The Great Simplification with Nate Hagens - Fires in the Rainforest: The Impossible Economics of a Disappearing Amazon | André Guimarães

Episode Date: November 20, 2024

(Conversation recorded on October 2nd, 2024)   For millions of years, the Amazon Rainforest has been home to a stunning array of plant and animal species, has shaped our world's climate, provided for millions of humans, and, as today's guest likes to put it, served as "the heart of the planet." But what economic and political factors are putting this vital ecosystem at risk, and what can be done to keep the "world's heart" beating for future generations of all species? In this conversation, Nate is joined by agronomist & economist André Guimarães to explore the historical context – and modern expansion – of deforestation in Brazil; the difficult relationship between local economies, animal agriculture, and the health of the Amazon at large; and the role of policy in shaping environmental and developmental outcomes. André emphasizes the importance of indigenous peoples in conservation efforts, as well as the responsibility to 'act locally while thinking globally' to ensure that the Amazon can continue to provide not only for its inhabitants, but for the world at large. Why is the Amazon Rainforest so important for global food production, and can it continue its massive output while sustaining the health of the forest? Why is the Amazon Rainforest burning? What is the Brazilian government's current approach to regulating deforestation, and how do local Brazillians, their families, and their economic realities fit into the conversation? Finally, how can we fulfill our global responsibility, no matter where we live, to protect it before it's too late?    About André Guimarães: André Guimarães is the Executive Director of the Amazon Environmental Research Institute, a Brazilian think tank focused on the Amazonian challenges for reaching zero deforestation and sustainable development. He is also the facilitator of the Coalition on Climate Forests and Agriculture, a network of 200+ entities from the rural sector, academia and civil society, focused on the development of a long-term vision for land use in Brazil. Mr. Guimarães is currently the Chairman of the Board at the Amazon Institute for Mankind and the Environment. He also founded and served as the CEO of Brazil Forests, a company dedicated to forest management, conservation and restoration of natural resources.    Show Notes and More Watch this video episode on YouTube   ---   Support The Institute for the Study of Energy and Our Future Join our Substack newsletter Join our Discord channel and connect with other listeners      

40, 50 years ago, our paradigm was that we have to remove nature, remove the trees to plant, soy, pasture. Now we know that we need forests. So the paradigm has shifted. We need to redesign the landscape so that we maximize the connectivity between productive areas and forested areas. These two things are not competitive anymore. They depend upon each other.

You're listening to the great simplification. I'm Nate Hagen's. On this show, we describe how energy, the economy, the environment, and human behavior all fit together and what it might mean for our future. By sharing insights from global thinkers, we hope to inform and inspire more humans to play emergent roles in the coming great simplification. Recently, Carlos Nobri joined me to discuss the state of the Amazon rainforest, the risk of its collapse and flimplification. the risk of its collapse and flip to Savannah in the coming decades and why that's important for the health and stability of the entire world, as if we shouldn't have known that. Following that, this week I am joined by André Guimaraes, another expert on the Amazon

to discuss the political and economic realities on the ground in Brazil in the fight to both preserve the integrity of the Amazon Forest and the Amazon basin, as well. well as the well-being of the people who live there. Andre Guimerais is the executive director of the Amazon Environmental Research Institute, which is a Brazilian think tank focused on the challenges to the Amazon for reaching zero deforestation as well as developing sustainably. He is also the facilitator of the Coalition on Climate, Forests, and Agriculture, a network of over 200 entities from the rural sector, academia and civil society focused on a

long-term vision for the land use in Brazil. As always, thank you for listening to and supporting this podcast. If you enjoyed this two-part series on the Amazon, consider sending one or both of these episodes to someone who might be interested in learning about this topic, as well as discuss it with some of your friends or colleagues on how it might impact your lives and choices going forward. With that, please welcome Andre Guimarais. André, bon die,

Tutta bien. Good day, Nate. All right. That's all the Portuguese I know, my friend. That's a good start. You know, we talked briefly a couple weeks ago, and I immediately felt a kinship with you, and I was looking forward to this conversation.

