10 Apr 2021 / 08:49 H.
By Jennifer Ann Thomas
SAO PAULO, March 25 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Brazil s lawmakers have cleared the way for the creation of a national system to pay farmers, local communities and others to protect natural systems that provide key environmental services such as water and carbon storage.
A bill was first approved in January by right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro, although he vetoed key points that would ensure transparency and governance, such as the establishment of a monitoring body and a register for payments.
After those provisions were reinstated, legislators last week backed the bill in a vote bringing together green-minded and agribusiness-friendly congressmen, to lay the foundations for a national policy for Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES).
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In Extrema, Brazil, this was the first patch of forest to start regenerating after decades of deforestation. Photo by Rafael Albuquerque
We often hear how Brazil’s deforestation crisis threatens its major ecosystems and the people who live in them. That’s an undeniable truth. But, even as the country lost 2.7 million hectares (6.6 million acres) of tree cover in 2019 alone, regenerating forests is also a big opportunity.
Thousands of farmers, budding entrepreneurs, NGOs, and established companies are restoring lost forests and degraded farms through the Atlantic Forest Restoration Pact and the Alliance for the Restoration of the Amazon. Some landowners are helping biodiverse, carbon-rich forests grow back naturally. Others are sustainably producing timber and paper for the international market.
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Brazil has committed to restore 12 million hectares of degraded and deforested land through its commitment to the Paris Agreement on Climate Change. Its goal? Store carbon, protect biodiversity, and create jobs and economic opportunity for rural communities.
In recent years, dozens of projects and hundreds of communities have started restoring forests, farms, and pasture across Brazil’s many biomes, from the Atlantic Forest to the Amazon and the Cerrado. But, until now, researchers couldn’t comprehensively assess how much land that local organizations, companies, and state governments have begun to restore. To track that progress and ensure that people working in the field are recognized for their important work, the Brazilian Coalition on Climate, Forests and Agriculture has developed a new platform that gathers data on restoration, reforestation and natural regeneration.
Jessica Brice and Tatiana Freitas, Bloomberg News Workers at a meat processing plant in Barretos, Brazil. Photographer: Dado Galdieri/Bloomberg , Photographer: Bloomberg
(Bloomberg) Brazilâs Amazon region has suffered more deforestation this year than any in the past decade. The lax environmental policies of President Jair Bolsonaro bear some of the blame; so, too, does climate change. But much can be laid at the feet of cattle farmers.
Most cows in Brazil, the worldâs largest beef exporter, are grass-fed. Ranchers in the precious biome use bulldozers, machetes, and fire to make room for pasturelandâa practice thatâs illegal but so widespread that itâs almost impossible for strapped regulatory teams to root out. A study published in Science in July showed at least 17% of beef shipments to the European Union from the Amazon region and Cerrado, Brazilâs savanna, may be linked to illegal forest des