Many studies and initiatives to monetize forest restoration have emerged as a way of scaling up restoration and providing business opportunities in the context of the bioeconomy of resources, including the planting of native species capable of removing carbon from the atmosphere. In view of the heated agenda concerning forest restoration, it is worth focusing on a very important issue that has been overlooked in the debates on tackling the climate crisis: the natural regeneration of Amazon forests.
Since the 1980s, along with other colleagues, I have been studying the recovery capacity of Amazon forests after anthropogenic disturbances such as deforestation and fires. These studies have shown that: 1) the Amazon rainforest is resilient to these disturbances and is able to regenerate naturally; 2) forests that regenerate can recover a large part of their biomass and carbon at 20 years, but the species composition may be different from mature forests; 3) natural regeneration can provide environmental services for biodiversity conservation; 4) there is great spatial variation in the regeneration capacity of Amazonian forests.
As part of the National Plan for the Recovery of Native Vegetation we found that 54% of the biome has high and medium potential for natural regeneration and, given the accumulation of knowledge on the subject, it was recommended that natural regeneration be used as a low-cost method for promoting the recomposition and restoration of native vegetation on a large scale, a measure capable of meeting around 30% of the targets agreed by Brazil in the Paris Agreement.
Natural regeneration is considered an alternative to promote environmental regularization in rural properties with environmental liabilities of native vegetation, both in Legal Reserves and Permanent Preservation Areas, according to Law 12651/2012 of the Forest Code. These liabilities in the Amazon are mainly located on large rural properties which have not complied with the Forest Code. The legal reserve deficit in the region totals 18.17 million hectares, according to recent studies by INPE.
Considering the natural regeneration capacity of Amazon forests in the policy of environmental regularization of rural properties can give scale to the recovery of ecosystems at low cost, making this measure a priority public policy.
Another example provided by science consolidates natural regeneration as a viable path. Studies by the Regenera project, funded by the SinBiose-CNPq Program, have shown that experiments in areas located in landscapes with greater native forest cover and a historical less intensive land use lead to regenerated forests with high ecological integrity. The project also proposes indicators that can be used to monitor the integrity of regenerating forests, with reference values for the different Amazonian states.
In line with this approach, degraded areas in Conservation Units and Indigenous Lands have the potential for regeneration of high ecological integrity, as they are in a landscape matrix with high forest cover and, in this case, as the cost is very low, there is no need to involve large resources in capital-intensive restoration projects, simply by removing the degradation factors and conducting natural regeneration to ensure the integrity of the regenerating forest.
In the area of forest restoration, we have the possibility of doing more with less. We gain efficiency if we consider alternatives based on consolidated and duly demonstrated knowledge, which also bring effective socio-environmental gains to the Amazon.
