Maíra Fainguelernt

Maíra Fainguelernt

Specialist in Engagement and Agents of Change

Maíra is a geographer with a PhD in environment and society from the State University of Campinas (UNICAMP). She has had an interdisciplinary career and for over 10 years has been expanding her experience in the Brazilian Amazon with a focus on protected areas, riverside populations, environmental licensing and the impacts of large hydroelectric power plants. She is currently an associate researcher for the project of the São Paulo State Research Support Foundation (FAPESP) entitled “After the hydroelectric plants: social and environmental processes that occur after the construction of Belo Monte, Jirau and Santo Antônio in the Brazilian Amazon.” She is an associate editor of Revista Ambiente e Sociedade (ANPPAS) and a collaborator of the extension and culture program at the Federal University of the State of Rio de Janeiro (Uni-Rio). At iCS, she coordinates the Land Use portfolio initiative aimed at the strengthening of local actors in the Legal Amazon and, in particular, with grants that have the objective of promoting more social and environmental justice among indigenous peoples and traditional communities and contributing to the conservation of the socio-biodiversity in the region.