Rio+20

Confirmed Speakers

• Jose Cordeiro
  José Cordeiro is an extremely versatile Venezuelan engineer. He has worked as an oil company consultant and gravitates between the fields of Science, Mechanical Engineering, Languages and is considered a “futurist.” He believes that soon death will not affect humans anymore. Some of his ideas went into the book – “The Latin-american Challenge,” that became a bestseller in Spanish-speaking countries.
• Jose Gomes Neto
  José Maria Gomes Neto is an astrologer, writer and lecturer, known within and outside of Brazil. He has wandered capitals, Europe and the United States, aligning his studies of the cosmos with coaching techniques which has resulted in what he calls Astro*Coaching. José Maria believes that each person has the possibility of transformation within himself. “No, you can not be whatever you want, but you can be whatever you are capable of becoming” is one of his sayings.
• Hans Donner
  Graphic designer responsible for more than 30 years for the visual identity of Rede Globo de Televisão, Hans Donner has transformed himself into a wizard. Austrian, but carioca at heart, he exposes his work around the world. His talent gave birth to the commemorative logos of ten years of the Georges Pompidou arts center in Paris and 80 years of Cristo Redentor.
• Vik Muniz
  One of the greatest Brazilian artists today. This is Vik Muniz, who has already spread his talent around the world, always with affordable and unusual materials. He was given an entire wing dedicated to his creations in the Museum of Modern Art in New York and was the protagonist of the documentary indicated for an Oscar called “Wasteland.”
• Helio Mattar
  Hélio Matter is the founder-director of the Akatu Institute, a non-profit organization that works to bring awareness to the population about consumption geared towards sustainability, considering using the idea of SER (social and environmental responsibility). The entity is recognized as one of the most competent in the world to work in partnership with private companies according to a report elaborated by the United Nations Global Pact.
• Marina Silva
  Marina Silva, Brazilian environmentalist and politician, she was born in Acre, worked as a housecleaner and learned how to read late. She surpassed adversities and became well-voted politician which culminated in 20 million votes in the last presidential elections. She has won prizes, like the UN “2007 Champions of the Earth” prize as well as honors from WWF, the Sophie Foundation, Prince Albert II Foundation, among others.
• Jessica Matthews
  Few things in this world mobilize people like a football. It was thinking about this that brought Jessica O. Mathews, with three other friends from Harvard University, to create the sOccket, a ball that generates and accumulates energy every time it is kicked. The idea was defined by leaders as “extraordinary” and won prizes around the world. But, for Jessica, innovation isn’t worth anything on its own, “if it isn’t contagious.”
• Viviane Cunha
  The union between architecture and sustainability is almost a synonym to the name Viviane Cunha. With a degree from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro and from the University College of London, she is the director of the first company to be licensed to evaluate sustainable enterprises and constructions in Brazil and in Latin America. Her work brought her to become a reference in Latin America and to win the English seal BREEAM, the oldest and most used in the world.
• Natalie Jeremijenko
  Biochemist, physicist, neuroscientist, professor, engineer and artist. Natalie Jeremjenko is all of this and more. Through the Environmental Health Clinic, she works with social experiments that permit and incentivize change through art and design. As a university professor, she also creates and supervises projects and shows her work in renowned spaces. She was part of the creation of the Despondency Index, a camera motion detector that was installed on the Golden Gate Bridge to tape suicides that were then represented graphically in relation to stock market data.
• Martina Hauser
  Martina Hauser is a political actor that has used her knowledge and her position to work towards sustainability. Since 2010, she has been the leader of the Italian Ministry of the Environment, Earth and Ocean team. Her main work has been to reduce CO² emissions in the country as well as increasing cooperation between emerging countries, such as Brazil. Currently, national and foreign countries as well as universities are involved in a project to evaluate environmental impacts. Her dedication won her the title of Third Class Knight of Labor in the Order of the Star of Italian Solidarity from the Italian President in 2005.
• Winnie Lau
  Winnie Lau manages the Marine Ecosystem Services (Mares) project, whose goal is to protect marine ecosystems while taking advantage of the private market and investments. She has traveled the world and worked in three different sectors of the US State Department. In practice, Winnie's works to prove that marine ecosystems are not just sources for resources. "Nature is not just there for us to take the goods that we want. She has all of these other aspects that make our lives so marvelous," she says. And, for her, these aspects also have their price.
• Claudia & Claudia Alencar
  Committed athletes, the twins Cláudia and Kátia Alencar, two of the biggest names in Brazilian rowing joined their victorious career with the desire to turn sports into a social tool. Pioneer women in their sport, the two brought rowing to children and adolescents as a new educational opportunity. They are also interested in defending nature, they even created the Pernambuco Rowing Federation Environment and Sustainability Committee, an innovative organization amongst Brazilian sports entities.
• Eleanor Luzes
  Eleanor Luzes is a psychiatric doctor, creator of the “Science of the Beginning of Life” that shows the importance of a series of caring actions during pregnancy that can lead to important improvements, such as the diminishing of infant mortality rates, improvement in quality of life and even increase in life expectancy rates. Her work has spread to various universities and caught the attention of federal representatives in a presentation that took place in May, 2006, during a celebration of the National Human Rights Week.
