New development model is essential to save not just the Amazon but the world, scientists say

Researchers who lectured at the São Paulo School of Advanced Science on a Sustainable and Inclusive Amazon insisted that a new bioeconomy is urgently needed for the region.

By André Julião in São Pedro (São Paulo state)  |  Agência FAPESP – At the age of 71 and having retired in 2016 from the National Space Research Institute (INPE), where he worked for more than 30 years, climatologist Carlos Nobre seems to have embraced the most daunting challenge of his career. 

“I’ve spent my entire life pointing out problems. I now want to find solutions,” he said in a presentation to the São Paulo School of Advanced Science (SPSAS) on a Sustainable and Inclusive Amazon, held on November 21-December 5, 2022, in São Pedro, São Paulo state (Brazil), with FAPESP’s support.  

Addressing a rapt audience of some 80 young researchers from Brazil and other Latin American countries, Nobre said the future is bleak for the Amazon and the world unless the Paris Agreement is implemented to prevent global warming from surpassing 1.5 °C by the end of this century.  

At the University of São Paulo’s Institute for Advanced Studies (IEA-USP), where he is a researcher, and as co-chair of the UN’s Science Panel for the Amazon (SDSN SPA), Nobre is working on an ambitious plan for the future of the Amazon Rainforest. The plan is necessary and includes the creation of an “MIT for the Amazon”, he said, alluding to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the United States. 

“We have to create a new bioeconomy for the Amazon. The Amazon Institute of Technology (AmIT) will train local people for this purpose and produce the technology required to develop the region in ways that valorize biodiversity and leave the forest standing,” Nobre promised. He gave his talk only a few days after returning from the 27th UN Climate Change Conference (COP27) in Egypt. 

“It was a political event that could mean a significant improvement in how Brazil treats the Amazon,” he told Agência FAPESP after his talk. “We can now be optimistic about the possibility of zero deforestation, with a bioeconomy in the standing forest where a living tree is worth more than a dead one cut up for timber, as President Elect Lula put it in his speech at COP27.” 

Innovative solutions are essential, he added. No economy exists in the Amazon or Brazil, or even worldwide, that valorizes forest products. “It’s very important to disseminate these challenges,” he said. 

Deforestation is the source of 40% of Brazil’s greenhouse gas emissions. This could be a major advantage in the international arena. Despite being the seventh-largest emitter in the world, Brazil is the only country that can significantly cut emissions without harming its industrial activity. In the developed countries, industry and energy production are the main sources of greenhouse gas emissions. 

Nevertheless, even if deforestation stops and the areas of Amazon Rainforest that have been razed can be restored, global warming will continue without a drastic reduction in developed-country emissions. If the local temperature rises another 4 °C, the forest will die out. 

“It’s important to understand that the atmosphere is shared by everyone. The same molecules of air you’re breathing now are breathed by people all over the world. Emissions must be reduced by all of us,” said Paulo Artaxo, a professor at the Physics Institute (IF-USP) and a member of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), in a presentation delivered on the second day of the SPSAS. 

“We can’t have infinite growth with finite resources,” Artaxo said. 

Changes 

Nobre advocated a set of bold measures that would include transforming the “deforestation arc” into the “reforestation arc”. The former term is often used to refer to a 500,000 square kilometer swath of Brazil where the agricultural frontier is advancing westward from southern Pará state, encroaching forest areas in the states of Mato Grosso, Rondônia and Acre. Rehabilitating this vast territory would cost many millions of dollars, but a fund like the one proposed at COP27 could help. 

“Between 1 billion and 2 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide per year in net terms are removed from the atmosphere by the intact Amazon Rainforest, where 150 billion to 200 billion tons are stored in the trees. It renders an immense environmental service to the rest of the planet,” Nobre said. 

Because tackling the challenge of forest conservation requires a great many skills that go beyond the limits of scientific disciplines, young researchers with different backgrounds in fields ranging from biological sciences to the humanities were selected to participate in the SPSAS and discuss solutions for the region. 

“I believe research on the Amazon should be done by multidisciplinary teams with people who have a background in human, social, biological and exact sciences, because the solutions should be right for society, which encompasses all these viewpoints,” said Carlos Joly, emeritus professor at the State University of Campinas (UNICAMP) and the organizer of the event.  

“We can’t concern ourselves with conservation alone. We must also take into account the well-being and livelihoods of the region’s inhabitants, 28 million of them in the Brazilian Amazon and 35 million in the entire Amazon Basin.  

Joly is a member of the steering committee for FAPESP’s Research Program on Biodiversity Characterization, Conservation, Restoration and Sustainable Use (BIOTA-FAPESP). 

According to archeologist Eduardo Góes Neves, Director of the Museum of Archeology and Ethnology (MAE-USP) and another speaker at the event, the Amazon was densely populated before the arrival of the Portuguese, and the original population knew very well how to manage the forest’s resources without degrading it. The Indigenous people who live there now have the same expertise, so some solutions can be derived from knowledge held by the region’s existing population. This is precisely what Neves and his group have been researching for decades. 

“The Amazon has always been densely populated. It used to have millions of Indigenous inhabitants. The present-day landscape is the result of modifications made by Indigenous people down the ages,” Neves said. “Protection of nature can’t be separated from protection of the way of life of these traditional peoples. They aren’t contradictory goals, but complementary. Anything planned for the future of the Amazon must take into account the presence of the forest dwellers, Indigenous and riverine communities, and quilombolas [descendants of enslaved Africans]. The idea of conserving the forest without its traditional population isn’t just socially unjust. It ignores the results of all our archeological research.”

The program for the event is at: spsas-amazonia.biota.org.br/.