Fabio Rubio Scarano

• PhD
• Full Professor at Federal University of Rio de Janeiro

While the world urgently hopes to reduce GHG emissions from fossil fuels and deforestation, the Brazilian Amazon offshore potentially becomes a new frontier for oil companies. The expected impact of oil royalties on the regional GDP is a political driving force pro-exploration. We advocate that the Brazilian Amazon offshore must remain oil explorat...

Nature-based solutions (NbS) are designed as a win-win strategy to address societal challenges while providing biodiversity, social, and economic benefits. However, uncertainties and gaps persist, particularly regarding the criteria that define a NbS measure and the specific requirements for a solution to be fully recognized as such, which limit th...

Non-technical summary Brazil – one of the world's largest biocultural diversities – faces high rates of habitat loss, social inequality, and land conflicts impacting indigenous and local peoples. To challenge that, Brazilian sustainability science and education needs to be strengthened. We searched for elements in ongoing bottom-up sustainability s...

For about 25 years the photosynthetic performance of plants has been measured at a variety of different types of vegetation physiognomies of the cerrados and Atlantic forests of Brazil. The results of all these 28 publications, at the great majority of which Eduardo Arcoverde de Mattos has actively and most inspiringly participated, are overviewed...

The ongoing post-normal times face two intertwining imperatives: sustainability and digital technology. Interestingly, the languages that address these imperatives are increasingly making use of concepts historically associated to or confined to the biological sciences, in particular botany and plant physiology. We address this phenomenon by applyi...

Alchornea sidifolia is a tree species used in the regeneration of degraded forest environments and which grows in both non-flooded and flooded soils. We compared the wood anatomy of trees growing under both conditions in Atlantic Forest remnants in the state of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, to understand intraspecific aspects of the adaptation of tropica...

This chapter introduces the three interrelated concepts addressed by this book – nature, sustainability and future. I posit that modern society has very narrow definitions of these concepts and that this is partly cause and partly consequence of the current planetary crises. ‘Healing’, I propose, should come from a multiactor and multispecies globa...

This chapter examines technology from two distinct perspectives: partly as cause of the current planetary crisis and part as potential solution. I move from Vernadsky’s, De Chardin’s, Russell’s and Heidegger’s optimism with the potential of technology in the first half of the twentieth century, to the arrival in the Anthropocene, largely driven by...

The modern era is when Europeans definitely perceived themselves as beings apart from nature. Not only separated but also superior, capable to control it. Nature then becomes the ‘other’, the ‘not-I’ that one does not dialogue with, an entity humans relate with either as an obstacle or a commodity. This chapter discusses to which extent this is rel...

This chapter examines the main actors engaged in sustainability policy and diplomacy: multilaterals, governments, companies, academia, civil society, and individual consumers. First, it discusses how development policies and environmental policies converge to give rise to sustainability policies, which are mainly fostered by global agreements conso...

This chapter examines the attitudes of young people in relation to sustainability. Currently, there is evidence of much engagement of the youth in the sustainability cause, as there is of disengagement. First, the chapter discusses youth expression of dissent with unsustainable politics and power, which ranges from global – as in the case of climat...

This chapter presents the 17 United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) agreed upon, in 2015, by 195 nations. The objectives combine biosphere, social and economic goals. The argument in this chapter is that the SDG logic is strictly modern, since it has as one of its premises that economic growth (SDG8) is necessary for sustainable develo...

This chapter addresses the outreach and communication of sustainability from the perspectives of digital technology, formal and informal education. It discusses the successes and challenges of these processes in increasing awareness and driving behaviour, starting from the notion that communication can be about, of, and/or for sustainability. Recog...

In the Middle Ages, humans developed a stronger impression of control over nature, but it was largely influenced by religion. Nature seemed ambiguous by then: at times, a nurturing mother; on other occasions, a punishing tyrant. Since this age covered no less than 1000 years, it is of course by no means uniform. The chapter explores three distinct...

