̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - Brazil

New long-term collaboration with Suzano begins with a £10 million donation to support conservation and sustainability education and research

plc32 — Fri, 15 Nov 2024 16:05:37 +0000

An initial £10 million donation will be used to support education and research into areas including the conservation of biodiversity, enhancing business sustainability, and the restoration of natural habitats in Brazil and beyond. ̽��ֱ��agreement will establish the Suzano Scholars Fund, a perpetual endowment at Jesus College to fund Brazilian nationals studying for a postgraduate degree at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge connected to the environment, ecology and conservation, educating the next generation of sustainability experts and leaders. Funding will also be provided to academics based at the Conservation Research Institute to undertake research projects exploring the interaction between human and natural systems in areas such as biodiversity, climate change, water resource management, and ecosystem restoration. Read more about this new initiative here

Suzano, one the world’s largest producers of bio-based raw materials, based in São Paulo, Brazil, establishes a long-term initiative with Jesus College and the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge.

This visionary initiative will help to build strong links between the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and Brazil

Professor Bhaskar Vira

Suzano

Green forests stretch out to the horizon

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright © ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

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Bolsonaro’s attitude to coronavirus increases ‘risky behaviour’ in Brazil

fpjl2 — Tue, 05 May 2020 09:44:31 +0000

Jair Bolsonaro’s public undermining of pandemic prevention efforts reduces social distancing in the parts of Brazil where his voter base is strongest, according to a new study using location data from over 60 million phones.

Economists used electoral data and anonymised geo-location from devices across Brazil to investigate whether the president’s outspoken anti-quarantine attitude influenced numbers of citizens staying at home to stop coronavirus spread.

Researchers from the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and Sao Paolo School of Economics-FGV found that municipalities which came out strongly for Bolsonaro in the last election have seen much higher levels of movement and travel among the population during February and March.

Additionally, in the days immediately after Bolsonaro’s televised dismissals of COVID-19 mitigation – e.g. publicly defying quarantine guidance or calling for schools to reopen – Brazil’s social distancing fell in general, and fell much more sharply in pro-Bolsonaro areas.

“Our research suggests that statements on public health behaviour from political leaders are taken seriously by their followers, regardless of how scientifically accurate they are, or how damaging they might be,” said Dr Tiago Cavalcanti, study author from Cambridge’s Faculty of Economics.

“Bolsonaro actively challenges the regulations imposed by sub-national governments to stem the coronavirus tide. He dismisses WHO recommendations and even those of his own minister of health, who he has recently fired.”

“Using big data research, we see the president’s attitude play out at a population level. Brazil is a polarized nation with a populist leader. ̽��ֱ��patterns we see in Brazil could be echoed in nations with a similar political situation, such as the United States,” he said.

Cavalcanti and his colleagues Dr Nicholas Ajzenman and Dr Daniel Da Mata looked at the percentage of mobile phones that remained within a 450-metre radius of their home location between February 4 and April 7 2020.

They compared this “social distancing index” with the voting record of each of Brazil’s 5,570 municipalities, in particular whether Bolsanaro received more or less than 50% of the vote in the first round of the 2018 election.

Social distancing has gone up across Brazil since the contagion began. In the top 3% of cities with the highest Bolsonaro vote counts*, such as Ascurra in Santa Catarina and Nova Santa Rosa in Parana, this increase was an average of 24 percentage points.

However, in cities at the bottom of Bolsonaro’s support spectrum*, such as Paricoa in Alagoas and Irapuan Pinheiro in Ceara, social distancing was much higher: a 31 percentage point increase.

̽��ֱ��study suggests that, on average during February and March, the cities where support for Bolsonaro is highest had levels of social distancing that were almost 30% lower than cities where Bolsonaro has very little support.

̽��ֱ��economists also analysed two key televised appearances by Bolsonaro in March, during which he openly disparaged efforts to control the pandemic.

̽��ֱ��first was on March 15, when Bolsonaro – suspected at the time of carrying COVID-19 – appeared at a supporters rally in Brazilia, flaunting public health guidelines by taking selfies and doling out fist bumps in the throng.

̽��ֱ��second was on March 24. In an official presidential pronouncement he called for schools to reopen nationwide, and criticized Brazilian media for too much reporting on the pandemic in Italy, suggesting he would only get “a little flu” at worst from COVID-19.

̽��ֱ��research shows how both these appearances caused social distancing levels to drop in the ten days after each event when compared to the ten days leading up them. ̽��ֱ��drop was particularly significant in municipalities with high numbers of Bolsonaro voters.

In fact, Cavalcanti suggests that, based on their data, a rough calculation for the effects of the March 24 appearance sees approximately one million additional Brazilians across the nation straying more than 450 metres from their home on each of the ten days following the televised speech.

“Leadership matters,” said Cavalcanti. “ ̽��ֱ��attitude of a leader can have a significant and possibly devastating impact on individual health and the healthcare systems of a nation.”

