Sobre

Late in the 1980s, images of the destruction of the Amazon began to gain prominence in the national and world press. Accelerated deforestation, forest fires, predatory logging and the proliferation of gold mines were exerting great environmental and social pressure on the region. At that time, American ecologist Christopher Uhl, then a visiting researcher at Embrapa, was conducting research on degraded areas in eastern Pará and was concerned about the lack of understanding and documentation of these transformations in the Amazon landscape. He realized that the scarcity of applied research into these transformations was weakening the debate on the causes of this environmental degradation and the alternatives for a sustainable Amazon. Uhl also found that there was a great shortage of higher education professionals capable of studying these phenomena in a multidisciplinary way and reporting on them in a didactic and strategic manner to decision-makers. He saw that as an opportunity to serve the Amazon and, in collaboration with Adalberto Veríssimo, David McGrath and Paulo Barreto, decided to create Imazon, an applied and multidisciplinary research institute with the goal of studying (with an emphasis on the empirical approach) and seeking solutions to the crucial problems of the use and conservation of natural resources in the Amazon.

The idea of creating Imazon originated in 1988, but it wasn't until July 10, 1990 that the institute was founded. For more than two years Uhl, Veríssimo, MacGrath and Barreto discussed at length the mission, values and approach to the work of the future institute. To this end, they reviewed other institutional experiences in Brazil and in the humid tropics and held debates on the proposal to create Imazon with dozens of intellectual, social and political leaders from the Amazon. Veríssimo and Barreto are currently senior researchers at Imazon and Chris Uhl returned to the United States in 1995 and is a professor at Pennsylvania State University. MacGrath, for his part, is a professor at Naea (UFPA) and an associate researcher at IPAM.

The consolidation of Imazon over decades of existence would not have been possible without the contribution of more than a hundred collaborators who have worked at the Institute over time, dozens of visiting researchers and associates, and members of the Institute's board of directors and advisory councils. Finally, Imazon has enjoyed a broad and productive partnership with a number of public, private and non-governmental institutions in its many activities, as well as partnerships with national and international funders who have generously supported it in carrying out its activities.