Regional Gastronomy and Sustainability
28-30 August 2025, Federal University of Pará, Belém, Brazil
The Brazilian Academy of Gastronomy (A.B.G.), in fulfilment of its institutional objectives and its role as a regional affiliate of the International Academy of Gastronomy and the Ibero-American Academy of Gastronomy, is organizing the first International Symposium on Amazonian Gastronomy (SIGA), from August 28 to 30, 2025, which will feature the participation of renowned researchers from Brazil and around the world.
Focusing on the theme “Regional Gastronomy and Sustainability,” SIGA 2025 will take place in the city of Belém, which will also host the Thirtieth UN Climate Change Conference – COP30, in November of this year, and has been a UNESCO Creative City of Gastronomy since 2015.
Climate transformations reflect on the sustainability of ecosystems around the planet. The production of culinary inputs, one of the pillars of gastronomic development, is impacted by the dynamics that these changes produce everywhere on Earth, including in gastronomic territories.
In this context, SIGA 2025 aims to analyse regional gastronomy from the perspective of the territorial food system, at risk of radical transformation. Sustainability thus becomes a strategic axis to preserve traditional identities and design future pathways for that system.
The gastronomic regionality will be addressed across different geographies, both in Brazil and abroad, through the exchange and debate of public policies and private initiatives aimed at enabling sustainable development in various biomes and cultures. Notwithstanding, by choosing the city of Belém, in the Brazilian Amazon, to host the event, ABG emphasizes the premise of sustainable regional gastronomy and its inseparability from the debate on climate change, as well as encouraging the knowledge of the Amazon rainforest and the experience of local food experiences in a region that plays a decisive role in the future of the planet.
Scientific Program
August 28 – Thursday
Keynote Lectures
- Claude Fischler – Eating together: A perspective on commensality
- Per Olof Berg – Regional gastronomy as a sustainable development strategy?
Society, Territory and Cultural Heritage
- Sidiana Macedo – The Amazon cuisine, a mestizo cuisine
- Marcos Miguel – Fermented ethnic foods: a look beyond cultural tradition
- Telma Shimizu – Nippo-Brazilian culinary: the contribution of japanese imigrants and their descendants to the construction of Brazilian food diversity
Public Policies and Private Initiatives for Sustainable Regional Gastronomy
- Gabriel Sola – The importance of public policies in strengthening agriculture, retaining people in the countryside, and preserving the Environment
- Renata Cabrera – From farm to table: biodiversity as the pathway to our the future
- Denise de Oliveira e Silva – Journal of Food and Culture of the Americas
Trends in International Gastronomy, Sustainability, and the Market
- Morena Leite – A internacionalização da Cozinha Brasileira
- Paulo Machado – Gastronomic Routes
- Silvio Barros – Sustainability and the development of tourism and gastronomy in Brazilian cities
Keynote Lecture
- Claude Fischler and Per Olof Berg – Gastronomics: an emerging hybrid science area?
August 29 – Friday
Keynote Lecture
- Rafael Ansón Oliart – Global vision of gastronomy in the 21st Century
Roundtable I
- Territorial Experiences in Regional Gastronomy – UNESCO Creative Cities of Gastronomy: Belém, Belo Horizonte, and Florianópolis
- Eduardo Cruvinel
- Fabiana Mortimer Amaral
Roundtable II
Pan-Amazon Cooperation for the Development of Regional Gastronomy, with the participation of the Brazilian Academy of Gastronomy (ABG), Association of Amazonian Universities (UNAMAZ).
- Álvaro do Espírito Santo
- Gisele Arouck
- José Seixas Lourenço
- Morena Leite
- Rosario Olivas Weston
Closing ceremony and reading of the Letter of Belém