“When Bolsonaro minimises the pandemic, we see significant increases in what is now risky behaviour within large sections of the Brazilian population.”

“As coronavirus cases and fatalities continue to rise across Brazil, the behaviour of its leader may be having a very real and dangerous effect,” he said.

̽��ֱ��researchers also found that Bolsonaro’s televised appearances, and the press coverage that ensued, much of it negative, was linked to a more significant drop in social distancing in areas with “high media access”*.

̽��ֱ��team calculated the overall change in Brazil’s social distancing during the period for which they have data. In early February, before the pandemic took hold, around 20% of the Brazilian population stayed within 450 metres of their house. By early April, this had increased to around 53%.

̽��ֱ��researchers worked with technology company In Loco to produce the phone data analysis, and the complete findings are published as a Cambridge-INET working paper here: covid.econ.cam.ac.uk

Notes:
* Top 3% of cities for Bolsonaro support had an average Bolsonaro vote of 82% in the first round of the 2018 elections.
* ̽��ֱ��bottom 3% of cities for Bolsonaro support had an average Bolsonaro vote of 5% in the first round of the 2018 elections.
* “High media access” is defined as municipalities in the top 25% nationally for average internet penetration, plus at least one local TV broadcaster.

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Study suggests that TV appearances by Bolsonaro led to millions more Brazilians ignoring social distancing in the days following broadcast.

̽��ֱ��attitude of a leader can have a significant and possibly devastating impact on individual health and the healthcare systems of a nation

Tiago Cavalcanti

Jeso Carneiro

Jair Bolsonaro, President of Brazil

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright © ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – as here, on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

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Young leaders from UK and Latin America tackle future at Shaping Horizons

plc32 — Wed, 11 Sep 2019 12:18:09 +0000

They will explore how emerging technologies like those underpinning genomics, artificial intelligence, clean energy, and smart cities can be used and regulated to create a more equitable and sustainable global community as well as how to encourage sustainable leadership across disciplines and move beyond traditional diplomacy to address global challenges like climate change and social inequalities.

Shaping Horizons 2019 is a Summit and Action Programme rooted in science, policy, and innovation and will strengthen ties and build relationships between young Future Leaders and Senior Leaders from the UK and Latin America. ̽��ֱ��delegates have been selected from across academia, industry, and government.

Professor David Cardwell, FREng, Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Strategy and Planning at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, welcomed delegates at the start of the Summit on behalf of the ̽��ֱ��.

“On every front, the ̽��ֱ�� has been and continues to be engaged with Latin America, including the pleasure of hosting this fantastic summit, Shaping Horizons, where the mission is to empower and promote youth, create networks and to drive change,” Cardwell said.

̽��ֱ��week will culminate with the Future Leaders pitching for prize money to support their own innovative social impact projects they have developed through mentorship and learning during the Summit.

Winners will be supported in further developing and launching their projects through the Action Programme which will follow on from the Summit.

Nigel Baker, OBE MVO, Head of the Latin America Department at the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office told delegates that all their ideas would help shape the future.

“Shaping Horizons is absolutely driven by the sense of entrepreneurship, innovation, and ideas of the young people involved. It is going to be fascinating to see the proposals that are coming out,” Baker said.

“There are 24 different teams and there are going to be some spectacular proposals and ideas. Some will win prizes, some will not, but I suspect that all of those ideas are going to be applicable in the future.”

Shaping Horizons is a non-profit initiative organised at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge with the support of the Office of Postdoctoral Affairs, and the Cambridge Hub of Global Shapers Community, which is an initiative of the World Economic Forum.

Shaping Horizons was founded by Dr Matias Acosta, a UK-Canada Fellow at the Centre for Science and Policy, and Theo Lundberg, a NanoDTC PhD Student in the Department of Physics.

“Shaping Horizons was founded to promote sustainability using global, cross-disciplinary cooperation as our driving force,” Acosta said.

“We are a team of 40 undergraduates and academics from across more than 20 departments from the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge bringing this initiative forward. Our goal is to build a shared and sustainable future between Latin America and the UK.

"We will be providing more than £30,000 in support for cooperative bilateral projects and also have designed a continuous mentorship programme to maximize the chance of success of each of the ideas.”

More than 100 future leaders from the UK and Latin America have gathered at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge to discuss the future of work and education in an increasingly global digital era at this year’s Shaping Horizons summit.

Shaping Horizons was founded to promote sustainability using global, cross-disciplinary cooperation as our driving force.

Shaping Horizons founder Dr Matias Acosta

Yes

Opinion: Pirate, turncoat, survivor: the life and times of Anthony Knivet, a Briton in 16th-century Brazil

Anonymous — Fri, 14 Oct 2016 08:10:44 +0000

On a dark night late in 1592, a group of Englishmen was massacred on the island of São Sebastião, off the southeast coast of Brazil. Most had deserted the infamous English privateer Thomas Cavendish less than two weeks before in the hope they could find a living in Brazil. But this was not to be. A band of Portuguese and their allied Indians from Rio de Janeiro set upon them in the early hours: they were dragged to the shore, where their skulls were smashed with “fire brands”.

