Hanging In The Balance: The Future Of A Forest
Speakers
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I am the founding president and CEO of Forest Trends an organization focused on bringing value to nature and ecosystem functions. We do this by supporting market and marketlike approaches including incentives and policies and with a focus on ensuring benefits flow equitably to the local and indigenous communities that steward these ecosystems
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Carlos Souza Jr. holds a bachelor's degree in geology from Pará State Federal University, Brazil, an M.Sc. in soil science from Penn State University, US, and a Ph.D. in geography from the University of California Santa Barbara, US. He is currently an associate researcher at Imazon, where he focuses on remote sensing for mapping and monitoring forests, forest degradation, land use and land cover change, surface water monitoring, and spatial modeling. Dr. Souza Jr. has co-authored over 100 journal articles, conference papers, and book chapters. He is also the co-founder of Terras App, an IT company that provides solutions for sustainable landscapes, and the MapBiomas Institute, IAMap. Dr. Souza Jr. has been honored with the Skoll Award and is a Mulago Foundation Fellow.
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Dr. Mark J. Plotkin has led the Amazon Conservation Team (ACT) since 1996, when he co-founded the organization with Liliana Madrigal. He is a renowned ethnobotanist who has spent three decades studying traditional plant use with traditional healers of tropical America.Among his many influential writings, Dr. Plotkin may be best known for his popular work Tales of a Shaman's Apprentice (1994), which has been printed continuously and in multiple languages. His most recent book, The Amazon – What Everyone Needs to Know, was published by Oxford University Press in 2020.Dr. Plotkin has received the San Diego Zoo Gold Medal for Conservation, the Roy Chapman Andrews Distinguished Explorer Award, and, with Liliana Madrigal, the Skoll Award. In 2010, he received the honorary degree of Doctor of Humane Letters from Lewis and Clark College. Dr. Plotkin was educated at Harvard, Yale and Tufts University. His ongoing podcast Plants of the Gods is available on Apple Podcasts and other platforms.
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Liliana Madrigal is Co-Founder and Vice-President of ACT, created in 1996 with Dr. Mark J. Plotkin. Her special mandate is providing the vision, strategic direction, and organizational leadership to advance ACT’s mission. Additionally, Liliana oversees ACT’s fundraising and programmatic activities, traveling frequently to South America to meet and work with ACT's local teams and indigenous partners. Previously she led conservation efforts with the Fundacion de Parques Nacionales de Costa Rica, Conservation International, and The Nature Conservancy. In 2006, Liliana won the Circle of Bridge-Makers Award from the Angeles Arrien Foundation. She and Dr. Plotkin were co-awardees of the Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship in 2008. In 2017, she was awarded a residency fellowship at the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Center. Liliana lives in Arlington, Virginia with her husband Dr. Mark J. Plotkin.
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Martin Von Hildebrand has spent the last five decades accompanying indigenous communities in the Colombian Amazon. During this time, he has been a fundamental actor to obtain the recognition of indigenous communities rights in the National Constitution, including the collective ownership of their land and the development of their governments. They now own 26 million hectares of continuous rainforest. Their rights have been recognized, and they have set up many governments.
Currently, Martin, along with NGOs, indigenous organizations, civil society, governments, and private enterprises, is coordinating the protection of the largest stretch of rainforests on the planet (the northern part of the Amazon between the Andes and the Atlantic, 260 million hectares).
He is an ethnologist with a doctorate from the University of Paris VII, founder and the current president of the Gaia Amazonas Foundation. He has been awarded a dozen international awards.
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Beto Veríssimo is a co-founder and associate researcher at Imazon, a think and do tank in the Brazilian Amazon. He is also co-founder of Amazon Center for Entrepreneurship. Moreover, he is Co-Director of Amazon 2030 Program, an initiative that seeks to develop an action plan for sustainable development of the Brazilian Amazon and Director of Social Progress Brazil. He received several awards including the 2010 Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship. Verissimo has a graduate degree in Agriculture by Federal University of Brazilian Amazon and Ecology by Penn State University.
