Talking about climate change, as an Economist graduated from UNB (University of Brasilia), it suddenly hit me that we were working on a model that was all right, but that there were externalities missing. Moreover, when we add them, the check is different, the geopolitical relationship is different, and the world we know is different. I realized that there was a flaw and that made me want to work on sustainability. Economy, as we know, is a very short-term view, and there is not an extended planning. No wonder that traditional economy does not consider itself as part of environmental and social issues. You will only realize such issues in the long run: greenhouse gases are formed in hundreds of years, so is ocean pollution. That is, it won’t be resolved during the governance of a mayor or a CEO. We have to think long term and then, it will work, because you will be thinking about the people’s well-being, and the people’s well-being is good for the companies, good for the business. There’s no need of being a philanthropist to think about the planet and society. Sustainability breaks paradigms. And this new look has made me see the same things with other eyes, other lenses, but in a totally different way, and such interweaving requires a new approach.

Marina Freitas Gonçalves de Araújo Grossi, or just Marina Grossi, was born in Goiânia, raised in Brasília, and lives in Rio de Janeiro for a while. She brings a bit of the Brazilian Cerrado (a tropical savanna ecoregion) and Atlantic Forest during her administration as the President of the Brazilian Business Council for Sustainable Development (BCSD-Brazil) since 2010. She was Brazil’s negotiator at the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change between 1997 and 2001 and coordinator of the Brazilian Forum on Climate Change between 2001 and 2003. She also participated in the negotiations of the Kyoto Protocol

She was a negotiator of Brazil during the Conference of the Parties (COP) at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) from 1997 to 2001, and the Coordinator of the Brazilian Forum on Climate Change from 2001 to 2003. She also participated in the Kyoto Protocol negotiations.

With background in public sector and now in the private sector, Marina believes that companies must be protagonists of fundamental changes in society, because they have the flexibility, discipline and resources, which are necessary to speed up transformations. Governments should work on appropriate regulations and on ways of scaling up established good practices.

A photographer in her free time, Marina believes that her advantage, as well as that of her Musician son, Gabriel, is to have a look that fits well with what she sees, beyond technique. In her small country house in Xerém (RJ), a region with no basic sanitation and few specialized labor – unable to install solar panels, for example – Marina tries to put into practice everything she believes in. Always respecting local culture, but taking full advantage of the time she spends close to nature. She poses a very special look in this relationship with the environment

To Marina, we are able to relax and learn through this connection with nature: “you see the leaf falling down… it has its own pace and you can’t rush it.” Also, when getting close to nature we realize how attached we are to it, how much we depend on it, including water resources. To Marina, the great change in attitude is to see herself as an ally of nature, and not as an opponent: “it is to realize how it exists, how it works, and to put yourself in the nature’s course. There are no adversaries, and it bears fruit. If you put yourself in favor of nature, it will realize that there are no opponents and it will bear fruits.”

Content published in March 19, 2018