This chapter portrays the emergence of sustainability science as resulting from the encounter of various disciplines from natural and social sciences and humanities as applied to the solution of complex issues of practical and political relevance. More emphatically, the chapter examines the ongoing and emerging disputes between perspectives and app...

Everything one wants to sell you is said to be sustainable. But what is sustainability? Is it a value, does it have a price or both? After the official definition appeared in 1987, more than 300 definitions to the concept have appeared. Sustainability emerged in the second half of the twentieth century as a moral value: it is difficult to be unanim...

This final chapter synthesises some of the key messages of the book by addressing sustainability as utopia. Not as some kind of blueprint utopia, such as the Sustainable Development Goals, but as a compass, as a persistent mentality that synthesises past, present and future. Utopias are not about ‘what works’, but they are about radical alterity, a...

This chapter focuses on pre-Modernity, also known as Renaissance. This period spans nearly two centuries (sixteenth and seventeenth) and saw two major events in planetary history: the advent of modern science and the arrival of the European colonisers in the Americas. The chapter addresses the extent to which they are interrelated, as well as the c...

This chapter examines how ancestral peoples’ worldviews relate to the concept of sustainability, in particular, to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). The term ‘ancestral’ here is used as an umbrella for indigenous, local and traditional peoples. Many differences between ancestral and modern views start at the contrasting perspective these peo...

This chapter presents pre-Socratic, Socratic, Platonic and Aristotelian views and approaches to nature. Their concerns, from the basic elements of life, through to the placement of humans on Earth and in the Cosmos. In these early days, philosophy gradually shifted from the philosophy of nature of the pre-Socratics through to the more humanistic ap...

The modern sustainability agenda, as framed by the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), fails to be inclusive of the inner dimensions of sustainability. Reason and scientificity alone do not deliver the transformations that science itself has been demonstrating to be necessary for planetary well-being, which indicates that shifts in mindset, belief...

The chapter introduces the postmodern movement as a reaction to Modernity, and postnormal times as a transition period from Modernity to a new, yet unknown state. The way this future state will look like depends on what we do now. Postmodern and postnormal are not synonyms, therefore, but have synergies as well as shadowy interfaces. The key reflec...

Modern world has produced many fractures in the planet and in ourselves. These fractures have split the whole into modules, some of which have become hegemonic over other modules. This first conclusive chapter builds on Mario Bunge’s emergence theory to propose regeneration as a prerequisite for the convergence of separate modules, and that from su...

Artistic practices that intentionally or unintentionally express sustainability notions, information and/or feelings are greatly increasing. This is to be expected since sustainability transition requires cultural transformation – although the Sustainable Development Goals underplay the role of culture. This chapter’s central question is how arts a...

Since antiquity, plant life and complexity have aroused the curiosity of many scholars, including aspects of plant intelligence. While historically the topic of intelligence in plants in academia has been approached with scepticism, more recently this matter has gained evidence, especially in popular science literature. Based on a systematic litera...

Question Drought‐induced tree mortality has been documented in forests worldwide but the mechanisms related to drought recovery are still poorly understood. To better predict forest trajectories under future climate scenarios, it is essential to disentangle physiological mechanisms underlying plant mortality caused by El Niño droughts. Here, we ass...

Eighteen megadiversity countries are home to 70% of the species in the world. They also host more than 64% of the languages spoken on the planet. This paper builds on this strong correlation to argue that diversity of cultures is an expression of biological diversity. These two components of diversity must, therefore, be treated jointly by science,...

A Ecologia surgiu, por definição, como uma ciência do todo. Em seguida, pulverizou-se em módulos reducionistas, porém importantes para diversas aplicações práticas em problemas ambientais variados. Hoje, diante da crise sistêmica planetária, a Ecologia volta à sua natureza transdisciplinar e compõe o elenco de contribuições científicas voltadas par...

