Approximately 2 billion people are close to or below the poverty line, living with less than the minimum necessary to produce and participate in social life. There is a clear ethical challenge there since it comes to ensuring essential dignity levels as well as an economic problem because it means that the potential for the realization of cultural developments and materials is underused. Indicators of inequality have increased in the last decade, with the wealthiest 1% group accounting for 82% of all global wealth generated in 2017. The united nations estimates that we have already exceeded the 400 parts per million CO2 mark in the atmosphere, suggesting a resurgence of unfavourable environmental conditions with proven effects on biodiversity erosion, declining marine life, and potentiation of climate change with impacts on livelihoods and productive processes (such as changes in rainfall regimes and their effects in the form of extreme events or effects on agricultural crops).
The inseparability of problems associated with the development agenda (stability and economic growth, inequality, human rights, social welfare) and the sustainability agenda (environmental conservation, environmental impacts of technologies and new processes, renewable energies, planning, and governance) is evident. In addition to the socio-environmental perspective, the theme aims to promote projects related to synthetic chemistry, catalysis, process development and green chemistry, and to promote the development and improvement of processes using biomass, by-products or industrial waste and agriculture, enabling the revaluation of waste of different origins and characteristics.
This research theme has the following goals: (1) to promote technological advances in the use of renewable energy sources, as well as in the optimization of current processes; (2) to investigate the sustainable use of natural resources and the reuse of waste; (3) to study new catalysts with potential industrial application in processes that optimize energy consumption; (4) from processes involving biomass and its derivatives, to research ways of obtaining organic compounds of scientific and technological interest; and (5) to stimulate human capacity building at international level, raising the impact of Brazilian scientific production in areas of development, technologies and sustainable processes.

Research projects

Sustainable Energy Storage and Production
Human Rights: from theoretical foundations to contemporary trends at the local level (cities)
Nanoscience for Environmental Preservation and Recovery
Optimization of transformation processes aiming technological advances in analytical methodologies and preparation of nanoparticles and electrocatalysts
Planning and Governance for sustainable metropolitan Regions in Latin America and Europe in the context of climate changes
Catalytic and electrocatalytic transformations to obtain energy and higher added value products from biofuel and oil derivatives