Yuna Fontoura

I am a PhD Candidate and Lecturer at EBAPE/FGV in Brazil and Visiting Fellow, at Essex University's Sustainability Institute in the UK.

My research area relates to the contested governance of global environmental change and global food systems. I have an ongoing project on the role of civil society in biosafety and genetically modified (GM) food governance. The focus of my research is to unpack civil society’s struggle in the context of GM food governance and to better understand the intersection between movements, corporations and societies in the political economy of governance. My recent experience on this topic consisted of field research in the United Kingdom and Brazil with International Environmental NGOs in GM food governance.

I have also an ongoing study on Agroecology in Brazil and the role of civil society in it. In Brazil this debate is of great importance since agriculture accounts for a significant part of the Brazilian economy. There is strong opposition to agribusiness in Brazil, and we see Agroecology as an alternative to it. The Agroecological movement in the country emerged as a response to the growing concern over environmental degradation and social exclusion of small farmers in the process of agricultural modernization. Within this context, the study consists of understanding the development of Agroecology as a social movement in Brazil and how the processes of consent, resistance, and coercion shape and are shaped in this movement.