Aim Long-term ecological research often integrates many research groups and subjects in one or few sites sampled systematically along the time. In the Amazon, there is a tradition of long-term research in terrestrial habitats, but this has been less common in floodplain lakes. This study systematically reviews 35 years of research (1988-2022) in Ba...

Official reports and academic studies call for profound and immediate transformations in how businesses relate to biodiversity. The urgency is such that the first draft of the Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) of the Convention of Biological Diversity has a specific target aimed at full sustainability in biodiversity practices in busine...

Although native vegetation is a determinant of aquatic ecosystems’ maintenance, forest restoration has been linked to decreases in water yields worldwide. Here we clarify linkages between forest restoration and water services and identify gaps in the literature critical for evaluating the benefits of forest restoration on water yields. Also, we dis...

Áreas verdes urbanas (AVU) são espaços livres de edificações, com predominância de cobertura vegetal, que geram serviços ecossistêmicos importantes nas cidades, como a melhoria microclimática, a segurança hídrica, e a saúde física e mental dos seus habitantes. Geralmente, as AVU são consideradas como um só componente em estudos sobre a floresta urb...

p>In this article, the abstract has been revised such that “30% of the total CO₂ increase in the atmosphere since the Industrial Revolution” now reads “30% of the total CO₂ increase in the atmosphere, or 14% of total emissions, since the Industrial Revolution.” In addition, the second paragraph in the “Priority areas for resto...

O Objetivo do Desenvolvimento Sustentável 11.7 visa fornecer acesso universal a espaços públicos verdes, o que pode ser alcançado por um sistema bem planejado de áreas verdes (AV). Este estudo buscou, portanto, identificar lacunas na distribuição de AV relacionada a variáveis demográficas e socioeconômicas. Curitiba foi selecionada como área de est...

Nessa resenha, revisito o artigo “A Ciência Limnologia: Aspectos Históricos e Estratégia de Pesquisa” de autoria do Professor Francisco de Assis Esteves (1982). Meu argumento é o que o jovem cientista que o redigiu já carregava todos os elementos que marcariam a trajetória do profissional que se tornaria uma das principais referências brasileiras n...

The increase in severity of droughts associated with greater mortality and reduced vegetation growth is one of the main threats to tropical forests. Drought resilience of tropical forests is affected by multiple biotic and abiotic factors varying at differ- ent scales. Identifying those factors can help understanding the resilience to ongoing and f...

The protection of the Brazilian Amazon is essential to prevent the collapse of global biodiversity and minimize the negative impacts of climate change worldwide. However, there is currently no estimate of how much it costs to conserve most of this region. We report that maintaining ∼80% (3.5 million km²) of the region within conservation areas (con...

Resumo: No ambiente das Nações Unidas, em setembro de 2015, 193 países acordaram acerca de 17 Objetivos do Desenvolvimento Sustentável (ODS) a serem alcançados até 2030. Tal aspiração decorre do reconhecimento global que o paradigma de desenvolvimento predominante no mundo é o que trouxe o planeta à maior crise ambiental e humanitária da sua histór...

Há quase cem anos, o cientista russo descreveu, em livro essencial, a camada em que convivem todas as formas de vida do planeta e inspirou uma visão de ecologia global A vida é a característica mais singular da Terra. E a biosfera, camada viva que recobre nossa casa comum, foi descrita há quase cem anos pelo cientista russo Vladimir Vernadsky (1863...

Brazil is a powerhouse in terms of water resources, which are instrumental to the country’s transition to sustainability. However, to realize this potential, substantial management and conservation hurdles must first be overcome. We propose a novel strategy for the use, management, and conservation of Brazilian water resources. Our approach recogni...

The increase in severity of droughts associated with greater mortality and reduced vegetation growth is one of the main threats to tropical forests. Drought resilience of tropical forests is affected by multiple biotic and abiotic factors varying at different scales. Identifying those factors can help understanding the resilience to ongoing and fut...

