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A strand of my research and writings attends to the challenge of reconciling biodiversity conservation and food production in Brazil [22, 28, 36]. It discusses how Brazil’s current development model and associated cultural proclivities generate food, water and climatic (in) security [37-41]. It subsumes research focused on the Brazilian Cerrado (savanna), which contains biodiversity of extraordinary quantity and socio-ecological and climatic importance, yet it is being rapidly devastated by development. Related INPE-led research involves participatory sustainable future scenario development with stakeholders in the Cerrado and uses back-casting models to help define realistic pathways for achieving the consensually defined scenarios.