At the time, English subjects were considered enemies of Spain and Portugal, “heretic Lutherans” who were officially forbidden to set foot on the Iberian colonies in the New World. But Cavendish’s men were not innocent: only a couple of months earlier they had besieged towns, burned down mills and plundered villages along the Brazilian coast.

̽��ֱ��massacre in São Sebastião would have remained unknown, had it not been for one who managed to survive and later write what would become the earliest extensive account of Brazil written by an Englishman. This man was Anthony Knivet, a young soldier from Norfolk with few scruples and a great desire for fortune.

In country

Knivet would spend the next nine years living in Brazil – mostly in or around the incipient village of Rio de Janeiro – working as a drudge for the ruling Portuguese. After all, the only reason he escaped being killed in São Sebastião was his swift offer to trade information on the English in exchange for his life. This would be the first of many brushes with death that Knivet would experience in Brazil. He would also, while serving the Portuguese as a slaver, travel vast portions of a territory then virtually unknown by Europeans, encountering a myriad of native tribes, many of which would have been destroyed by the following century.

From the vantage point of an outsider, Knivet witnessed first-hand several aspects that characterised Brazilian colonial society in its very beginnings: the harsh life at the early sugar-mills – the “engenhos” – the multiracial settlements, the political disputes, the exploitation of labour and the violent expansion towards the unknown “interior”. Though we do not know exactly how he managed to finally extricate himself from the hands of the Portuguese, we know that he arrived back in England in 1601, and in 1625 the remarkable story of his adventures came out in print as ̽��ֱ��Admirable Adventures and Strange Fortunes of Master Antonie Knivet, who went with Master Thomas Cavendish to the South Sea, 1591.

Slaves working the sugar mill at an engenho. John Carter Brown Library’s Archive of Early American Images

Published in a compendium of travel accounts, the Admirable Adventures had not attracted much sympathy or credence until recently, and remained mostly unknown to the broader public. It received its first single annotated edition in English only last year.

One reason for this lasting disregard may have been Knivet’s obscure background, his poor writing skills, together with allusions to mermaids and “glistening mountains”. Even his original editor, Samuel Purchas, was reticent about endorsing some of his descriptions. However, on close inspection and when verified against Portuguese documents, several events, names and descriptions in the narrative turn out to be surprisingly accurate.

Portrait of a survivor

Perhaps there is another aspect that has kept Knivet’s story obscure: in a seeming endless string of narrow escapes from death, Knivet emerges as someone whose only loyalty is to saving his own skin at any cost, even if it meant betraying the English, the Portuguese or the Indians. In the ruthless world of colonial disputes and bloody encounters, Knivet became a master of survival, a skillful improviser who aptly manipulated cultural tensions to his own advantage.

Knivet tells us how, after breaking off from an expedition along with 12 young Portuguese, he encounters a tribe of Tamoio living deep in the hinterland. Knowing of the enmity between Tamoio and Portuguese, Knivet aptly declares himself French before all his Portuguese companions are executed and ritually devoured. ̽��ֱ��ensuing year is spent living with the tribe until he convinces his hosts to engage in a mass migration to the coast in search of fisheries and French trading ships.

What Knivet tells his readers (but did not tell his hosts) is that he in fact longed to find a safe passage back to England. In truth, Knivet led the tribe straight to a notorious slave-trading post kept by the Portuguese on the coast. As a result, the last known tribe of Tamoio to have escaped Portuguese conquest in the 1550s was then either massacred or enslaved.

̽��ֱ��Admirable Adventures renders the interplay between fact and fiction even more problematic as we deal with a narrator who can be disconcertingly frank while remaining unnervingly opaque. Apart from its fascinating glimpse into an under-documented time in colonial Brazil, Knivet’s account tells us a lot about the interplay of truth and fiction in early modern travel writing.

̽��ֱ��author will be giving a talk on Anthony Knivet as part of the Cambridge Festival of Ideas from October 17 to 30.

Vivien Kogut Lessa de Sá, Lecturer in Portuguese Studies, ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge

This article was originally published on ̽��ֱ��Conversation. Read the original article.

Vivien Kogut Lessa de Sá (Department of Spanish & Portuguese) discusses the life and times of Anthony Knivet, a young soldier from Norfolk who spent nine years living in Brazil in the 16th century. She will be discussing Knivet's life on 22 October as part of the Cambridge Festival of Ideas.

Public domain

«Dança dos Tapuias», célebre quadro do pintor neerlandês Albert Eckhout

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

Yes

From Chinese milk to Indian chocolate, behind the world’s fast-expanding markets

Anonymous — Wed, 21 Oct 2015 10:31:23 +0000

It’s time to think small when it comes to identifying growth areas in the global economy.

