Hantavirus, organismo transmitido por roedores selvagens e, de acordo com o pesquisador, mais perigoso que a covid-19. A doença causou mortes na Bolívia este ano e é uma ameaça aos brasileiros.

Na tentativa de resolver as questões climáticas e de saúde, Mayara Floss, médica e colaboradora do The Lancet Countdown, afirmou que “as medidas de mitigação e adaptação precisam ter a questão da saúde como central”. As recomendações feitas pela Lancet Countdown foram a transição para uma economia de baixa emissão de carbono, a criação de uma vigilância epidemiológica nacional que também acompanhe as doenças provocadas pelo calor, desenvolver projetos urbanos mais adaptados a altas temperaturas, recuperar as áreas desflorestadas, zerar as queimadas e o desmatamento, assim como a redução da emissão de carbono .

“É importante perceber que as mudanças climáticas já estão ameaçando a saúde pública e precisamos agir agora. Não só temos que diminuir a emissão de gases estufas drasticamente e imediatamente, como também precisamos pensar em medidas adaptativas e resilientes para fortalecer nossos sistemas de saúde”, afirmou Alice.

Dedicated to the COVID-19 victims, the 99th issue of the journal Estudos Avançados presents a dossier on the pandemic caused by the Sars-CoV-2 coronavirus. The online version (Portuguese only) is available at SciELO.

According to sociologist Sérgio Adorno, editor of the publication, the object of the dossier is the complexity of the pandemic, reflected in the 17 articles written by 47 researchers from two dozen universities and research institutions in several Brazilian states.

"Its multiple aspects are addressed by experienced researchers through extensive investigations, some of which are produced in the effervescence of events, in the seemingly uninterrupted search for scientific responses, and by government plans to stop its natural course, fertilized by unfavorable social and political conditions," notes the editor.

He points out that the pandemic is above all a public health problem, involving different types of collectives, which are represented, for example, by groups with different degrees of vulnerability.

"Not without reason, the dossier addresses issues more properly situated in this domain, such as the norms of international and national regulatory bodies, and the race for the discovery of vaccines, the performance of tests, and consequent epidemiological modeling that enable the assessment of both scenarios and guidelines for prevention."

However, the pandemic also reveals the harsh social reality, accentuated by the "acute process of economic recession that, in societies like Brazil, means the worsening of social inequalities that are projected with greater intensity in the metropolises, as is the case of São Paulo," says Adorno.

He reinforces that the space studies of the dossier demonstrate how inequalities affect the poorest, the black population, and the residents of neighborhoods where populations with low education and income predominate, "the most vulnerable to contamination and deaths" by COVID-19.

Other topics addressed by the dossier have been highlighted by Adorno, such as issues regarding the right to privacy in the face of intense data tracking and monitoring, the dangers of spreading Sars-Cov-2 in Brazilian biomes, and the absence of government policies capable of containing the pandemic's progress in the country.

The dossier begins with an article by the collaborator in the organization of the journal's set of texts, José da Rocha Carvalheiro, a professor of social medicine at USP's School of Medicine in Ribeirão Preto (FMRP) and a member of IEA's Innovation and Competitiveness Observatory.

In the article, Carvalheiro states that COVID-19 in Brazil will not be a disease limited in time, but in space: "An endemic disease or, perhaps, a collection of endemic diseases with different characteristics spread across the national territory. Due to the diversity, the control proposals will inevitably have their own characteristics. This requires a coordination effort and political skill on the part of the leaders."

The effort of the journal to collaborate with the academic and public debate about COVID-19 and its consequences does not end in the current issue. Issue #100, to be launched in the next four months, will feature articles on the impact of the pandemic in areas such as (national and international) economy, international relations, education, labor market, agriculture, food, and engineering.

Youth

Another highlight of the issue is a set of articles on the Brazilian youth, a topic addressed by Estudos Avançados for the first time. Organized with the collaboration of Professor Marilia Pontes Sposito, from USP's School of Education (FE) and co-author of one of the articles, the section "Portrait of Youth" contains six texts written by a dozen education and sociology researchers from USP, the Federal University of ABC (UFABC), the Federal University of São Carlos (UFSCar), the Federal University of Ceará (UFC), the University of Brasília (UnB), Pará State University (UEPA), UNISINOS, and the Federal University of Alfenas (UNIFAL).

