Reuters World News - Special episode: Inside the race to replant the Amazon

Episode Date: June 3, 2023

Listen to Jake Spring’s special report on replanting the Amazon with host Kim Vinnell. As the climate clock ticks down, it's fallen to non-profits to restore vast portions of Brazil's decimated Amazon Rainforest. But they're battling illegal land grabs, tight budgets, and some botanical mysteries. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Replanting the Amazon could save the planet, but why is it so hard to do? Today, we're on the ground in one of the world's most important ecosystems. As the climate clock ticks down, it's fallen to non-profits to restore vast portions of Brazil's decimated Amazon rainforest. But they're battling illegal land grabbers, tight budgets, and some botanical mysteries. Join us on their race to save the world. This is a special episode of Reuters World News dedicated to those trying to save the Amazon. I'm Kim Vennel in London.

And I'm Jake Spring in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Convierte your passion in a business with Shopify and bathe records of ventas with the form of pay with a better conversion of the world. Has you heard of the best. The incredible system of Pago of Shopify facilitates the companies in your site web, in the networks

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on shopify records I started by visiting an organization called Rio Terra which is in Western

Brazil this lush extremely biodiverse forest you can feel all the biomass under your feet as you're

walking through and smell the trees. They have about 900 mother trees, they call them, where they collect the seeds. These are huge trees. I mean, a castaniera, which are the famous Brazil nut trees, would take three people to get their arms all the way around it, and they've been growing for potentially hundreds of years. These trees help support populations of tapers and jaguars and all sorts of rodents and mammals and birds. There's a theory that there's a tipping point in the Amazon, after which a certain amount is destroyed,

that the rainforest will no longer be able to sustain itself as an ecosystem, and it'll dry out and become a degraded savannah. And in this process, it will release a carbon bomb into the atmosphere. We could be very close to this. Carlos Nobri, who's probably the top climate scientist in Brazil, says that 18% of the Amazon has already been destroyed. And if that gets to 20 to 25%, and we also are on track for 2 degrees Celsius warming, we would probably tip over at that point. These trees are really hard to cultivate in nursery. This whole process can take about 18 months. So it's not

something you get right the first time. They've been doing this for about a decade. And so now, I believe they work with about 100 native Amazon tree species. If getting these trees to take root on cleared land wasn't enough of a challenge, groups trying to reforest the Amazon also face a behemoth agriculture industry in Brazil that is increasingly feeding the world. Our agriculture reporter, Anamano in Sao Paulo, is here to help us understand how Brazil became such a powerhouse of food production. Sometime between the 1970s and the beginning of this new century,

people from our southernmost state, they started to go up north to these territories closer to the Amazon. And many people stopped in Matto Grosso. Part of Matagrooso is serrado and part is rainforest. So the agricultural revolution of Brazil started. We use corn and soy to feed animals, so it would be natural to be good at not only growing crops, but also producing meat. It's a vicious circle, and it's very difficult to fight it. We do business with China or, you know, countries in the Middle East, like Saudi Arabia.

We sell a lot of meat to these guys. We sell a lot of everything to these guys. corn and chicken and beef. Brazil can produce a lot of food, so I think we will continue to be a cheap source of food for years to come. I think it is possible for Brazil to continue producing food and selling it to the world. We wouldn't have to cut a single more tree if we do our homework. I am Anna Mano in San Paulo for writers.