For the past 15 years, since the BRIC acronym was coined for Brazil, Russia, India and China, the world’s biggest emerging economies have been the focus for discussion on growth opportunities outside of western developed markets. But with a slowdown in China and a credit downgrade for Brazil, it is getting harder to view the BRICs story as a simple, grand narrative of gilded opportunity for investors and businesses alike.

Those concerns are not confined to China and Brazil. Russia’s economy is contracting this year due to low energy prices; India’s economic recovery too has been slower than expected.

But these nations are not a busted flush; we just have to adjust our thinking. Real growth can be found in fast-expanding markets within those countries. It is a subject we have examined recently in a paper published in the Thunderbird International Business Review, seeking to understand these markets which transcend sectors as well as nations, and sometimes even confound conventional wisdom.

Milking it

While BRICs was useful shorthand for showing that a few populous countries would reshape the global economy this century, this macroeconomic lure has in fact been a microeconomic disappointment for some big companies. Home Depot had an emblematic experience, entering China in 2006 and pulling out completely in 2012. It didn’t anticipate that the do-it-yourself culture of the US wouldn’t translate into a country with abundant and relatively cheap labourers.

It is a story that illustrates the difficulty in using a top-down approach when operating in emerging markets. So rather than only taking a bird’s-eye view of such populous countries, it is useful to also take a ground-up look at where highly specific opportunities lie in BRIC countries and beyond.

̽��ֱ��heat is on. Fast expanding markets take flight. Will Murphy, CC BY-NC-ND

In China, one of these fast-expanding markets is milk production and consumption. More people have been paying close attention to their health and to the role that milk can play in their basic diet. Other factors have included an upgrade to the supply chain, a relaxation of the country’s one-child policy and the continued westernisation of China as companies such as Starbucks grow popular.

From 2000 to 2006 alone, China’s raw milk consumption nearly quadrupled, and the country is now the world’s third-largest producer behind the US and India as agricultural infrastructure has improved.

Choc-alert

In India, fast-expanding markets include Western-style cheese, which saw sales growth of nearly 200% from 2008-2013; solar water heaters, with the area in square metres of instalments almost doubling between 2009 and 2011; and the chocolate industry may treble this year to more than $2 billion, as a rise in sugar prices has made traditional sweets more expensive.

Object of desire. In Liechtenstein at least Partha S. Sahana, CC BY

Beyond BRICs, fast-expanding markets include mobile money transfers in Kenya and video game production in Turkey, developing games which conform to Islamic values.

And we can even branch out beyond the developing world too. There are opportunities for entrepreneurs, investors and businesses in the Vitamin D testing market in Italy, benefitting from an increasing lack of direct sun exposure; in organic food production in Spain, linked to a downturn in the property market; in food trucks in the US, which have grown at a double-digit annual rate in recent years; and ceramic teeth in Liechtenstein, an industry which expanded in the past five years at a compound annual growth rate of 9.5%.

While overall growth is useful to know, an unquestioned loyalty to macroeconomic data misses much of the equation and loses most of the intelligence that can drive astute investment decisions. That’s partly because macroeconomic analysis often takes a linear look at the future, and this can often prove wrong. If you were to look at the US population statistics in the early 1900s, one could reach the conclusion that the country would have been 80% Italian and Polish by 1930 if trends had followed a linear progression.

Pocketing the wealth

̽��ֱ��central idea is that wealth can be found everywhere, even in countries that share gloomy macroeconomic data or prospects, like Bolivia, which is the country that has driven the quinoa revolution into the “ready to eat” industry in the US. With an annual growth rate of 26.5%, Bolivia has exploded its production of quinoa, to the benefits of the new dietary aspirations of Americans, who have integrated the super grain into the daily use of soups, salads and energy bars. This is a great example of an agricultural fast-expanding market, which stems from what many consider as the poorest economy in Latin America.

Making the most of the boom. Bolivian quinoa farmers. Bioversity International, CC BY-NC-ND

Sometimes, fast-emerging markets develop in unlikely settings. Italy has long had a reputation for high-quality food products and delicious wines, but in the midst of that, microbreweries are gaining a foothold. This is partly because the lack of a traditional beer culture in Italy means microbreweries can more readily experiment with flavours and ingredients. Another surprising expanding market in Italy: American-style bakery products such as chocolate chip cookies, cupcakes and donuts.

Some may scoff that craft beer in Italy or quinoa in Bolivia are pretty insignificant compared to major global industries such as automobiles or machine tools. But such a reaction risks blinding us to fresh insights that can lead to new pockets of excellence that, taken together, make a real difference to the world economy.

Khaled Soufani, Senior Faculty in Management Practice (Finance), ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge; Mark Esposito, Professor of Business & Economics at Grenoble Ecole de Management and Harvard Extension School, Harvard ̽��ֱ��, and Terence Tse, Associate Professor of Finance / Head of Competitiveness Studies at i7 Institute for Innovation and Competitiveness, ESCP Europe

This article was originally published on ̽��ֱ��Conversation. Read the original article.

