Maurício Waldman

Maurício Waldman (born 2 December 1955, São Paulo) is a Brazilian academic and environmental activist. 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 (Forest People Committee), the African Studies Centre of São Paulo University (USP), and Centro Ecumênico de Documentação e Informação – CEDI (Ecumenical Centre of Documentation and Information, in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro). 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 (PT), working on political papers and as a party organizer. He founded the PT Jewish Committee (1988) and Ecological Commission (1989). He also became involved in the Executive branch of government as Chico Mendes Park's Coordinator in the east of São Paulo (1990) and Environmentalist Administrator in São Bernardo do Campo (1991–1992), 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 (AGB) 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.