And isn't it a blessing that, and a boon that two people living on different continents who've never met can use modern technology to come together and have a conversation about the crisis of your country, the forest in your country, the whole planet that we're facing. It's such a perilous and amazing time to be alive, don't you think? Absolutely, Nate. I couldn't agree more. I think this is one of the beauty beautiful aspects of being on this planet these days. We do have problems, yes, but we can communicate on an efficient way

and try to find solutions for the problems. And I think that's pretty much of a privilege of being walking on this planet. A privilege and a responsibility, I increasingly think, and I think more people increasingly feel. Okay, so we're going to take a deep dive on what's going on in the Amazon forest, the relationship to climate, the relationship to global systems,

the relationship to the people of Brazil, bioeconomic, regional models of economy and all that. But let's just start with how did you first get started on this topic as a researcher, as a defender of the Amazon? I am an economist by training. I graduated actually in the University of Brasilia, what I'm talking to you from, back in 1991. A few months away from the big ecological moment of our recent history,

which was the Rio 92, the ECO-92, the meeting in Rio de Janeiro, which grouped together more than 150 global leaders to talk about climate, to talk about the challenges of protecting biodiversity, the challenges of humans embracing nature. So I think it was one of the very first moments in our history that, you know, these issues of protecting nature and in protecting nature and protecting ourselves was debated in a large scale in such a high-level debate. And again, when I graduated, again, a few months before Rio 92, you can imagine the debates and the media and the attention that the public was given to the subject, particularly the environment. and suddenly for, you know, young students or young scientists as myself, the Amazon appeared on the radio screen.

Up until then, to be very honest with you, I'm a human guy. I used to live in Brazil. My parents are from San Paulo. So the Amazon for me was something very distant, something very, you know, unknown, something very dangerous, something very, you know, from many, many perspectives was strange to my reality. but suddenly because of the event in Rio de Janeiro, that big green blur in the Brazilian map appeared to me.

And I had, remember, I had two job offers when I graduated. One was to be an agronomist, to really run farms and, you know, dedicate my time to, you know, producing soy and other products in the central Brazil, where I am, where Brasilia is. And the other job offer was actually an idea of putting together a project with another couple of young scientists to try to understand the dynamics of logging in the Amazon.

I had no doubt, Nate. I said, thank you very much to my job offer to become an agronomist. I took everything I had, including my wife and my dog, put it into a little car, and drove 2,000 kilometers to the north and reached Belain, where I lived for four years and started my career. And honestly, I would do that all again

if I had the opportunity to. I think I would do that again if I had the opportunity. I would do that right now. So, so, uh, I just recently had Carlos Snowbray, uh, on the show who I know you are a colleague with who said when he started and he's a little bit older than us, um, that there was only 0.5% of the Amazon forest was deforested and now it's, uh, approximately 17%. So, so when did this major deforestation? begin and what were the main drivers at the time and the main drivers now?

I think to understand the process of deforestation, we have to go back to the, I would say, the late 60s, early 70s. Back then, and there were lots of oil crises and global economic crises, and Brazil was a net importer of a number of goods and services such as oil, for example, we were a net importer of oil, but we were also a net importer of food. So Brazil used to import poultry, use import fruits, use to import, you know, other food products and so on. So we had problems with the balance of payments at the country. So several working groups were created at the time to short out ways to replace imports.

So one of these groups was a group dedicated to replace food imports. And from that group, a number of initiatives came out. One of them was the setup of Embrapa. Embrapa is the Brazilian agency for agronomical research. So the objectives of Embrapa back then, late 60s, early 70s, was to bring the northern agriculture to tropical regions. So adapt agriculture to tropical reasons. So we have seen back then lots of incentives,

both to develop science and to bring Brazilians to the interior of the country. I'm talking about the Cerrado, the southern part of the Amazon, but also the Amazon. So roads were built, infrastructure was designed, electricity was connected, dams were built to generate electricity to cities, cities like Beléin and Manals, which are today 2.5, 3 million people, cities have gained traction and enhanced its population. So the idea of developing the agriculture of Brazil, which initially was to replace the imports of food,

was one of the main drivers of the occupation of central Brazil and the southern part of the Amazon. So it is a success story. If we cut a long story short and look at it from today's eyes, we'll see that Brazil is today, you know, one of the largest producers and exporters of food and agricultural commodities on the planet. So this is a tremendous success story on one way.