Khaled Soufani (Cambridge Judge Business School), Mark Esposito (Grenoble Ecole de Management and Harvard ̽��ֱ��) and Terence Tse (i7 Institute for Innovation and Competitiveness, ESCP Europe) discuss fast-expanding markets in the world's biggest emerging economies.

Gwendolyn Stansbury

Got milk? China joins the lactose lovers.

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

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‘Para Ingles ver’ (for the English to see): the other side of the World Cup

amb206 — Sat, 05 Jul 2014 08:00:00 +0000

England’s team may have returned home, but eyes remain on Brazil. As the World Cup enters its fourth week, tensions mount in the stadiums but more so in the streets outside, with protests accompanying most matches.

̽��ֱ��World Cup is a bitter topic for many Brazilians, already angry at an undemocratic and regressive use of public funds. Football in Brazil owes much of its fame and vibrancy to the most vulnerable social groups. Megastars Romário, Pelé, Ronaldo and Jairzinho all grew up in favelas.

It is these very groups who are being evicted, priced out, repressed and shot at for the sake of FIFA’s mega-event. During the Chile-Spain match in Rio de Janeiro, 25-year-old Afonso Maurício Linhares was shot and killed by the police as he was refereeing a local football match in the Manguinhos favela just 6km from the stadium. In Belo Horizonte, an unfinished overpass constructed for the World Cup collapsed only yesterday, killing two people on a bus while others were trapped inside.

In June 2013, more than two million people took to the streets of Brazilian cities in what came to be known as the ‘Vinegar Revolt’ or ‘Brazilian Autumn’. Sparked by rising bus fares, these protests became a much larger movement against inequality, corruption, privatisation and the everyday brutality of the military police.

In Rio, as in other host cities, simmering discontent continued as World Cup construction projects resulted in unbearable levels of traffic congestion through the city’s hottest summer for 30 years. This popular anger has now re-erupted as the world focuses its attention on a country where an economic boom has done little for the majority of the population.

There is an increasing trend for city governments to use international mega-events to raise their international profile, attract investment, and provide impetus for urban development projects.

̽��ֱ��widespread resistance to the World Cup in Brazil places an onus on social scientists, activists and policy makers to ask whether the hosting of mega-events is actually ever ‘good for’ a city, and if so, for whom exactly? ̽��ֱ��neglected stadiums in Cape Town and Athens loom as a warning for the legacy of Brazil’s World Cup as well as for Rio’s 2016 Olympic Games.

Mega-events have a direct bearing on city planning. They result in programmes that prioritise flashy, short-term initiatives targeted at tourists and TV audiences rather than residents.

Last year I supervised the undergraduate dissertation of Land Economy student Annabel Cooke, who chose to write about the links between the World Cup and the ‘pacification’ projects in Rio’s favelas. These are essentially military invasions of favelas in which a specially created police force wrests control from drug trafficking gangs.

Annabel’s research shows that these programmes are provoked and sustained by Rio’s hosting of the World Cup. ̽��ֱ��focus of pacification is largely on favelas closest to the stadiums, which leads gangs to relocate to other, poorer favelas, while indiscriminate police violence under the pretext of protecting tourists is increasing across the city.

Image-based or ‘city branding’ policies are nothing new. Brazil has long had to fabricate an image of success and stability to attract investors (from states whose own wealth was generated by resource theft from Brazil and other colonies). There is even a Brazilian saying, ‘para ingles ver’, or ‘for the English to see’. This phrase dates back to a treaty signed in 1826 between Britain and Brazil supposedly ending the slave trade, which actually continued for another six decades.

Many songs written in Rio, particularly in the genre known as ‘funk consciente’, have lyrics that tell a story of two worlds. Tourists hang out in the south zone, drinking coconut water on Copacabana beach while, in the song-writers’ worlds of the favelas and north zone, thousands of people struggle with the most basic needs of security, food and clean water.

What is the outcome of strategies that are ‘para ingles ver’? If the hosting of mega-events provides the scope and impetus for contemporary urban development, who loses out behind the glossy images, and how are people responding?

As part of my PhD, I am exploring the impact of mega-events on street vendors in Rio. ̽��ֱ��vendors I interviewed have some important insights into these questions, which are pertinent not just for Brazil but for host cities of international mega-events across the world. My interviewees spoke at length about their feelings of betrayal, invisibility and indignation at the World Cup, but also their involvement in emerging political struggles.

Street vendors are one of the most vulnerable and neglected groups of workers in the city. They suffer from police extortion during the day, assaults on public transport, and pervasive violence back home in the favelas where they live.

I work as a volunteer for a small non-profit workers rights’ organisation called CAMTRA (Casa da Mulher Trabalhadora). Based in the centre of Rio, CAMTRA is doing an extensive survey of female vendors’ impressions and experiences of the Cup.

