José Antônio Kroeff Lutzenberger (17 December 1926 – 14 May 2002) was a Brazilian agronomist and

environmentalist An environmentalist is a person who is concerned with and/or advocates for the protection of the environment. An environmentalist can be considered a supporter of the goals of the environmental movement, "a political and ethical movement that se ...

. In 1988, he was awarded the

Right Livelihood Award The Right Livelihood Award is an international award to "honour and support those offering practical and exemplary answers to the most urgent challenges facing us today." The prize was established in 1980 by German-Swedish philanthropist Jakob v ...

for his "contribution to protecting the natural environment in Brazil and worldwide".

Biography

He was born in a

German-Brazilian German Brazilians (German language, German: ''Deutschbrasilianer'', Hunsrik: ''Deitschbrasiliooner'', pt, teuto-brasileiros) refers to Brazilians of full or partial Germans, German ancestry. German Brazilians live mostly in the country's South ...

family in

Porto Alegre Porto Alegre (, , Brazilian ; ) is the capital and largest city of the Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul. Its population of 1,488,252 inhabitants (2020) makes it the List of largest cities in Brazil, twelfth most populous city in the country ...

, the capital city of southernmost state of

Rio Grande do Sul Rio Grande do Sul (, , ; "Great River of the South") is a Federative units of Brazil, state in the South Region, Brazil, southern region of Brazil. It is the Federative_units_of_Brazil#List, fifth-most-populous state and the List of Brazilian st ...

, as the only son of architect Joseph Franz Seraph Lutzenberger. He graduated in

Agronomy Agronomy is the science and technology of producing and using plants by agriculture for food, fuel, fiber, chemicals, recreation, or land conservation. Agronomy has come to include research of plant genetics, plant physiology, meteorology, and ...

at the

Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul The Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul ( pt, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, UFRGS) is a Brazilian public federal research university based in Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul. UFRGS is among the largest and highest-rated univers ...

in 1950. For more than 15 years he worked in Germany, Venezuela and Morocco for a German chemical company, BASF, selling the same products he would later campaign against. In 1971, Lutzenberger founded the ''Associação Gaúcha de Proteção ao Ambiente Natural'' (Agapan), an environmentalist organization. He became famous for defending the environment together with Magda Renner, Hilda Wrasse Zimmermann, Giselda Castro and others during the time of military government in Brazil. He was appointed to the Environment Ministry in the

Fernando Collor de Mello Fernando Affonso Collor de Mello (; born 12 August 1949) is a Brazilian politician who served as the 32nd president of Brazil from 1990 to 1992, when he resigned in a failed attempt to stop his impeachment trial by the Brazilian Senate. Coll ...

federal government, in the early 1990s. "He was Brazil's first internationally known environmental activist, and the fact he was chosen environment minister in Brazil's first democratically elected government in 30 years was just one indication of the tremendous mark he made in that area," said Stephan Schwartzman, senior scientist at Environmental Defense. In 1987 Lutzenberger founded a group called Gaia, which focused on global issues, and a year later he won the

in recognition of his work. Like millions of others in southern Brazil, the Kroeff-Lutzenberger family was bilingual, speaking both Portuguese, the national and official language of the land, but also

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany (of or related to) **Germania (historical use) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law **Ger ...

, a strong regional language in the state of Rio Grande do Sul. Lutzenberg also achieved a high level of fluency in English, Spanish and French. The Guarita State Park in

Torres, Rio Grande do Sul Torres is a city on the coast of south Brazil in the state of Rio Grande do Sul. The city has a population of approximately 40,000 inhabitants, of which 10,000 live in rural zones, but in summer the number of inhabitants reaches 300,000. Histor ...

, was renamed the José Lutzenberger State Park in his honor in January 2003.

Death

Lutzenberger died in 2002 at the age of 75. He was buried as he wished – naked, without a

coffin A coffin is a funerary box used for viewing or keeping a corpse, either for burial or cremation. Sometimes referred to as a casket, any box in which the dead are buried is a coffin, and while a casket was originally regarded as a box for jewel ...

, close to a tree in a farm he restored, the Rincão Gaia in

Pantano Grande Pantano Grande is a municipality in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. See also *List of municipalities in Rio Grande do Sul This is a list of the municipalities in the state of Rio Grande do Sul (RS), located in the South Region of Brazil ...

, Rio Grande do Sul.

References

External links

Fundação Gaia
(in Portuguese)
Vida Produtos e Serviços
– company started by Lutzenberger *http://www.roessler.org.br (in Portuguese)

{{DEFAULTSORT:Lutzenberger, Jose 1926 births 2002 deaths 20th-century Brazilian people 21st-century Brazilian people People from Porto Alegre Brazilian people of German descent Brazilian agronomists Brazilian environmentalists Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul alumni 20th-century agronomists