According to Adorno, the section "deals with an issue that is always present in public debates: youth as a social matter." Despite the variety of topics covered, he identifies "the effort to review theses that seemed consolidated in the specialized literature based on original investigations" as an axis that articulates all contributions.

With regard to the educational scope, there are articles on the participation of high school students in the institutional plan of schools (based on the results of research on the subject in urban centers in Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, and Spain), the difficulties for schooling of the Brazilian youth that emerged since the 1990s, and what the occupation of schools in Rio Grande do Sul in May and June 2016 has represented for its protagonists.

The section also features articles on public performance through the Facebook profiles of young conservatives, youth cultural production on the outskirts of Fortaleza, and the policies and proposals for the professional training of young people and their insertion in the labour market in the last three decades.

The list below contains the names of the authors who have contributed with each one of the addressed themes:

Covid-19 Pandemic

José da Rocha Carvalheiro
Cláudio Maierovitch Pessanha Henriques and Wagner Vasconcelos
Paulo Marchiori Buss, Santiago Alcázar, and Luiz Augusto Galvão
Glauco Arbix
Carmen Phang Romero Casas, Julio Silva, Rodolfo Castro, Marcelo Ribeiro-Alves, and Carolina Mendes Franco
Naomar de Almeida Filho
Raul Borges Guimarães, Rafael de Castro Catão, Oséias da Silva Martinuci, Edmur Azevedo Pugliesi, and Patricia Sayuri Silvestre Matsumoto
Marcos Silveira Buckeridge and Arlindo Philippi Jr.
Vinicius Carvalho Jardim and Marcos Silveira Buckeridge
Gabriela Capobianco Palhares, Alessandro Santiago dos Santos, Eduardo Altomare Ariente, and Jefferson de Oliveira Gomes
André Luis Acosta, Fernando Xavier, Leonardo Suveges Moreira Chaves, Ester Cerdeira Sabino, Antonio Mauro Saraiva, and Maria Anice Murebe Sallum
Sandra Caponi
Márcia Pereira Alves dos Santos, Joilda Silva Nery, Emanuelle Freitas Goes, Alexandre da Silva, Andreia Beatriz Silva dos Santos, Luís Eduardo Batista, and Edna Maria de Araújo
Eugênio Bucci
Fernando Xavier, João Rodrigo Windischi Olenscki, André Luis Acosta, Maria Anice Mureb Sallum, and Antonio Mauro Saraiva
Marcos Antônio Mattedi, Eduardo Augusto Werneck Ribeiro, Maiko Rafael Spiess, and Leandro Ludwig
José Eli da Veiga

Portrait of Youth

Marilia Pontes Sposito, Elmir de Almeida, and Felipe de Souza Tarábola
Adriano Souza Senkevics and Marília Pinto de Carvalho
Livia de Tommasi and Maria Carla Corrochano
Glória Diógenes
Wivian Weller and Lucélia de Moraes Braga Bassalo
Luís Antonio Groppo and Rodrigo Manoel Dias da Silva

At a time of marked reduction in the possibility of work for a large number of workers as a result of restrictions on displacement and public contact due to the COVID-19 crisis, the 98th issue of the journal Estudos Avançados, released this month, discusses two themes already problematic in Brazil before the pandemic: the still little recognition of care work, which is essential in view of the aging population, and the characteristics and impacts of new forms of work, including on workers' health. The online version (Portuguese only) is available at SciELO.

The content of the issue was defined before the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the pandemic caused by the international spread of the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2. Thus, rigorous analyses are not presented, as they could not have been produced in the early stages of the outbreak.

However, the issues addressed in the dossiers deserve extra attention as they are among those for which society must seek answers in the post-pandemic period in order to ensure decent and equal work for everyone, in addition to rights and health protection.

