Climate disasters and their lessons

Marcel Bursztyn is a full professor at the University of Brasilia, in the Center for Sustainable Development (CDS - UnB). He has experience in social-economy, with emphasis on Sustainable Development, working on the following themes: regional development, public policies, sustainability, Amazon, Northeast Brazil, environmental management, climate change vulnerability and adaptation, social exclusion, interdisciplinarity, and ethics in research. Author of 133 articles published in scientific periodicals, 55 book chapters and 19 books. He has supervised 23 M.Sc thesis and 35 PhD dissertations.

Carlos Hiroo Saito, PhD, is a biologist working in interdisciplinary research involving environmental education, spatial analysis and water security. He works with conceptual modeling for science literacy in a systemic approach, and how the understanding of social and environmental processes can strengthen social participation. He is a research fellow of CNPq (Productivity in research), and executive coordinator of the National Institute of Science and Technology (INCT-Observatory of Socio-Environmental Dynamics). He is full professor at the University of Brasilia, Brazil, linked to the Department of Ecology/Institute of Biological Sciences and to the Center for Sustainable Development. He is also a researcher associated to UMR Espace-DEV research groups, Montpellier, France, and he is part of the research group which was recognized as a CES/Centre d’Expertise Scientifique "Paysage" (Center of Scientific Expertise in Landscape), in France. He was the chair of Global Water Partnership-south America (2018-2019).

Frédéric Mertens is a professor at the Center for Sustainable Development, University of Brasília, Brazil. He holds a PhD in Environmental Sciences from the Université du Québec à Montréal and has an interdisciplinary academic background in biology, sustainability sciences and network analysis. He teaches in the Graduate Program in Sustainable Development at the University of Brasilia. He was the supervisor of 14 Ph.D. and 17 M.Sc. students and of 5 post-doctoral fellows. His main research interests include social-ecological sustainability, network science, food security and multilevel governance. During the last two decades, he participated in ten international IDRC funded research projects. Since 2006, he is also the coordinator of the Brazilian node of the Community of Practice on Ecosystem Approaches to Human Health in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Patrícia Mesquita is a full collaborator/post-doctoral researcher at the Center for Sustainable Development (CDS) at the University of Brasilia (UnB), at the INCT Odisseia project and at the Climate Change and Regional Development sub-network, within the scope of the Brazilian Network for Research on Global Climate Change (Rede CLIMA). She holds a PhD in Sustainable Development (CDS-UnB, Brazil), MSc. in Geography (University of Victoria - Canada ), BSc. In Biology (UFRN, Brazil). Patrícia was a researcher at the Water and Climate Impact Research Center at the University of Victoria (Canada), at the Université Laval (Canada) and a visiting researcher for the Science without Borders sandwich doctoral program at the University of British Columbia (Canada) at the Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability (IRES) and Faculty of Land and Food Systems (FLS).