̽��ֱ��first phase of the study showed that many vendors fear that the World Cup would lead to a decrease in living standards due to increased police regulation of vending. ̽��ֱ��‘General Cup Law’ passed last year stipulates that only registered established traders can sell within a certain radius of each stadium, meaning that as one vendor asserted: “With the World Cup, only those who already have money will earn.”

For the past year, vendors have faced vastly increased commutes to work, as most live in the North Zone where infrastructure projects by the airport have led to extreme congestion on the roads. In my interviews, vendors made a clear connection between poor services and the huge sums of money being spent on the World Cup. One woman working at a clothes stall exclaimed: ‘This government spending all this money on the world cup! It needs to prioritise, there are people dying in the street here.”

Some vendors had been left homeless as a result of World Cup construction projects, and in CAMTRA’s survey of more than vendors, all those who lived in favelas felt that the police ‘pacification’ projects were directed at tourists rather than residents.

All 30 of the vendors I spoke with in depth were in favour of the street protests, arguing that the unrest was a signal that Brazilians had ‘woken up’ and might achieve some real change. Some of my interviewees recalled the massive protest movement that swept the corrupt President Fernando Collor de Mello out of power in 1992. Many predicted an increase in protests during the World Cup and in the run up to the Olympics. “People are going to come back to the streets, I promise,” an orange juice seller told me, “And in larger numbers than ever before.”

There is some indication that the Brazilian government is responding to the popular mobilisations. Just before the start of the World Cup, President Dilma Rousseff committed to maintain the increase in social spending that her presidency has seen, as part of an agreement made in response to the June 2013 protests.

She has also pledged to ring-fence the hoped-for returns from the ‘Lula’ oil field (a potential gold mine of pre-salt layer oil discovered 250km off the coast of Rio de Janeiro) claiming that in the next 35 years the government would be able to invest R$1 trillion in education and health.

̽��ֱ��World Cup and Olympic committees strive to maintain a glossy image of Brazil for corporate investors. Yet an unintended outcome of their mega-events strategy is the international attention seized by critical groups, who will hold the government to account on these public spending promises.

As well as working with CAMTRA, I volunteer as a translator for Rio on Watch, a community journalism website that is seeing high levels of traffic at the moment. As a result of reports and images that shame the government and FIFA, another picture of Brazil has emerged. Protests, state violence and political repression are now widely associated with the country, alongside football, samba and cachaça.

“ ̽��ֱ��favelas cannot be silenced,” insists Ana Paula Gomes de Oliveira, mother of 19-year-old Jonathan de Oliveira Lima who was recently killed by the police in Complexo de Alemao.

More and more people are aware of the blood, sweat and tears behind the stadiums, and political reports are creeping into the sports sections of online news sources. Brazilian protesters are not actually calling on us to boycott the World Cup matches. ̽��ֱ��popular slogan and hashtag used across Brazil, ‘Nao vai ter copa’ – there will not be a world cup – is not really a threat or campaign to prevent the World Cup from happening. Rather, it is to assert that the World Cup should not be as the governors of the host cities intended – an uncontroversial, investment-garnering, glossing over of the city scapes ‘para ingles ver’. Instead, the slogan ‘Our Cup is in the Streets’ refers to the subversion of the event into another kind of ‘cup’.

This is a ‘cup of strikes’, as the striking public sector workers in Rio claimed, a cup where the eyes of Amnesty International are monitoring human rights abuses on the streets, and where competitions between national football teams are changed into comparisons between national policies. In the photo above, the banner contrasts Brazil and Uruguay. ̽��ֱ��text reads ‘Uruguay 3, Brazil 0: legalisation of abortion, equal marriage and legalisation of marijuana.’

We do need to look carefully for this ‘other cup’. It’s not going to be publicised along the edges of the stadiums with McDonalds and Hyundai. As the street vendors assert, it is the way in which the dynamics on the streets play that determine what mega-events mean to a country. And for those attending the games, one small way to support the ‘cup of the streets’ is to buy from street vendors rather than from the FIFA-endorsed chains. Just take a short walk from the stadium, and they will be there waiting for you with an ice cold beer.

Inset images: protest poster reads "the parties in the stadiums are not worth the tears in the favelas" (credit: Rio on Watch); bikini seller and tourist (credit: eGuide Travel); caipirinha seller (credit: Keetr); Uruguay versus Brazil banner compares the two countries over recent years (credit: Renato Cinco).

Brazilians are famous for their love of football but millions of ordinary people are angry at the huge sums spent on the World Cup. Lucy McMahon, a PhD candidate in Development Studies, is working as a volunteer for two human rights organisations in Rio de Janiero. She reports on her research among some of the poorest groups.

Mega-events have a direct bearing on city planning. They result in programmes that prioritise flashy, short-term initiatives targeted at tourists and TV audiences rather than residents.