In "Work, Gender, and Care", the first dossier, care for people is analyzed in its various forms. An example is when care occurs as "help," without being characterized as a professional activity or as a parental obligation. The topic is discussed by sociologists Nadya Araujo Guimarães, a senior professor at USP's Faculty of Philosophy, Languages and Literature, and Human Sciences (FFLCH), and Priscila Pereira Faria Vieira, a researcher at the Brazilian Center of Analysis and Planning (CEBRAP).

Helena Hirata, former visiting professor at the IEA and director emeritus of research at the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS), addresses the main points of convergence and divergence in the activity of elderly caregivers in Brazil, Japan, and France, without neglecting the centrality of women in this work. The objective is to demonstrate how gender, race, and social class help to build the professional and personal trajectories of caregivers.

In the article "Care and Responsibility," Natacha Borgeaud-Garciandía discusses the work of immigrant caregivers for the elderly in Buenos Aires. A researcher at the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences (FLACSO), Borgeaud-Garciandía focuses on responsibility as the assumption of a moral obligation towards a vulnerable person. One of the addressed aspects is the role of responsibility in the complexity of the caregivers' exploitation plots within the framework of unequal power relations.

The legal treatment of care in Brazil and public policies aimed at the socialization of social reproduction activities fall short of social demands, according to Regina Stela Corrêa Vieira, a researcher at CEBRAP and a professor of the graduate program in Law at the University of West Santa Catarina (UNOESC). To her, labor law, which "historically ignores or neglects domestic work, whether paid or unpaid," has made some progress such as the Constitutional Amendment 72/2013 and the ratification of Convention C189 of the International Labor Organization (ILO), but currently sees labor reform as a "threat to the hard-won rights of domestic workers."

The struggle of these female workers for the enhancement of their professional activity is also analyzed in an article by Louisa Acciari, from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), and Tatiane Pinto, from the Federal Rural University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRRJ), who discuss informal negotiations with employers and union mobilization in the category. They propose a redefinition of the concept of work with the full inclusion of care work, something "indispensable to guarantee the dignity and equal rights."

Labor precariousness

The discussion on the lack of rights and dignity in the context of caregivers and domestic employees in general is extended in the second dossier of the isssue to address the characteristics and impacts of the transformations underway in the world of work, including health.

In his article, sanitary professional René Mendes, a collaborating researcher at the IEA, summarizes the concerns that led him to propose the development of the research project "Impacts of the New Morphologies of Contemporary Work on Life, Sickness, and Death."

Mendes starts from the perceptions of existing studies on the problem mainly carried out from a sociological perspective, but seeks to deepen the reflections on the nature and complexity of the pathogenesis mechanisms of the new morphologies of work on the workers' life and health from the perspective of social epidemiology.

One of these new forms of work is the "uberization," subject of the article by Ludmila Costhek Abílio, a researcher at the University of Campinas's Center for Union Studies and Labor Economics (CESIT-UNICAMP). Her study is based on empirical research with cosmetic dealers and motorcycle drivers, and on secondary data on Uber drivers and the so-called bike boys.

Abílio's analysis considers two theses: 1) uberization is an ongoing global trend to consolidate the worker as an available subordinate self-manager defined as a just-in-time worker devoid of guarantees and rights; 2) companies present themselves as mediators, when they actually operate forms of subordination and work control, in what can be called algorithmic work management.

The third article in the dossier, authored by sociologist Clemente Ganz Lúcio, a technician at the Inter-Union Department of Statistics and Socioeconomic Studies (DIEESE), presents a brief history and the current context of the debates on union reform and the system of labor relations in the National Congress and in the Federal Government. Lúcio points out that countless aspects of the world of work have undergone changes, such as jobs, occupations, labor dynamics, forms of hiring, working hours, and working conditions, among others.

For him, some guidelines should be considered in these changes. One of them is the development of an autonomous and effective system of self-regulation between workers and employers, which supports the union's restructuring of the labor relations system and resolves conflicts through instruments created by the parties.