When reforestation is at odds with the livelihoods of farmers, miners, and loggers, it can lead to confrontation. Jake, through your reporting, you learned that planting trees is not without risks, right? Yeah, I mean, one of the benefits of following these projects over the course of years is I've seen threats escalate. In the case of the Rio Terra Reforestation Initiative, one guy who works for Rio Terra named Milton DeCosta, Jr. He was going out to this remote area and he was going to check on thousands or millions of trees and he got stopped on the road. Two motorcycles came tearing past him, blocked his way just before this wooden bridge. And one of the guys drew a gun, stuck it in his face and basically told him, you need to stop planting trees here. There are a lot of people in the Amazon who want

to take these public land and convert them into farms and stake their claim. And so this guy, Milton, a year later, he went back to the same area after they saw there might be fires in the area. He saw this huge fire that had burned almost two square kilometers, so a huge area, charred wasteland, a lot of work gone up in flames. And while he was standing there, people started to shout at him from in the jungle and he couldn't see them. And they said, hey, we told you not to come back here. If you keep this up, we'll eliminate you. The battle to save the Amazon is life or death. Just this week, a bill passed the Lower House of Congress

that restricts land rights and opens up indigenous communities to more mining, logging and farming. That's led to violence and demonstrations across the country. Anthony Bodle in Brasilia is covering the reaction. This bill triggered violent protests outside San Paulo, where Guarani blocked a military. major highway and they confronted police with bows and arrows and hold stones at them until they were dispersed by riot police with tear gas. In Brazil, the Kayapo indigenous group were at the Supreme

Court to lobby for them to strike down the bill. This bill is really damaging for Brazil's estimated 1 million indigenous population because it limits the land that they can claim as ancestral lands and turn into formal reservations to protect them from large-scale agriculture and illegal wildcat gold mining, which is polluting their rivers with mercury. There are about 730 indigenous territories. 300 were mapped out years ago and are waiting for official recognition. We spoke to the leader of the Kayapo group, Doto Takak Iree.

He said, the law is being supported by the farmers. They want to destroy the forests with this bill, to free our lands for farming, and also to limit new reservations. They want to eliminate the indigenous communities. We are very worried. I'm Anthony Baudel in Brazilian.

Saving the Amazon is largely being left to non-profits. People who get up every day, try to find funding wherever they can, and work to convince those hostile to change that hope is not lost. Jake, you spent time with one organization that's finding new ways to make progress. Yes, the Black Jaguar Foundation has to work with some 13,000, 13,000 property owners along a river that they want to reforest. And many of these farmers are resistant. So they really have to go on with this narrative of this is going to help you.

Grouts are only going to get worse. This will help the rivers. I spoke to the founder, Ben Volks. Because you cannot keep on destroying the forest. The water is simply leaving. But in 40 years, it's too late. So we have to take action now. So we are helping farmers to survive.

But this is a 2,600 kilometer long corridor. I mean, we're talking like Boston and Miami. So it is really a huge feat that they're attempting to do. All this reforestation costs a lot of money. Black Jaguar Foundation alone thinks it needs about $3.7 billion to reforest its corridor. They've turned to corporate sponsorships, like one with the Moveda car rental company. And when you go to rent a car there, you can offset your carbon footprint. They have a contract for Black Jaguar to plant one million trees.

And for the other group, Rio Terra, they're looking at carbon credits, which are a bit controversial. Some people believe it's just permitting fossil fuel companies and others to emit more. Rio Terra has a structure set up with L'Oreal, the French cosmetics makers. They've invested more than $5 million US dollars, and they'll help 600 farmers reforest about 20 square kilometers. and keep that forested for the next 30 years, government funding has proven really inconsistent. Bolsonaro immediately shuttered the Amazon fund that was mostly funded by Norway and Germany.

They spent more than $50 million since 2008 on reforestation. The new president, Luis Enacio Lula de Silva, has reopened it, but it takes a while for these mechanisms to get working again. So, you know, it's possible that you could see this on again, off again, government funding. Whether Black Jaguar and Rio Terra and other tree planting initiatives can really rescue the Amazon remains to be seeing, Carlos Nobri, Brazil's leading climate scientists, summed it up to me like this. He said, reforestation is really essential to save the planet.

We could do it. Are we going to do it? That's still a question we can't answer. That's it for this special episode of Reuters World News. We'll be back on Monday with our daily news show, bringing you everything you need to know about your world in 10 minutes. To make sure you know what's going on in the world, don't forget to subscribe on your favorite podcast player or download the Reuters app.