• Adriana Gryner
  This communications expert and business-owner decided to upgrade the idea that trash can be more than trash by creating high quality products through reutilizing materials, generating opportunities and income. Canvases and banners used for shows, parties and events are transformed into purses and wallets, among other items. And the majority of the people who produce the products are inmates of prisons in Rio de Janeiro through the NGO TemQuemQueira, founded and presided over by Adriana Gryner.
• Fabien Cousteau
  Passion for the oceans is written into Fabien Cousteau's DNA. Son of Jean-Michel Cousteau and grandson of Jacques-Yves Cousteau, one of the aquatic filmmaker's most famous inventions is a submarine in the shape of a shark.
• Illac Diaz
  The Filipino Illac Diaz carries with him the “green” side of his corporate executive past. Among his projects are the Pier One Seafarer’s Dormitory, a self-sustaining shelter, the MyShelter Foundation that works with sustainable solutions for the construction of clinics and classrooms in rural areas and the Liter of Light that provided energy at zero carbon cost and zero electricity to one million houses in 2012 alone. Working with five components, its possible to illuminate dark areas during the day using a solar light bulb with around 55 watts of power.
• Laurence Kemball-Cook
  Laurence Kemball-Cook is a young engineer who developed a sustainable project that is going to be a great attraction at the Olympic games in London, the Pavegen. The invention, a block of pavement that is capable of converting energy from the movement of those who pass over it into electricity has already gained recognition and won awards. But the entrepreneur expects more, “A person takes 150 million steps on average during their life, imagine the potential,” emphasizes Kemball-Cook.
• Colomban de Vargas
  Colomban de Vargas is a biologist and a great appreciator of adventures. He chooses his challenges based on the benefit they can bring to science. He participated in an audacious expedition that covered 35 countries to study plankton, where he coordinated a team of researchers who collected more than 40 thousand samples. The topics that he studies go beyond marine life, reaching our climate. Colomban graduated from the University of Geneva and is a master in research at the National Council of Scientific Research at the Roscoff biological station in France.
• Jim Robbins
  Writer and journalist, Jim Robbins celebrates that fact that he can give himself freely to his curiosity and even be paid for it. He has wandered the world looking for good stories that have become books and texts for the science section of the New York Times, the newspaper that he has collaborated with since 1980. In this space he deals with themes like the environment and the human central nervous system, pointing out internal changes that can become instruments in the transformation of lives and the planet.
• Tony haymet
  Tony Haymet dedicates his life to the study of oceans and their implications on the Earth’s climate. He directs the Scripps Institution of Oceanography as the head of the largest network of greenhouse gas monitoring stations. He is vice president of CleanTech San Diego, a non-profit organization that is one of the main producers of clean energy and sustainable practices in the US. The researcher defends the exploration of oceans as if they were a neighboring planet. “We don’t have any idea of what strange forms of life prosper in the depths of the ocean. But we know enough to not want to loose them.”
• Jarbas Agnelli
  Videomaker, director of commercials, musician. This is Jarbas Agnelli, who, in 10 years as head of his agency, AD Studio, has already received awards from Cannes and the Grand Clio, the most prestigious American propaganda award and the first given to non-English entry.
• Gabor Maté
  Garbor Maté is a Canadian doctor, born in Hungary in 1944. He never chose the easy way; he took care of the terminally ill and treated patients that suffered drug addiction, mental health problems and HIV. Aligned with case studies, he became known for his unique perspective on Attention Deficit Disorder and thinks that the first question in treating addiction is not ‘Why are you addicted?’ but ‘Why does it hurt?’
• Jean-Michel Cousteau
  Explorer, environmentalist, educator, film and TV producer, writer. These are only some of the diverse sides of Jean-Michel Cousteau, son of the legend Jacques Cousteau and considered one of the greatest environmental preservation activists in the world. In 1998, he received the Environmental Hero Award from the then American Vice-President Al Gore. He received various honors as well as the Emmy and Peabody Awards, TV program awards in the United States.
• Magnus Cheifetz
  More than 30 years of work that today concentrates on the development of technologies for the production of clean energy. This is just one aspect of the life and of the work of the businessman Daniel Magnus Cheifetz. He was one of the first of 40 software developers for Macintosh, worked at an organization that provides websites for involved organizations and worked on the development of Livelink, the first document management company to be based on the internet. He is currently the CEO of the company Building Energy.
• Severn Suzuki
  Environmentalist since the age of 6 (yes, that’s right, 6), Severn Suzuki has already created an organization, spoke at Eco 92, graduated with an ecology and evolutionary biology degree and presented a children’s TV program. Her work spreading environmental consciousness and defense of the planet turned her into the main character of the documentary “Severn, the voice of our children.”
• Nilton Bonder
  At 54, Nilton Bonder is a rabbi, writer, business consultant and surfer. With a degree in Jewish Literature, he won the Jabuti award in 2000 and the award for best Jewish writer in 2002. He is recognized for his work with humanitarian causes. In 2011, he won the 1st Rio without Prejudice Award - 1º Prêmio Rio Sem Preconceito.