The agricultural development in the Cerrado no longer needs to come at the expense of destroying the ecosystem, becoming instead an opportunity to attract investment in sustainable agriculture, the World Economic Forum (WEF) has warned.
A newly released whitepaper revealed that sustainable economic growth in the savanna could generate $47-72 billion of value, but only if “production and protection proceed hand in hand”.
Agribusiness contributes 25% of Brazil’s GDP, and Cerrado currently contributes over 60% of the country’s total agricultural output.
This has led so far to one of the fastest transformations of nature on Earth, with half its area converted to croplands and cattle pastures over the past 20 years, the authors said.
“In 2023, according to the Brazil government’s database, 7,800 sq. km were converted to agriculture in the Cerrado – an increase of 43% on the year before,” WEF underlined.
“This is in sharp contrast to the downward trend in the Amazon, where forest conversion in 2023 was 4,000 sq. km – a reduction of 62% on the year before.”
The Cerrado, the most biodiverse biome of all the world’s savannas and the second-largest in South America after the Amazon, hosts 5% of the planet’s wildlife and plant species, and is home to 100,000 Indigenous peoples and communities who have lived there for millennia.
The crucial Brazilian ecosystem has gained global attention as Brazil’s G20 meetings get underway this week, and the country will host the UN climate conference COP30 in 2025.
INCENTIVES AND LAW ENFORCEMENT
The Brazilian farmland expansion has occurred mainly in the Cerrado, where deforestation reached a record high in 2023, with an increase of 43% compared to 2022.
Last week, NGO Global Witness released an investigation showing that beef production fuelled illegal land clearance, with an area bigger than Chicago deforested between 2008 and 2019 by ranches supplying the country’s three biggest meatpackers.
The WEF report offers several solutions to ‘reconcile’ agricultural production with environmental protection, resulting in benefits for both nature and people. Options include adopting regenerative and integrated systems in the current production area.
“The challenge is to build on Brazil’s success in deploying technology, policies, and science to boost agricultural development on existing productive or degraded land, while demonstrating that ecosystem protection can add economic value to the country,” researchers said.
Up to 38 million hectares of degraded pasture lands could be restored and used for the production of soy and corn, the paper showed.
Conversion in Cerrado mainly occurs within private properties, representing 84% of the ecosystem territory. Since the Brazilian Forest Code mandates forest protection at the property level of between 20% and 35% – compared to 80% in the Amazon – WEF recommends more robust law enforcement to enhance the ecosystem preservation.
“There is an urgent need to develop a set of mechanisms that incentivise landowners to conserve the existing over 30 mln ha of private land that could be legally converted,” it said.
A separate study published in the journal Nature last week also stressed the need for a strengthened implementation of the Brazilian Forest Code. The analysis estimates that 40% of its native vegetation can be legally converted to agriculture and cattle under the law.
WEF also suggested delivering more generous incentives for protection that include carbon and biodiversity markets.
“There is potential to create value for native vegetation ($12-21 bln) by capitalising on the opportunities of global carbon markets and the bioeconomy, combined with the scale-up of incentives for producers to protect private properties,” the paper said.
By Giada Ferraglioni – giada@carbon-pulse.com
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