Lucy McMahon

Rio on Watch

Names of people killed by the police are stencilled on to football shirts

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Cambridge and Brazil discuss possibilities for further scientific collaboration

amb94 — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 10:05:53 +0000

̽��ֱ��group was led by Prof Jorge Guimarães, President of Brazil’s federal agency for the support of post-graduate education and research (CAPES), a division of the Ministry of Education; and by Prof Paulo Beirão, Director of Agricultural, Biological and Medical Sciences of Brazil’s national research council (CNPq), part of the Ministry for Science, Technology and Innovation.

Supported by CAPES, by the Brazilian embassy in London, and by the UK embassy in Brazil, the event sought to identify opportunities for Cambridge-Brazil research collaboration in biological sciences, medical sciences, and physical sciences and technology.

Welcoming the Brazilian delegates and over sixty Cambridge attendees at Clare College’s Gillespie Centre, Prof Lynn Gladden, Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Research, emphasised the ̽��ֱ��’s interest in pursuing collaborative opportunities with the world’s best researchers in strategic fields of knowledge. She welcomed the chance to explore ways of supporting the growing number of links established by Cambridge academics with their Brazilian counterparts.

Prof Guimarães told the audience that CAPES takes very seriously the opportunity of fostering collaboration with Cambridge–as shown by the fact that most of the Brazilian academics invited to join the delegation were full members of the Brazilian Academy of Science, one of the highest forms of scientific distinction.

Representing the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation (MCTI), Prof Beirão reminded the audience that, although science is relatively young in the country, Brazil has been catching up fast by investing significantly in its science base, and has already attained world excellence in certain fields of knowledge –represented by the National Institutes for Science and Technology (INCTs), which CNPq supports. A closer research relationship with a world-leading university like Cambridge would, he hoped, bring benefits to all.

Following the opening remarks, simultaneous breakout sessions were held during which panellists from Cambridge and Brazil offered overviews of their research interests and suggested possible areas for further collaboration.

̽��ֱ��session on Biological Sciences included presentations by Prof Geoffrey Smith, Head of Department of Pathology; Dr John Carr, Senior Lecturer in Plant Sciences; Prof Steve Oliver, Director of the Systems Biology Centre; and Dr David Sargan, from the Department of Veterinary Medicine. Their Brazilian counterparts were Prof Ricardo Gazinnelli, of the Federal ̽��ֱ�� of Minas Gerais (UFMG), and coordinator of the INCT for Vaccines; Prof Mauro Martins Teixeira, also of UFMG, and coordinator of the INCT for Dengue; and Prof Maria de Fatima Grossi de Sá, plant biotechnology researcher at Brazil’s national agricultural agency, EMBRAPA.

Physical Sciences and Technology were represented by Prof Lindsay Greer, Head of Department of Materials Science and Metallurgy; Prof Jeremy Baumberg, Director of the Nanophotonics Centre; Prof Simone Hochgreb, Professor of Experimental combustion at the Department of Engineering; Prof Richard McMahon, of the Institute of Astronomy; and Dr Sophie Jackson, Reader in Biophysical Chemistry. They shared the panel with Prof Carlos Aragão, Director of the Brazilian Center for Research in Energy and Materials (CNPEM); Prof Luiz Davidovich, quantum physicist at the Federal ̽��ֱ�� of Rio de Janeiro; Prof Alvaro T. Prata, mechanical engineer at the Federal ̽��ֱ�� of Santa Catarina and currently Secretary for Technological Development and Innovation at the MCTI; and Prof Virgilio Almeida, computer scientist at UFMG and Secretary for Information Technology Policy at the MCTI.

̽��ֱ��session on medical sciences involved Prof Christopher Rudd, from the Division of Immunology, Department of Pathology; Dr Kenneth Seamon, Development Director for Science at the Cambridge Cancer Centre; and Dr Thais Minnet, Senior Research Associate, Institute of Public Health. They discussed potential areas for collaborative work with Prof Jorge Kalil, Director of the Immunology laboratory at São Paulo’s InCor hospital; Prof Guilherme Kurtz, Head of Pharmacology at Brazil’s National Cancer Institute; and Prof Kleber Gomes Franchini, Director of the National Laboratory for Biosciences (LNBio), in Campinas.

̽��ֱ��breakout sessions and closing remarks were followed by a buffet lunch, during which attendees were able to discuss their research interests with the Brazilian delegates.

As immediate follow-up to the event, the International Strategy Office and Research Strategy Office are collecting and collating feedback from panellists and attendees. ̽��ֱ��purpose is to create a list of research themes and modes of engagement that Cambridge researchers would find most useful as they seek to establish or deepen research links to Brazilian scientists.

After comparing priorities and interests, CAPES and Cambridge will identify areas of research that CAPES is likely to support through the provision of funding for researcher mobility and for the organisation of thematic workshops. This initial form of support, it is hoped, will allow collaborators in Cambridge and Brazil to tap other sources of funding for joint research projects.

