Edesio FERNANDES

Edesio Fernandes is a Brazilian legal consultant, lecturer, researcher and based in the UK. He is currently a part-time lecturer associated with several institutions: the Institute for Urban Development and Housing Studies (HIS) Rotterdam, Netherlands; the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy in Cambridge MA/USA; three Brazilian universities; and the DPU. He is the founder and former co-ordinator of the International Research Group on Law and Urban Space (IRGLUS), which is a partner of UN-HABITAT.

Before moving to the UK in 1988, he worked as a lawyer, city planner and as a lecturer in Brazil (1980-86) and as a legal advisor during the national Constitution-making process (1986-88).

His main research interests include land rights and urban and environmental law; land and urban planning, policy and management; informal land markets, urban land regularisation and land registration; intergovernmental articulations, local government and metropolitan administration; and constitutional law and human rights in developing and transition countries.

Since the early 1990s, he has been a regular consultant to many governments and national and international NGOs, including UN-HABITAT, UNDP, Unesco, OSCE, World Bank, DfID, IHS and Urbaplan. He has worked regularly in Brazil and most of Latin America, South Africa, Kosovo, Albania, Bulgaria, Cape Verde and elsewhere.

In 2003, he was appointed the Director of Land Affairs in the new Ministry of Cities in Brazil, and in that capacity he formulated the National Programme to Support Sustainable Land regularisation in Urban Areas.

He has published articles in academic and technical journals, and contributed chapters to several books in English, Portuguese, Spanish, and Italian. He is the author of ‘Law and Urban Change in Brazil’ (1995, Avebury); co-editor of ‘Illegal Cities - Law and Urban Change in Developing Countries’ (1998, Zed Books), ‘The Challenge of Environmental Management in Urban Areas’ (Ashgate, 1999), and ‘Geoforum Urban Brazil Special Issue’ (2001); and editor of ‘Environmental Strategies for Sustainable Development in Urban Areas: Lessons from Africa and Latin America’ (1998, Ashgate).

He is fluent in Portuguese, Spanish, French and English, and has a good knowledge of Italian.

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