Biodiversity Conservation

Biodiversity conservation is critical for ensuring the diversity of living organisms, including terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. Diverse assemblages of organisms are collectively the guardians of nature's services to humans, such as clean water, abundant food, a stable climate and culture. Brazil is the most biodiverse country in the world. The International Institute for Sustainability works to conserve biodiversity through its projects, considering not only its environmental but also its social and economic values.

Climate change

Global climate change is one of the biggest problems facing humanity today. The complexity of the scientific understanding of this phenomenon generates uncertainty, which makes it difficult to identify adaptation changes. IIS's work on climate change has focus on scaling adaptation, especially in cities.

Ecosystem restoration

Ecosystem restoration is vital to reducing and reversing historical human impacts on the environment, and can mitigate climate change, conserve biodiversity, and improve the quality of life for society through providing ecosystem services. A science-based approach to ecosystem restoration is critical for guiding restoration, and requires interdisciplinary research from theoretical and practical approaches. The importance of this work has grown exponentially in recent years.

Sustainable development

IIS's mission is to promote the transition to sustainability by contributing to the balance between socio-economic development and biodiversity conservation and rational use of natural resources, with the aim of meeting the needs of the present generation without compromising future generations.

Sustainable Land Use

Soil is the basis for the development of diverse life forms and plays a critical role for society by providing ecosystem services. In addition, it is full of stories that recount the way human beings have interacted with the earth. Over the last few centuries, this relationship between man and soil has become increasingly problematic, resulting in a high level of landscape transformation and degradation. These changes in land use and land cover have compromised the functioning of ecosystems with impacts on biogeochemical and hydrological cycles, which directly affect the climate and the provisioning of ecosystem services.

Economic Analysis

The projects developed by IIS are intended to strengthen the balance between the economy and the environment. The work of IIS includes research, planning, management and promotional activities in the public and private sectors, focusing on the relationship between ecological, social and economic systems. Economic analysis is used as a tool to optimize the means of production and public policies, as well as value and conserve natural heritage under a sustainable development perspective.

Public policies

IIS supports the formulation of public policies focused on sustainability, as well as the implementation of practical actions, working in partnership with public sector agencies such as the Brazilian Ministry of the Environment.

Spatial intelligence

Whether identifying areas at high risk of future deforestation or areas that have the highest value for conservation or restoration, landscape modelling and monitoring allows the identification of patterns and trends of social and ecological systems. These trends can provide quantitative statistics and mapped scenarios that directly inform decision making.

About > Internal collaborator

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Agnieszka Ewa Latawiec

Executive Director

Agnieszka Ewa Latawiec is a co-founder of the International Institute for Sustainability in Rio de Janeiro (IIS) and she currently holds the position of an Executive Director at the Institute, besides being coordinator of the Centre for Conservation and Sustainability Science (CSRio).

She is also Associate Professor in two universities: at the Faculty of Production and Power Engineering at the University of Agriculture in Krakow - Poland, and at the Department of Geography and Environment at the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio). Agnieszka holds BSc in Environmental Engineering and MSc in Environmental Protection, with specialization in soil and plant chemistry.

Being always interested in social aspects of land management she also performed during PhD a survey with contaminated land officers of England and Wales to investigate incorporation of bioaccessibility into decision making for contaminated land. Over the last years she focused on broader aspects of land management and participated or led a number of projects related to land-use change and modelling.

In 2013, she participated in designing the first discipline of Sustainability Science at the Pontifical University of Rio de Janeiro and she is interested in a range of topics related to sustainability. She co-edited the book "Sustainability Indicators in Practice" and seeks collaborative interdisciplinary research in a range of topics including soil science, land management, environmental decision-making, land-use change, impact assessments, sustainability science and indicators.

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