History
Since the early 1990’s, German-Brazilian workshops on environmental topics were regularly organized as part of the long-time scientific cooperation between the research groups of Prof. Dr. Ernst Bayer from the University of Tübingen and Prof. Dr. Raimundo Damasceno from the federal University Fluminense Niterói. After Prof. Dr. Bayer passed away in 2002, this series of scientific conferences on environmental topics from different fields of the natural sciences was reinstated with the 1st German-Brazilian Symposium 2003 in Tübingen. Since then Symposia are organised biennially, hosted alternately by Universities in both countries.
Previous hosts were:
- 2003 University Tübingen
- 2005 UFSM und UNISC, Santa Maria und Santa Cruz do Sul, Rio Grande do Sul
- 2007 University Freiburg
- 2009 UFPR, Curitiba, Paraná
- 2011 University Stuttgart
- 2013 UFOPA, Santarém, Pará
and - 2015 Heidelberg University
The Symposia are organized by a team of the host-institution, always supported by the Brasilien-Zentrum at the University of Tübingen in Baden-Württemberg (BZ) and since 2011 by Baden-Württemberg International (bw-i).
The objective of these Symposia is the scientific exchange between colleagues from Brazil and Germany in the field of sustainability. They focus primarily on topics related to energy, water, soil, climate, biodiversity, agriculture and forestry, later Symposia also picked up issues in politics and economics, resource management and cities of the future. Regional or special foci are introduced by the host. The number of participants ranges from 250 to 300.
The established conference structure includes lectures and posters spread over 3 to 4 days, accompanied by scientific excursions related to the conferences foci.
Symposium Proceedings and/or reports of all Symposia can be downloaded from the BZ-webpages:
Tübingen, in December 2014
Sabine Heinle
