Dreams may come true, slowly...

IN THE PREVIOUS EPISODE…

In Episode 0 of my personal and professional "saga" with the United Nations, published last week, I told you that <<My story with the UN started more concretely in August 1997, sometime after I got my MSc Degree in Biological Sciences from the University of Modena, in Italy, my home country>>. But I also wrote that I could <<trace its start to an earlier period, in 1996, during the research work for my final thesis, when I was not very happy with what was happening and what I was doing>>. The story goes on here below, with…

EPISODE 1 (...or SECTION 1): METHODS

Here in this section, as I would need to do in a scientific article, I need to explain to you what was my method of work for the final thesis, but without boring you, as I still need to make you read on and understand how this personal story of that period at the university relates with my professional story with the UN. Therefore, I choose the method of storytelling, which is also one of the teaching techniques recommended by UNESCO in the framework of its flagship educational strategy "Education for Sustainable Development" (ESD) -- to know more about it, I suggest you to check out this UNESCO's ESD Sourcebook.

My laboratory studies, started in 1993, were targeted to understanding the importance of that little snail of Episode 0, the Planorbarius corneus, for the ecosystem as a whole, and especially for the humans, for whom a parent species of that snail -- the Biomphalaria glabrata -- can be the intermediate host of a naughty parasite, a blood trematode (a flatworm) of the genus Schistosoma mansoni, which can penetrate the human skin and cause a terrible tropical disease, the Schistosomiasis (Bilharziasis) -- the second most widespread human parasitic disease after malaria, as it currently affects over 200 million people worldwide and causes over 200,000 deaths annually -- figure 1 below, from the World Health Organization (WHO), a UN agency, illustrates the cycle of the disease.

As explained and instructed by my father, Ferdinando Lombardo (who was my first thesis supervisor), I needed to "use" those two species of snails of two different genera -- Planorbarius and Biomphalaria, of the same family of mollusks, the Planorbids -- as my "scientific models", because by understanding the physiology of their nervous system, their distribution in different ecosystems (the P. corneus is mostly found in temperate areas across Europe and the B. glabrata in humid areas of the tropics) and their feeding habits, we could find important information to plan a biological control initiative -- that is, the gradual replacement of the B. glabrata snails, in the native tropical environments where they live, with other species of Planorbid snails, not affected by the parasite. As shown in figure 2 below (source: Creative Commons - CC1.0, via ResearchGate), biological control, through direct snail control, is one of the most applied control strategies to regulate and stop the cycle that leads to human infection by the Schistosoma parasite, generating and spreading the schistosomiasis disease. For those who want to know more about different control strategies, modeling methods, and the use of competing snail species for the biological control of schistosomiasis, I recommend looking at some relevant scientific articles.

As I had learned that the biological control of pests can also negatively affect the ecosystems' biodiversity in many ways, for my final thesis I needed to understand how to "use" the snails as biological control agents, in a "sustainable" way, that is, without compromising other non-target species of animals in the ecosystem. Therefore, especially since 1993, I had started looking more and more on the internet (I was discovering how useful were the internet search engines, much before Google was created), hoping to find useful information about sustainable development and sustainable scientific research. I was amazed to find out that some UN agencies, such as the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization - UNESCO and the United Nations Environment Programme - UNEP, were working with universities and research institutes on a number of wide-ranging initiatives to promote and support scientific research for the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity, in line with the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CDB), opened for signature on 5 June 1992, at the UN Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), also known as the "Earth Summit" or Rio-92, as it was held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. And during those special days of the Rio-92, living in Modena, Italy, I dreamed of myself exploring the Brazilian Amazon on a sunny day, walking under the shade of the big trees of the rainforest, and then swimming in a big river and playing together with indigenous children, more or less like in the image below (figure 3, source: Wikimedia Commons).

Flashing forward to 1996, I now need to explain what happened the night of 29 February, ending the sad day of the beginning of this long “#LinkFlix” story (you can "flashback" to Episode 0, if you forgot...). That night of 29 February 1996, after the frustration of a bad day in the laboratory of the University of Modena, I dreamed again of myself in the Brazilian Amazon, as I did during the days of the Rio-92 conference. The sound of the forest, and that of the Amazon River, were resonating in my mind, and I saw myself smiling while I was dreaming again of being there in Brazil! As I have commented before, with my eyes wide open, as well as with my eyes well-closed, for many times before and after that day, I had already tried to “escape” from my complex and exhausting academic research, getting lost in the fascinating world of the UN system, described by many web sites where I was chasing information for my academic thesis... and my imagination used to go much beyond the laboratories and the field sites around Modena, where I was chasing the snails for my experiments.

But that night of 29 February 1996 in Modena, I woke up with another dream of myself in the Brazilian Amazon, and thus I started to reflect as I never did before. Suddenly, I realized that the work of the UN is much closer to the Brazilian Amazon than to any laboratory in Modena. So, that dream was “revelatory”, or maybe “precognitive”, because it made me understand and foresee that I could make good use of my university studies without becoming an academic researcher, and that the UN could offer me much more enjoyable opportunities than the university itself. And for some good joke of the destiny, or because of my own persistence, or maybe because of God's will (as you wish…), the Brazilian Amazon would soon become a big part of my personal and professional story, and that dream of 1992, which I dreamed again in 1996, actually came true... as you will see in the next episode of this story.

END OF EPISODE 1

Stay tuned on this #Linkflix series – read Episode 2 (Section 2: Results)! And if you missed the previous episode, please check it out from the following link: Episode 0