Maurício Waldman


Maurício Waldman is a Brazilian academic and environmental activist.

Biography

Waldman was born in São Paulo on 2 December 1955, to a Jewish family originally from Poland and Italy. As an activist, he collaborated with Chico Mendes and several organizations, including Comitê de Apoio aos Povos da Floresta, the African Studies Centre of São Paulo University, and Centro Ecumênico de Documentação e Informação – CEDI. He also participated in activist movements against dams, anti-nuclear demonstrations, and especially against water pollution in São Paulo.
From the 1980s to 1992, Waldman was an active member of the Brazilian Workers' Party, working on political papers and as a party organizer. He founded the PT Jewish Committee and Ecological Commission. He also became involved in the Executive branch of government as Chico Mendes Park's Coordinator in the east of São Paulo and Environmentalist Administrator in São Bernardo do Campo, a city in the ABC Region, the industrial region next to São Paulo where PT began.
However, anti-ecological measures taken by the city administration and members of the party created a serious conflict between Waldman and the mayor, and in 1992 he left the PT and returned to the university and to his professional life.
Waldman received his Anthropology M.Sc. degree from USP in 1997. He became Director of the Children Homeless’ School of São Paulo in 1998, Director of the Fundação Estadual do Bem Estar do Menor' School in 1999, coordinator of São Paulo Recycling Service in 2000, and Editor of the Brazilian Geographers' Association São Paulo Sector from 2002 to 2003.
Waldman received his Ph.D. degree from the Geography Department of USP in 2006. His thesis, "Water and Metropolis: Limits and Expectations of the Time", is one of the most detailed academic works on Brazilian water resources and Water management in the Metropolitan Region of São Paulo. Subsequently, with the support of the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development, Waldman conducted post-doctoral research from 2010 to 2011 at the Geography Department of the Geoscyenses Institute at the University of Campinas. This research, focused on municipal solid waste in Brazil, led to several papers and lectures, and finally a book, Lixo: Cenários e Desafios, launched in August 2010 at São Paulo International Book Fair. In September 2011, this book was selected as a finalist of the Prêmio Jabuti literary awards.
Also in 2011, Waldman began his second Postdoctoral Research project, at USP's Faculty of Philosophy, Languages-Literature and Human Sciences. The focus of this research was the Angolan basin management policy, evaluating the role of Angola in Southern-Central Africa's hydro resources, in terms of International Relations.
This Postdoctoral Research was linked to the FFLCH-USP Sociology Department and supported by São Paulo State's Foundation for Research Support. This work took place under the supervision of Professor Fernando Augusto Albuquerque Mourão, a Brazilian Africanist and expert in International Relations and Multilateralism. In December 2013 Waldman finished this research, and began a third Postdoctoral Research project, again supported by CNPq. The focus of this project was the incineration of municipal solid waste, recycling management policies and the Waste picker movement, and it concluded in December 2015.
In 2016 Mauricio Waldman founded the Kotev publishing house in São Paulo, intending to launch e-books and e-texts on the Kobo platform. He has contributed articles to magazines Cultura Verde, and Ambiente Urbano, among others, and is a columnist for the O Imparcial, Think & Rethink Column. He has also written a large number of papers, scientific and technical reports, e-books and e-papers, articles, and essays, and given lectures at a variety of conferences and universities. He has translated work by authors such as Michael Shellenberger, Joan Martinez Allier and Diané Collinson.

Books