We welcome our PhD fellow Tiago at University of Louvain

We are very happy to welcome a new COUPLED fellow, Tiago!

Tiago Reis (ESR 10), supervised  by Patrick Meyfroidt, will be working on the research project 10, Stickiness in international trade of agricultural and forestry products, based at the University of Louvain.

Until recently, Tiago worked at IPAM, a Brazilian science-based NGO located in Brasília and other eight places in the Amazon. It is dedicated to producing scientific knowledge and to bridging the gaps between science and policy in order to improve the social, economic and ecological conditions of the Amazon and Cerrado biomes. His work involved qualitative and public policy assessments, including fieldwork and expeditions, but also political advocacy through forums and coalitions with public and private sector actors, such as UNFCCC conferences, Soy and Cerrado Working Groups, Climate and Forest Code Observatories. During these three and half years, Tiago had the opportunity to learn, work and research many topics related to land-use science and policy, such as climate change mitigation and adaptation policies, anti-deforestation, land-tenure, REDD+ policy design, implementation and evaluation, private sector anti-deforestation initiatives, such as the Amazon Soy Moratorium.

The interdisciplinary approach and the assumptions of a telecoupled world in the COUPLED project called Tiago’s attention. After a few years working with coalitions and technical working groups to develop solutions, he became motivated to go deeper in the scientific knowledge and assume a stronger academic perspective over land-use problems. Particularly, the issue of agricultural and forestry supply chains and how they determine land use became very important for him.

His research in COUPLED will be focused on understanding how agricultural supply chains behave in face of external changes and shocks. To do this, he will firstly employ network science to map the links, interconnections and pathways of supply chains. Secondly, he will develop an analytical framework aimed at measuring and evaluating the stickiness (rigidity and volatility) of agricultural supply chains. The third step will be applying this framework to analyze the stickiness of specific supply chains and regions where data is available. In this stage, qualitative analysis and fieldwork should be used to investigate specific conditions. As a result, this research will provide an analytical tool capable of exposing economic, social, environmental and geographical trade-offs for public and private policy-makers who are developing regulations and policy instruments.

Again, a warm welcome to you, Tiago! We are looking forward to a successful cooperation in the upcoming years.

You can find more information about Tiago’s research project here.