Brazil’s Ministry of Environment and Climate Change has released its first call for bids in the concession process for forest restoration and planting of native species in the Atlantic forest, Agencia Brasil reports.
In a statement, the ministry reported that the grant should cover the national forests of Irati, in Paraná state, and Chapecó and Três Barras, in Santa Catarina, aiming to recover the biome in the region. The project should draw investments totalling BRL 430 million in a contract effective for 35 years.
“Until then, the [Brazilian Forestry Service] had only granted concessions for sustainable management in native woods in the Amazon,” the note reads.
A portion of the funding from the concession will be passed on to states and municipalities to boost activities to promote the local economy.
At the same time, the resources from forest production are expected to go to the Forestry Service, the Chico Mendes Institute for Biodiversity Conservation (ICMBio), and the states and municipalities where the forests are located.
Indigenous Rights in Brazil’s Atlantic Forests
It comes as new research suggests that indigenous communities in Brazil’s Atlantic Forests, who have attained full and formal recognition of land rights, have led to reduced deforestation and increased forest cover.
The Atlantic Forest once covered a vast swath of Brazil, Paraguay, and Argentina – an estimated 1,500,000 sq km.
But five centuries of logging, agricultural expansion, and the relentless growth of cities, such as Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, have reduced it to fragments.
The forest has experienced its highest levels of deforestation over the last two centuries reducing it to just 12% of its original size – primarily for agricultural conversion.
A University of Colorado Boulder study, which supports past research in the Amazon, analysed changed in forest cover in 129 indigenous communities between 1995 and 2016 and noted that legal tenure had a positive impact on reforestation.
The study showed that Indigenous peoples felt more encouraged to revise forests, safe in the knowledge that they will be protected by law.
What is legal tenure?
FAO defines forest tenure as the right that determines who can use, manage, control, or transfer forest lands and resources such as wood or the multitude of non-wood forest products.
When indigenous peoples have forest tenure, deforestation and emissions are significantly lower than the global average leading to many environmental non-profit organisations, including Project Drawdown, to prioritise tenure to combat climate change.
Over the last few years, a number of countries, including Australia, have looked at indigenous tenure over forests.
In the past, José Graziano da Silva, director-general of the Food and Agriculture Organisation, has spoken of the importance of forest tenure in meeting UN Sustainable Development Goals ahead of the 2030 agenda.
“Our study adds an important piece to the growing body of evidence that tenure in indigenous lands has often improved forest outcomes – including now in the Atlantic Forest, which has experienced high deforestation over a long period of time.”
Rayna Benzeev, the lead author of the study.
FSC and PEFC are committed to upholding the rights of Indigenous Peoples, with both certification standards recognising Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC).
FPIC gives Indigenous Peoples the right to give or withhold consent to a project or any investment which may affect them or their territories.
In September 2021, FSC released a guideline for FPIC, safeguarding the rights of forest dependent indigenous communities in or near FSC-certified operations.
PEFC has similar provisions within its latest Sustainable Forest Management standard released in 2019.
This provides important assurances that certified forest products from certified forests meet the requirements for FPIC which has backing from the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), the Convention on Biological Diversity and the International Labour Organisation Convention 169.
In some Indigenous territories, increase to reforestation has surpassed 20%
The study was featured in the US-based conservation and environmental science news platform Mongabay published on April 6 this year.
The article reported that the Toldo Pinhal and Toldo Chimbangue Indigenous communities, located in the state of Santa Catarina and home to the Kaingang Indigenous people, recording increases in reforestation of 27.8% and 21.1% across the duration of the study.
Across the whole total forest area, the study reported a forest cover change of 0.77% per year in tenured vs. non tenured lands.
While results are encouraging, Benzeev notes that the demarcation process – which recognises the territory necessary for an indigenous community to exist – has ground to a halt in many Indigenous territories across Brazil.
The country’s previous president Jair Bolsonaro vowed not to demarcate “a single centimetre” of Indigenous land and did just that during his time in office from 2019 to 2022.
The new government, under Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, has an opportunity to reverse this by abiding by the Constitution and granting Indigenous peoples their right to self-determination.
“Our discoveries have brought an environmental argument to the table for the recognition of Indigenous peoples’ legal rights to their land in Brazil’s Atlantic Forest,” Benzeev says.
Brazil’s (empty) commitments to reforestation and regeneration
In many ways Brazil is now playing catch up with its commitments to regenerate its vast forest areas.
In March 2022, Mongabay monitored Brazil’s performance against its global commitments to restore tens of millions of hectares of forest.
Specifically, its 2015 commitment at the Paris Agreement was to restore 12 million ha of forest for ‘multi use’ with its commitment to the Bonn Challenge to restore 22 million ha of forests all by 2030.
Using satellite imagery, it identified that while deforestation has slowed it is still advancing.
Among the main bottlenecks for restoration include greater transparency and standardisation in reporting, delays in reforestation and restoration projects and Brazil’s Atlantic Forest Law.
Under the law, introduced in 2006, recovered areas that are more than 10 years old become protected and may not be forested again.
“Rural producers sometimes leave land abandoned for five or six years, and when a forest starts to form there, they clear it again, even if they are not going to use the area for any economic purposes, just to avoid falling into permanent protection status,” Marcus Rosa, technical coordinator of MapBiomas said.
This may explain why naturally regenerating forests often last for less than a decade before being cut down, biologist Pedro Ribeiro Piffer from Columbia University claimed 2022 study.
“We don’t claim that the landowners are doing this, because we haven’t investigated the properties. But that is one of the most plausible explanations for our results,” Piffer said.
Set up in 2021, the Restoration and Reforestation Observatory – an initiative of the Brazilian Coalition on Forests, Climate and Agriculture – is seeking to address the bottlenecks in data collection, providing for the first time, an accurate indication of Brazil’s restoration efforts.
According to Mariana Oliveira, project manager at World Resources Institute (Brazil) – a member of the Observatory – ENGOs play an important role in ensuring that forests remain connected.
“It may come through when an NGO goes there and establishes a project with a rural producer who signs a document and will take of that area for 10, 15 years.”
These projects are registered and linked to the Brazilian Forest Code, an area of 12 million ha that by law must have vegetation cover.
Enforcing the law is not enough, notes Oliveria, leaving a substantial gap in meeting Brazil’s Paris and Bonn commitments.
In the Atlantic Forest alone, an analysis published by Sustentabilidade em Debate pointed to a 4.74-million-ha deficit of native vegetation. This this needs to change.
Atlantic Forest declared UN World Restoration Flagship
While the forest faces challenges, there are some green shoots.
Through the UN’s Trinational Atlantic Forest Pact, more than 360 organisations (including the WWF) have been working for more than 30 years to restore the Atlantic Forest.
In December 2022, the UN announced that the forest has been officially declared as one of the 10 World Restoration Flagships.
To date, 700,000 ha has been restored with a goal to protect and revive 1 million ha by 2030 and 15 million ha by 2050.
Today, reforestation efforts have led to certified forest products being grown on agricultural lands, biodiversity being restored, soil qualities improved and revegetation of vast amounts of degraded lands.