Desde 2017, a Organização das Nações Unidas (ONU) prepara o lançamento da Década da Ciência Oceânica para o Desenvolvimento Sustentável (2021-2030). Com o lema “A ciência que precisamos para o oceano que queremos”, a campanha tem por objetivo, além de chamar atenção sobre a importância do oceano para o planeta, mobilizar cientistas de diferentes di...

Strategies for establishing priorities for the sustainability agenda by addressing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) are prominent in the scientific literature. Some studies have suggested that sustainability will emerge from different backgrounds, such as through biosphere or societal transformations, whereas other approaches have searched f...

Ecological restoration is an increasingly global concern. Trees are the basic unit for land restoration in forests. Our journal “Trees: Structure and Function” now launches a special collection on structure and functions, including development, ecology and evolution of trees, to support concepts and approaches of restoration. Submission of original...

Esta prévia do livro Futuro Além da Paisagem é dedicada aos participantes dos eventos Sementes para o Futuro, promovido pela Conservação Internacional em parceria com o Museu do Amanhã nos dias 22 e 29 de abril e Diálogos sobre o Futuro além da Paisagem, série de webinars de lançamento do livro, que acontecerá nos dias 6, 13, 20 e 27 de maio na red...

Private conservation lands are essential for protecting biodiversity, but few national‐level studies have assessed their coverage and the legal frameworks that support them. Here, we review the legal mechanisms enabling conservation on private lands in Brazil and evaluate these lands' potential to reinforce the national protected area system. We fo...

Soil ecosystem service (SES) approaches evidence the importance of soil for human well-being, contribute to improving dialogue between science and decision-making and encourage the translation of scientific results into public policies. Herein, through systematic review, we assess the state of the art of SES approaches in tropical regions. Through...

Soil ecosystem service (SES) approaches evidence the importance of soil for human well-being, contribute to improving dialogue between science and decision-making and encourage the translation of scientific results into public policies. Herein, through systematic review, we assess the state of the art of SES approaches in tropical regions. Through...

Soil ecosystem service (SES) approaches evidence the importance of soil for human well-being, contribute to improving dialogue between science and decision-making and encourage the translation of scientific results into public policies. Herein, through systematic review, we assess the state of the art of SES approaches in tropical regions. Through...

Ongoing anthropogenic climate change is becoming one of the major threats to biodiversity. Studies that aim at projecting the future impacts of ongoing climate change on biodiversity should use general circulation models (GCMs) that show a good performance in the region of study, an information that is lacking for the Atlantic Forest. Here, we eval...

The Atlantic forest biome is a key provider of ecosystem services (ES) delivered worldwide. The region presents a complex history of land use changes based on human demands that have decreased its native vegetation and the potential to integrate biodiversity and human wellbeing. In this chapter, we described the profile of the scientific output on...

Droughts have increased in frequency, duration, and severity across most of the tropics but their effect on forest communities remain not fully understood. Here we assessed the effects of a severe El Niño-induced drought event on dominant and lowabundance understory plant species and the consequent impacts on ecosystemfunc- tions in the South Ameri...

O capítulo apresenta quatro filmes de ficção que, ao usar elementos da natureza como personagens ativos nos seus enredos, evocam Gaia e a integração ser humano-natureza. Os filmes são "Fitzcarraldo" (Werner Herzog, 1981) para água, "Deus e o Diabo na Terra do Sol" (Glauber Rocha, 1964) para terra, "Nostalgia" (Andrei Tarkovski, 1983), e "A Chegada"...

Este ensaio discute se Gaia, o supraorganismo planetário, teria uma linguagem própria e propõe três hipóteses alternativas. O texto combina referência científicas (biossemiótica, linguística e ecologia), artísticas (cinema, música e literatura) e filosóficas (principalmente Merleau-Ponty, Wittgenstein e Adorno), assim como outras ligadas ao conheci...

Agriculture is one of the main examples of the interface humankind-nature-technology. However, innovation in agriculture has often been associated to only one component of this tryptic: technology-in particular its development, use and application. In this paper, we argue that the innovation space in agriculture is migrating from an emphasis in tec...