For enquiries, please contact Dr Ángel Gurría-Quintana, International Strategy Office (angel.gurria@admin.cam.ac.uk).

A delegation comprising some of Brazil’s most senior researchers and science administrators was in Cambridge on June 7 to take part in a half-day seminar, “Cambridge-Brazil: Opportunities for a strategic partnership.”

Phil Mynott

Prof Jorge Guimarães, President of CAPES; Prof Lynn Gladden, Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Research; Prof Paulo Beirão, of CNPq

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Event highlights strong links with Brazil

th288 — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 11:31:36 +0000

̽��ֱ��Rector of Universidade Estadual de Campinas (Unicamp), Professor Fernando Ferreira Costa, met with the Cambridge Vice-Chancellor Professor Sir Leszek Borysiewicz this morning, before a day-long seminar involving academics from both institutions.

Unicamp is a research-intensive university located in the state of São Paulo. It is widely recognised as one of the top-ranked Latin American institutions of higher education.

It contributes 17% of the country’s scientific output and produces 10% of Brazil’s PhDs. Through its technology transfer office, Inova Unicamp, it has become the country’s leading university in the production of Intellectual Property.

̽��ֱ��seminar, “Research collaborations: Opportunities, Policy and Practice”, was organised by Cambridge Enterprise in partnership with Inova.

It was funded by the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office’s Prosperity Fund, and coordinated by the International Strategy Office, the Research Strategy Office and the Institute for Manufacturing.

Making his opening remarks, the Vice-Chancellor commented on Cambridge and Unicamp’s shared belief that “research must not only be of the highest quality, but must be for the benefit of society.” He added that “friendship and solidarity are essential” for successful collaboration, and hoped the Rector of Unicamp would feel that “he was very much among friends”.

Professor Costa gave an overview of Unicamp’s activities and said: “I am sure this is the beginning of increasing and real cooperation between our universities.”

Speaking on behalf of the UK government, Professor Sir Adrian Smith, Director General of Knowledge and Innovation at the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, declared: “Our aim is to maintain and extend the UK’s position of as one of Brazil’s top partners in science and innovation. We also want the UK to be a gateway for Brazil’s internationalisation.”

After keynote speeches by Dr Jennifer Barnes, Pro-Vice-Chancellor for International Strategy, and Professor Ronaldo Pilli, Unicamp's Provost for Research, the meeting broke up into two parallel sessions to discuss opportunities and challenges for collaborative research in biological sciences and energy.

On Thursday, Professor Costa had the opportunity to visit the School of Clinical Medicine, the Cambridge Institute for Medical Research, the Wellcome Trust Stem Cell Institute and the Centre of Latin American Studies.

̽��ֱ�� ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge has a long tradition of engagement with Brazil. As was pointed out by Professor Steve Oliver, one of the panellists on the biological sciences session, the ̽��ֱ�� Herbarium holds samples of plants collected by Charles Darwin during his famous voyage on ̽��ֱ��Beagle.

̽��ֱ��prestigious Simón Bolívar Chair of Latin American Studies, a visiting professorship for distinguished Latin American intellectuals, has been held by notable Brazilians including economist Celso Furtado, former president Fernando Henrique Cardoso, and sociologist José de Souza Martins.

There are currently many existing research collaborations in areas as diverse as infectious diseases, plant biology, animal welfare, renewable energy, cancer studies and stem cell research.

One of the purposes of the seminar –which focused on research in biological sciences and energy—was to explore ways in which these links can be strengthened, and new links developed.

Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Press opened its Brazil branch in 1998. Today, with a head office in São Paulo and an office in Rio de Janeiro, CUP is one of the largest international publishers in this important market.

Brazil is a growing market for English-language teaching and ESOL examinations.

̽��ֱ��U.K. is Brazil’s second largest partner in scientific research. Engagement with Brazil is a key strategic priority for the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge for the coming decades.

Cambridge has agreements with Brazilian funding bodies such as CAPES (Federal Agency for the Support and Evaluation of Graduate Education) to offer scholarships to Brazilian citizens.

One of the purposes of Unicamp’s delegation is to explore the possibility of sending Unicamp graduate students and post-docs to Cambridge through the mobility scheme Science Without Borders, announced last year by the Brazilian president, Dilma Rousseff.

̽��ֱ��Rector of Unicamp and Professor Pilli were joined by fellow academics Professor Roberto Lotufo, Professor Rubens Maciel Filho and Professor Gonçalo Pereira.

Pictured are (l-r) Professor Fernando Ferreira Costa, Professor Sir Leszek Borysiewicz and Dr Jennifer Barnes, Pro-Vice-Chancellor for International Strategy

A senior delegation from one of Brazil’s leading Universities visited Cambridge today to explore the potential for further collaboration.

̽��ֱ�� ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge has a long tradition of engagement with Brazil.

̽��ֱ��Vice-Chancellor

NIGEL LUCKHURST

Brazil visit

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