The bus journey from São Paulo to João Pessoa took almost three days, a distance of almost 3 thousand kilometers along the roads of Brazil in the 1970s. But, alongside his father, the botanist Aylthon Brandão Joly, every inch of ground covered was worth for him a life. Along the way, teenager Carlos Alfredo Joly learned about the vegetation that played like a movie in the window. He learned from his father what the Cerrado was, what the Caatinga was, why the plants and fauna varied so much. That was an unforgettable gift for his 15th birthday.
Joly Sr. was afraid of getting on a plane. He preferred his feet on land and sea. The family built a small house in Ubatuba and there, on vacation, everyone lived a caiçara life. Aylthon Brandão Joly was a taxonomist and specialist in marine algae. He was one of the founders of the Department of Botany at Unicamp (today incorporated into the Department of Plant Biology). He had a career as a full professor at the University of São Paulo (USP) and died too soon, at the age of 50.
Joly Filho attended college where his father was a professor. She learned from him to respect any and all forms of life. He was sure of the path he should follow. But, at that time, the student movement also occupied his time. He couldn't turn a blind eye to the barbarity, and his performance at college ended up falling behind. When his father passed away, he decided he would graduate as soon as possible.
Unicamp would be his destination. Carlos Alfredo Joly arrived for his master's degree and soon became a professor. He went to Scotland for his doctorate working with ecophysiology, understanding more and more every day how organisms transform according to environmental changes. Already a doctor, on weekends he repeated his father's steps and took his students to Mata Santa Genebra, to Serra do Japi. He invested in mapping degraded areas, in studies for their preservation and recovery.
In 1985, he was invited to develop the project to restore the riparian forest of the Jacaré-Pepira River, in the Brotas region, in the interior of São Paulo. It involved two distinct tasks: understanding how to plant, how to choose species and how to restore the forest; Allied to this, convince the population and the owners of degraded areas about the need for restoration. There was no time off. On Saturdays, in the city, he recorded a radio program together with his students to raise awareness among the population about the importance of preservation work. It was ten years of activity. A decisive decade that The ecological axis of that basin changed: from agricultural activity to adventure tourism. The project gained international recognition, and Joly learned by doing.
“I learned relatively early that, for you to be able to play a role at the interface between science and politics, you have to be recognized as a scientist. I invested in my academic career at the same time as I worked on conservation policy.”
Since helping to restructure the Postgraduate Course in Ecology at Unicamp, the researcher understood that, for things to really work, he would need to get involved on several fronts. In politics, he allied himself with the then federal deputy Fabio Feldman and helped create the chapter on the environment in the 1988 Federal Constitution.
Feldman held the position of state secretary of Environment under Mário Covas (1995/2001). Joly was tasked with setting up the State Program for Biodiversity Conservation (Probio). The problem was convincing more researchers to develop science in areas where there were gaps, and this was because of the lack of guarantees regarding the continuity of the work. Joly was also in the coordination of the Biological Sciences sector at Fapesp (São Paulo State Research Support Foundation) and managed, together with partner Naércio Menezes, to articulate the scientific community around the need to work in a network. Then the Program was born Fapesp for Research in Characterization, Conservation, Restoration and Sustainable Use of Biodiversity (Biota-Fapesp) and “many results became legislation”.
In 2011 he joined the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation and participated in the creation of the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), maintained with the help of the United Nations (UN). The prizes kept piling up. In 2022, he received the title of Professor Emeritus at Unicamp. In July 2023, he was awarded the National Order of Scientific Merit, in the grand cross class, an honor granted by the federal government.
Still in 2023, Fapesp, within the scope of Biota, paid tribute to the professor. “A career dedicated to the study of Biodiversity. The international impact of Prof. Carlos Joly” and “The role of Prof. Carlos Joly in promoting biodiversity research in São Paulo” were the titles of the round tables.
For the scientist, the awards mean recognition for the fact that his work on environmental issues is more comprehensive. Joly won the Muriqui Prize, which recognizes the promotion of sustainable development in the Atlantic Forest areas, in 2012, and the Zeferino Vaz Prize, in 2014, both of which he considered “very special”. Because, for Joly, the Atlantic Forest and Unicamp have always been his second home.
In the Scientific Memory program, carried out by the Executive Secretariat for Communication (SEC), the professor tells all these stories. A legacy that is already there for the next generation that he imagined favoring when he began working with environmental conservation.
Watch the program:
