Aziza Chaouni and her colleague Guilherme Lassance from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro were recently awarded a 2012 IDRC Canada-Latin America and Caribbean Research Exchange Grant (LACREG). This funding will allow Chaouni and Lassance to lead a comparative study of Rouge Park in Toronto and Guaratiba in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Their research will focus on ecotourism as a tool to preserve already fragile ecosystems as well as the social economic conditions of local populations.

The Canada-Latin America and the Caribbean Research Exchange Grants program is designed to strengthen international partnerships and consolidate emerging networks among academic researchers from Canada and Latin America and the Caribbean. Its purpose is to support small collaborative research activities which will contribute to the creation, dissemination and sustained application of knowledge in the development process in at least one area of the International Development Research Centre’s thematic priority.