Brazil's goal of eliminating deforestation and forest degradation in the Amazon by 2030 goes along with the urgency brought to the biome by the context of environmental depletion, spotted in scientific research. Increasing socioeconomic vulnerabilities, rising temperatures and occurrence of natural disasters and climate phenomena, such as the extreme droughts recorded in the region in 2023, are steadily more present scenarios calling for strategic policies to be faced with urgency and respect for present diversity.
Within this perspective, an article published in the Trends in Ecology & Evolution Journal by two researchers from Pará, one of the states in the biome, suggests sustainable territories in the Amazon as a way of achieving the country's goals. The area would be divided into 85 distinct subsystems, already identified, with ecological integrity and human prosperity. The proposal consists of an articulation between science, technology, knowledge of original peoples, quilombolas and traditional communities towards environmental conservation and local development.
The study points out that the particularities and differences found in each region must be taken into consideration in this process of creating territories. PhD. in Ecology and researcher at the Museu Paraense Emílio Goeldi, Ima Célia Guimarães Vieira and PhD in Zoology and Professor at the Department of Geography and Sustainable Development at the University of Miami, José Maria Cardoso da Silva, signed the publication. The research was first launched in 2005, but the current scenario demanded that there should be a new attempt to boost the advocated strategy,
Urgent context
The official rate of deforestation in the Amazon calculated by the Prodes system (Project for the official mapping of annual losses of native vegetation in the Legal Amazon), from the Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais (Inpe) [National Institute for Space Research], was 27,772 km² in 2004. In 2022, the same system detected devastation of 11,594 km², however, the accumulated index in this period of time reached 168,413 km², a destructive scenario which contributed to the increase in carbon emissions in the region and an intangible loss of biodiversity. Another aggravating factor is the Law Project (PL) 3,334/2023, which proposes the reduction of the legal reserve in the Amazon, making 28.17 million hectares available for deforestation.
The time gap between the two decades that passed from the first to the current publication of the article has been analyzed and regarded as without major advances in from the environmental point of view. In practice, territories are platforms to improve the governance of development programs. Ima Vieira, one of the authors, says that the new study reminds us that change is still possible, but new approaches must be taken. “We need to speed up this process, since forests are increasingly threatened by degradation and the benefits they provide in Brazil and around the world are in decline.”
“At the time of the first proposal, 2003, we presented a document both to the government of Pará and to the federal government, and, in 2005, we published a paper. In 2015, NGOs pushed forward and engaged around a Zero Deforestation Law. Two years later, in 2017, I presented the proposal to the Comissão de Direitos Humanos e Legislação Participativa (CDH) [Human Rights and Participatory Legislation Commission], of the Federal Senate. In 2023, when we discussed updating the paper, I had the opportunity to propose at the Amazon Summit the articulation of a Zero Deforestation Observatory to monitor policies and actions around this strategy”, says the researcher.
Therefore, establishing territories is regarded as an urgent action. Ima explains that the model aims to guarantee the region's biodiversity and improve the quality of life of the local population. To achieve this goal, the areas would involve a balance between conservation and development. “We must recognize the diversity and heterogeneity of the Amazon to establish sustainable territories, where human activities are conducted in a way that supports social well-being and environmental conservation and ensures long-term economic viability”, she adds.
Belém
In practical terms, José Silva, another author of the study, uses the city of Belém, capital of Pará, as an example. “Much of this region has already been significantly altered and the quality of life of the population has not changed much over these centuries. So, planning for a territory in this specific region of the Amazon will be completely different from actions to plan a sustainable territory, for example, in the west of the Amazon, where a large part of the forest exists and the population is concentrated in small towns along the rivers. So, you have to recognize these differences in order to think strategically”, he states.
Strategies for implementing territories enhance effects
For this purpose, the scientists listed six strategies that can be adopted at different scales of importance to enhance the effects of sustainable territories in the Amazon: expansion and decentralization of the regional system of science, technology and innovation; effective management of protected areas and Indigenous Lands (TIs); conversion of undesignated public lands into Conservation Units (CU) and TIs; increased forest protection in private areas; recovery and efficient use of degraded areas; and improving governance mechanisms.
