Biosketch
Eduardo S. Brondizio is Distinguished Professor of Anthropology, Directs the Center for the Analysis of Social-Ecological Landscapes, and Senior Fellow at the Ostrom Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis at Indiana University-Bloomington, where he served two terms as chair of the Department of Anthropology. Brondizio holds external professorship with the Environment and Society program at the University of Campinas, Brazil. Brazilian-born, Brondizio’s career has uniquely weaved agricultural sciences, anthropology and geospatial analysis to address questions of human-environmental interaction from the local to global scales. Since the late 1980s, he has dedicated his research to understanding and responding to the social-environmental transformation and governance challenges of Amazônia and has been closely involved with international research programs advancing understanding of the human dimensions of and responses to global environmental and climate change. Brondizio’s work is known for advancing innovative multi-scalar methodologies towards problem-oriented and participatory social-ecological research in Amazonia and beyond. Among numerous international advisory and editorial roles, he co-chaired the Global Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), approved by 132 countries in 2019. Brondizio is also fellow of the Society for Applied Anthropology, foreign member of the French Academy of Agriculture, and elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Research Interests
For over three decades, Brondizio's work has documented, examined, and responded to the social-environmental transformation and governance challenges of Amazônia and beyond. Brondizio has contributed to and led numerous initiatives advancing understanding of the human dimensions of and responses to global environmental and climate change. Brondizio's research connects the different scales of his work through an ethnographically-grounded complex systems perspective. His work has shed light on the processes linking development policies, markets, and climate change to household decision-making, collective action, and landscape change, as well as contributed new methodologies for linking place-based ethnographic research with regional- and global-level analysis. His work has brought attention to the socioeconomic and environmental inequities of rural and urban areas as well as the contributions, often marginalized, of rural smallholder and indigenous communities to food production, nature conservation, and sustainable development. All with the aim of defying simplistic interpretations and one-size-fits-all solutions to such issues. His work has contributed to explaining the underlying drivers and consequences of deforestation and reforestation, agroforestry intensification, rural-urban networks and urbanization, urban vulnerability to climate change, and the governance of interconnected urban, coastal, agricultural, conservation and indigenous areas. Among others, Brondizio co-chaired the highly influential Global Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), approved by 132 countries in 2019.
Membership Type
Member
Election Year
2022
Primary Section
Section 64: Human Environmental Sciences
Secondary Section
Section 51: Anthropology