Oxford Centre for Tropical Forests seminar – all welcome
Recent analyses of Brazil’s mass media coverage of climate change have found it relatively devoid of climate scepticism and more “advanced” compared to more “advanced” societies, such as the United States, responsible for generating a high and striking level of climate change concern. Through a focus on resource depletion and global environmental change generated by agricultural expansion in Brazil, Myanna examines the extent to which Brazilian research and mass communications structures contribute to the challenge of communicating and addressing them. She argues that current scholarly analyses fail to perceive the nationally particular expressions and foci of anti-environmental forces and how these forces limit the country’s environmental policy and politics.
Trained in cultural anthropology, social studies of science and technology, and interdisciplinary environmental research, Myanna Lahsen studies socio-cultural and political dynamics related to global environmental change, environmental sustainability and development, with special attention to science-policy interfaces and related knowledge politics in the United States and Brazil. She is social science advisor to Nature Climate Change and Executive Editor with WIREs Climate Changes domain on The Social Status of Climate Change Knowledge since both journals’ inceptions, and recently also joined as Executive Editor of “Environment Magazine” (Environment: Science and Policy for Sustainable Development). Since her postdoctoral fellowships at the U.S. National Center for Atmospheric Research and in Harvard University’s JF Kennedy School, she has served as Lecturer in Harvard University’s Environmental Science and Public Policy Program and Senior Associate Researcher in the Earth System Science Center of the Brazilian National Institute for Space Research (INPE). Involved in international science institutions since her position as Social Science Officer with the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme in 2007-2009, she was involved in the “visioning” process that led to the international Future Earth science program. She also convened Future Earth’s 2014 Early Career Scientists Conference in Vigoni, Italy, focused on Ecosystem Health, Human Wellbeing and a Green Economy (www.icsu.org/news-centre/news/top-news/young-scientists-met-to-debate-future-of-the-green-economy). Former recipient of numerous prestigious awards, including the US EPA “STAR| fellowship, she has served on review and advisory panels at the U.S. National Science Foundation and the United Nations on topics related to the science-policy interface, climate change and global sustainability issues.