“[The strategies] can be applied to the region as a whole, but the importance of each of these strategies will be different considering these different sustainable territories. So, we identified some things that are clear and need to be done in all regions. First, we have to properly manage protected areas and indigenous lands. The protected areas we call conservation units, so, we need to guarantee the conservation of biodiversity and to manage these conservation units on indigenous lands well”, points out Professor José Maria Cardoso da Silva.
The transformation of public areas in the region, which total around 600 thousand kilometers, into conversation units, such as indigenous lands, and the benefit of those who have private conservation reserves are other measures that the research considers fundamental among the strategies. “We need to think of ways to use areas that have already been degraded or deforested. Most of the areas that have already been deforested produce very little, from an economic point of view, and correspond to an area the size of France. Imagine an area the size of France, producing well, based on existing technologies.”
Technology and innovation
Investment in technology and innovation in the Amazon, also considering the natural peculiarities of each region, is essential in this process of creating territories. José Silva emphasizes that each location needs to have a research institute or an organization focused on development, fostering, creating and testing new ideas. “Because without innovation, it is not possible to have a sustainable territory. What does innovation mean? Making good use of the resources we have, transforming these resources into products and services that have high added value and that due to this will generate sales to the local population.”
“There is no point, for example, in developing just one product and selling this product for a long time. That will not work. The economy is very dynamic, people are developing new products and services, these products are replaced over time, their value changes over time, [therefore] we need to think of the economy as something extremely dynamic and that needs to be based on innovation. That is what we need to do in the Amazon. We have enormous biotechnology in biodiversity, we have great sociodiversity,” he adds.
The Amazon needs up to US$2.8 billion per year to protect areas
The study developed by researchers from Pará estimates that between US$1.7 billion and US$2.8 billion per year would be needed to keep conservation and indigenous areas protected. The creation of these sites is part of the action plan. “If you imagine that this resource has to come directly from the municipalities where these internal conservation units are located, this will be an economic transformation in itself. “It will multiply the economy of some municipalities by two or three,” says Professor José Maria Silva.
“This alone, just by investing in conservation with the help of the national government, but also from international foundations from other governments. Just investing in conservation in the Amazon will create an economic base, because the municipalities in the Amazon are currently relatively far from development. There is a lot of talk about conservation, but it is forgotten that conservation has a cost associated with it. This money is enough to maintain these units and over time these units will evolve and become agents of development,” adds Silva.
Current economic model needs to include environmental issues
Over time, the economic models present in the Amazon have been gaining new boundaries. According to professor and researcher Ricardo Folhes, professor and researcher at the Núcleo de Altos Estudos Amazônicos [Center for Advanced Amazonian Studies] at the Federal University of Pará (Naea/UFPA), between the 1950s and 1970s, the process generated a series of problems: deforestation, contamination and rural violence, for example. It was a period of entry of multinationals and capital associated with agribusiness, with livestock farming as a strong activity. In the early 2000s, there was a change.
The arrival of soybeans at the turn of the century made the already existing scenario even worse. “It is an exclusionary model, based on big capital, land concentration, heavy use of pesticides and environmental problems. All of this happened continuously, generating a series of problems in Amazonian cities,” says Folhes.
Bioeconomy
In this context, the researcher argues that the bioeconomy, combined with a closer relationship with the traditional peoples of the biome, also fits in as a solution to solve the problem of deforestation that the economic history of the region has caused. “These are sectors that have very in-depth knowledge about the climate, about biodiversity and the applications of this knowledge for a series of products, such as pharmaceuticals, clinical products, cosmetics… We understand that not every bioeconomy is worthwhile.”
For the researcher, it is essential to increase political and institutional support for these agents. “The main debate today is that when we talk about bioeconomy, we can have many different meanings, but in my view, what matters is to discuss a bioeconomy based on sociobiodiversity, one that is supported by social and biological diversity and the ways of protecting this diversity. When we talk about protecting forests, we are protecting the territorial rights of traditional peoples and communities, indigenous and peasant populations,” emphasizes the researcher.
Science
According to Folhes, the production of knowledge, in order to achieve the goal of combining development with sustainability and achieving zero deforestation, needs to take into account the reality and needs of the place. “If we want a development model that keeps the forest standing, we have to know what to do with this forest, and the people of traditional communities are the ones who tell us this. Science can help us, but today the greatest effort is being made to help with soybean and cattle production. We need to train people who are able to understand the forest as a complex,” he says.