O capítulo traça resumidamente a trajetória da relação ser humano - natureza, do passado integrado (dos pré-socrático e povos ancestrais do sul global) à separação moderna, que resultou no Antropoceno. Traz também a leitura pós-moderna, na busca da reintegração humana à natureza. Finalmente, o capítulo discute prazos e trajetórias possíveis para qu...

Fire may divert or arrest natural regeneration in abandoned pastures throughout the tropics, transforming them to low-resilience systems that do not recover even in the absence of disturbances. Understanding regeneration in degraded landscapes is crucial to decision-making and predicting the outcome of passive or active restoration actions. We aime...

Extensive ecosystem restoration is increasingly seen as being central to conserving biodiversity¹ and stabilizing the climate of the Earth². Although ambitious national and global targets have been set, global priority areas that account for spatial variation in benefits and costs have yet to be identified. Here we develop and apply a multicriteria...

The purpose of the RIOCCADAPT report is to assess the climate change adaptation actions being carried out in the member countries of the Red Iberoamericana de Oficinas de Cambio Climático (Ibero-American Network of Climate Change Offices or RIOCC), i.e., Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking countries in the Americas, the Caribbean, and the Iberian Peni...

The rapidly evolving ocean economy, driven by human needs for food, energy, transportation and recreation, has led to unprecedented pressures on the ocean that are further amplified by climate change, loss of biodiversity and pollution. The need for better governance of human activities in the ocean space has been widely recognized for years, and i...

Español/ Português El Informe RIOCCADAPT, Adaptación frente a los riegos del cambio climático en los países de la Red Iberoamericana de Oficinas de Cambio Climático (RIOCC), conformada por los países de lengua española y portuguesa de América, islas del Caribe y la Península Ibérica, es una iniciativa pionera financiada por el Programa ARAUCLIMA d...

El Informe RIOCCADAPT tiene por objetivo evaluar las actuaciones sobre adaptación al cambio climático que se están llevando a cabo en los países de la Red Iberoamericana de Oficinas de Cambio Climático (RIOCC), esto es, los países de lengua española y portuguesa de América, islas del Caribe y la Península Ibérica. El análisis de la adaptación se ha...

E cosystem restoration can provide multiple benefits to people and help to achieve multiple Sustainable Development Goals 1-3 , including climate change mitigation 4 and nature conservation 5. Thus, 47 countries have collectively committed to have 150 and 350 million hectares of degraded lands under restoration by 2020 and 2030, respectively, and h...

Gene movement in plants is determined by seed and pollen flow and its limitation results in spatial structuring of genetic variation, affecting potential levels of inbreeding within populations. In clonal plants, clonal propagation may also play an important role in spatial genetic structure (SGS). Characterization of SGS usually is done by analysi...

People depend on nature in multiple ways and there is increasing concern about how the current unsustainable use of natural resources will compromise human well-being. In this context, there is a debate about the usefulness of the terms ecosystem services (ES) and nature's contributions to people (NCP) in addressing this problem, but so far no rese...

Most tropical forests are threatened by a myriad of human-induced disturbances, associated with land use changes, altered fire regimes and direct deforestation. The combined effect of multiple disturbances can shift forests towards a new, resilient state that is qualitatively distinct in structure, species composition and function. We found that ab...

Gene movement in plants is determined by seed and pollen flow and its limitation results in spatial structuring of genetic variation, affecting potential levels of inbreeding within populations. In clonal plants, clonal propagation may also play an important role in spatial genetic structure (SGS). Characterization of SGS usually is done by analysi...

A group of scientists created in 2015 the Brazilian Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (BPBES), the first national-level initiative to emerge independently but inspired by the enterprise undertaken by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES). The main goal of BPBES is to develop asses...

governança oficial da biodiversidade e dos serviços ecossistêmicos no Brasil é bipolar: por um lado, instituições fortes e capazes; por outro, problemas infraestruturais, processos lentos, ineficiência nas ações e conflitos jurídicos e socioecológicos. O Brasil dispõe de uma variedade de instrumentos de política e de opções de governança socioambie...