Bioeconomics, energy, and vegetation

Themes related to the environment and sustainable development have had a regular presence throughout the journal's 33 years, and are present in this issue in three articles. André Luiz Willerding, a biotechnologist at the Amazonas State Secretariat for Economic Development, Science, Technology, and Innovation (SEDECTI), and five other researchers from SEDECTI an Amazonas State University, present an overview of the state's reality regarding the development of bioeconomy strongly linked to the potential of natural resources. According to the authors, the discussion on this theme goes against the search for alternatives for the state's economy, still centralized around the Manaus Industrial Pole, which "becomes increasingly threatened year after year."

Another region addressed in this section is the Brazilian Northeast, in an article on the importance of integrating social, economic, and environmental policies around the supply of energy to the semiarid region. Based on the food-water-energy nexus, which seeks to examine the interrelationships of these three essential components of environmental and human quality, Marcel Burztyn, from University of Brasília's Center for Sustainable Development (CDS-UnB), proposes the promotion of photovoltaic energy generation by family farmers.

When studying issues such as the degree of complexity and diversification of the Brazilian landscape, it must be taken into account that a landscape may be the result of recent environmental changes or relics of much more remote conditions. This is what geologists Daniel Meira Arruda, from the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG), and Carlos Ernesto Gonçalves Rynaud Schaefer, from the Federal University of Viçosa (UFV), point out in another article. They discuss the biogeographic theories formulated and modified over the past 60 years of studies on the reconstruction of Brazil's vegetation under the impact of the climatic changes of the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), which occurred 18,000 years ago. According to both researchers, the recent advance of global climate models has provided new perspectives for a more faithful reconstruction of the conditions of that period.

Literature and other cultural themes

The "Culture" section brings texts about works by writers Samuel Beckett, José de Alencar and Murilo Mendes, and about the costumes of the Brazilian Indians during the time of Johan Maurits van Nassau-Siegen's government (1637-1644) during the Dutch occupation in the country's Northeast. The set of articles also includes "The Impediments of Memory," by Jeanne Marie Gagnebin, and "Ideological Automata," by Benhur Bortolotto.

Estudos Avançados #98 also presents tributes for the ten years since the death of Portuguese writer José Saramago, winner of the 1998 Nobel Prize for Literature. There are three articles on some aspects of the author's work written by Jaime Bertoluci, Marcelo Lachat, and Jean-Pierre Chauvin.

Finally, the edition includes reviews of five books: "Reflection as Resistance: Homage to Alfredo Bosi," organized by Augusto Massi, Erwin Torralbo Gimenez, Marcus Vinicius Mazzari, and Murilo Marcondes de Moura; "The French School of Geography: a Contextual Approach," by Vincent Berdoulay; "The Double Night of Linden Trees," by Marcus Vinicius Mazzari; "Historia von D. Johann Fausten," translated, organized, and commented by Magali Moura; and "The Tragical History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus," by Christopher Marlowe, with translation and notes by Luís Bueno and Caetano Waldrigues Galindo.

The list below contains the names of the authors who have contributed with each one of the addressed themes:

Work, Gender, and Care

Nadya Araujo Guimarães and Priscila Pereira Faria Vieira
Helena Hirata
Natacha Borgeaud-Garciandía
Regina Stela Corrêa Vieira
Louisa Acciari and Tatiane Pinto

Labor Issues

René Mendes
Ludmila Costhek Abílio
Clemente Ganz Lúcio

Environment and Development

André Luis Willerding, Leonardo Rodrigo da Silva, Roseana Pereira da Silva, Geison Maicon Oliveira de Assis, and Estevão Vicente Cavalcanti Monteiro de Paula
Marcel Bursztyn
Daniel Meira Arruda and Carlos Ernesto Gonçalves Reynaud Schaefer

Culture

Jeanne Marie Gagnebin
Luciano Gatti
Fabiano Lemos and Ulysses Pinheiro
Pablo Simpson
Aline Leal Fernandes Barbosa
Benhur Bortolotto
Fausto Viana

José Saramago: Themes and Languages

Jaime Bertoluci
Marcelo Lachat
Jean Pierre Chauvin

Reviews

Alexandre Koji Shiguehara
Nilson Cortez Crocia de Barros
Klaus F. W. Eggensperger
Rafael Rocca dos Santos