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UFSC - Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina
The Research Group on Environmental Monitoring and Appraisal (NUMAVAM) is an accredited research group within the Faculty of Agrarian Sciences, involving academics and post-graduate students. In the last ten years NUMAVAM has been actively engaged in the development and application of indicators of sustainability in Brazil and abroad.

The rationale behind the indicators of sustainability and tools developed by NUMAVAM is to adopt an epistemology to re-join human and nature. Therefore the main characteristic and aim of the indicators is not to evaluate the bio-physical environment or its constituents but to evaluate the quality of the relationship that human beings establish with nature.

The indicators already developed include methodologies to evaluate the quality of land use, to control erosion, quality of water use and stakeholder participation in situations of complexity, among others. These indicators have been tested and applied under real conditions not only in Brazil, but also in Germany, Bolivia, Ecuador, China and Vietnam.