Key message Among four species of Clusiaceae (sensu lato) occurring in a mosaic of different types of tropical vegetation, Kielmeyera coriacea Mart. & Zucc. and Calophyllum brasiliense Camb. were C3-species with similar performance at micro-sites of contrasting water supply, Clusia criuva Cambess—although potentially a C3/CAM intermediate species—p...

Achieving ambitious global restoration commitments is a huge challenge. The Atlantic Forest Restoration Pact, created in 2009 as a movement to restore 15 Mha of degraded/deforested lands by 2050, pledged 1 Mha towards the 2020 Bonn Challenge. We documented the restoration of an estimated 673,510–740,555 ha of native forests from 2011 to 2015 in the...

This essay argues that the “sustainment” of humankind on Earth will require short-term ruptural transformation of rooted individual and societal attitudes and ethics into a new categorical imperative. We establish a difference between “sustainment” of humankind and “sustainability”. Sustainment is the process of dynamic state of maintenance of cond...

I use Mario Bunge’s approach to the interplay between emergence, submergence and convergence to address the emergence of sustainability. In line with this approach, my argument is that sustainability emerges as a novelty out of the convergence between independent lines of inquiry, such as sociology, economics and ecology in the science realm, and o...

Climate change poses risks to biodiversity and to the socioecological systems dependent on it in Brazil. However, the country’s natural wealth, its biodiversity and ecosystems, are simultaneously among the main source of alternatives for mitigation and adaptation. This review shows that increase in temperature of >2oC, towards the end of this centu...

Biodiversity and ecosystems are important elements for addressing national and global socioeconomic and environmental crises, since they provide new development opportunities, for example, as source of job and income creation, and reduction in poverty and socioeconomic inequity. Brazilian biological diversity is also expressed in its immense cultur...

O ponto de partida deste Relatório é a premissa que a direção da interação entre biodiversidade, clima e desenvolvimento é uma escolha humana. Esta interação se alterará ao longo do tempo, de maneira mais ou menos favorável à sociedade, dependendo do grau no qual o paradigma de desenvolvimento se transforme em direção a incorporar a conservação e u...

Target 6 of the Global Strategy for Plant Conservation of the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity states that by 2020 at least 75% of production lands in each sector will be managed sustainably, consistent with the conservation of plant diversity. Target 11 stipulates that by 2020 no species of the wild flora will be threatened by int...

Article impact statement: Decision making on Białowieża Forest will affect local people and biodiversity and ecosystem services of worldwide importance.

New remote sensing data on vegetation cover and restoration opportunities bring hope to the Brazilian Atlantic Forest, one of the hottest of the 36 global biodiversity hotspots. Available estimates of remaining vegetation cover in the biome currently range from 11% to 16%. However, our new land-cover map, prepared at the highest resolution ever (5m...

Understanding the links between biodiversity, ecosystem services (ES) and human well-being (HWB) is a prerequisite for furthering the agenda of several multilateral environmental agreements and global goals. We performed a systematic review to discuss the extent to which biodiversity research has addressed the interface between ES and HWB and we fo...

We developed an indicator that defines priority municipalities in order to facilitate the deployment of preventive policies and strategies for ecosystem-based adaptation to climate change (EbA) in Brazilian municipalities. Based on the premises that poor people are the population most vulnerable to climate change and that conservation and sustainab...

Studying species with different distributions and ecological requirements in the same taxonomic group allows an understanding of the specialization strategies across the environmental conditions of core vs. peripheral habitats. Here, we studied patterns of niche and geographical partitioning among Myrsine spp. and mapped areas of high alpha and bet...

Chapter 6 on "Options for governance and decision-making across scales and sectors" is part of the regional assessment report on biodiversity and ecosystem services for the Americas of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services.