On the other way, we have promoted this growth at the expense of half of the Cerrado biome and nearly 20%, as you said, 17, 18% of the Amazon biome. So there was an environmental cost associated to this development, which, you know, strikes us today and put, you know, responsibility on our, on our shoulders to redesign this process. We can continue the way that took us here. We have to rethink the model. So what you just described in Brazil is a microcosm of what's happened in the entire planet

with growth and the cost and the environment, except in many other countries, what happens in their country environmentally stays in their country. But that's not the case in Brazil, because as we hear in the news, the Amazon forest are the lungs of the planet, maybe you could describe how important the Amazon basin is to the global weather and climatic and natural world. Absolutely. The Amazon stores the equivalent to 10 years of global carbon emissions.

So that's the weight of the Amazon in terms of climate change. I mean, if we had the Amazon, burned, you know, in a few days, we would add a dramatic situation to the planet because zillions and zillions of tons of carbon would be immediately emitted to the atmosphere. So the Amazon is also responsible for maintaining or at least help to maintain the climate in our planet. But Brazil, as we've talked about, is an enormous producer of food and commodities, agricultural commodities and so on.

According to the minutes of agriculture, we supply food to one billion people every day. And that is directly related to the moisture that comes from the Amazon and allows for Brazil to have such a successful agricultural production system, among other benefits. But the main benefit, one might argue, is you're an exporter of ecosystem services, the vast majority of which are not included in our prices or our goals.

of our current system. Absolutely. One kilo of soy, Nate, requires 4,000 liters of water, nearly 1,000 gallons of water to be produced. We don't spend that water, but the water is necessary to be in the system so that we produce the soy.

One kilo of beef demands 15,000 liters of water available in the system to be produced. all across the life cycle of the animal. So, you know, water is absolutely necessary, but it's not just the volume of water, but when it comes, when it stops. So the distribution of water, in addition to the volume of water,

is something that the tropical forests provide as a service to agriculture, as a service to food security, as a service to the planet. So just to quote one example of how dependent we are, and sometimes we don't really, realize how important it is to keep forest standing for our daily lives. So I know the last two years have had some incredible droughts,

and the smoke from the fires can be just visible on an aerial map of South America. Have you tracked the standard deviation of precipitation, flood and drought, like over the last few decades, and has the amplitude increased of, of the variation in rainfall? Absolutely. This is one of the analysis that we keep doing all the time. The variation, if we look at the volumes, it's pretty much stable, right, over the past decades.

So we don't have more water or less water falling. What we have is a different distribution of water. And that's for no other reason that we are having land slides, for example, in several cities, including San Paulo, which is a big city, more than 20 million people's city. They are facing challenges in San Paulo and Rio de Janeiro in other parts of Brazil. We have had a severe flooding in Rio Grande du Su, which is a state down south of Brazil. It's a tragic story because Rio Grande do Suu is responsible for about 15% of the Brazilian GDP and 80% of the economy of that state was somehow damaged because of the water flooding.

and so on. So all of those disturbances are related to, let's put it this way, a different distribution of water, which sometimes gets concentrated in a few days, sometimes a few hours. We've been experiencing situations in some parts of Brazil, and that's not different in other parts of the world, in Germany, in Indonesia, in Mozambique, in several parts of the world, we are experiencing the same thing. You know, the water systems, both the natural ones, the rivers, and the artificial ones, the sewage systems, for example, they weren't designed for that amount of water. So at the end of the day, we face challenges in our infrastructural system,

in cities, for example, such as the sewage systems, but also in the natural systems with floodings and water disturbances that we haven't been experiencing, you know, three, four, five years ago. So take me through the history of how Brazilian government, Brazilian policy surrounding deforestation has changed over previous decades. And where does it stand now? Let me roll back the movie a couple of decades, maybe three decades. We have had a peak of deforestation in 1999, around 1999, 2000. That year, 26,000 square kilometers were deforested in the Amazon in one evening.

year. There was the peak of deforestation which took place in the year 2000 or around the year 2000. A peak in the rate of deforestation. In the rate of deforestation, correct. In the rate of deforestation that year, 26,000 square kilometers. So, you know, the images of the degradation of the Amazon, the images of the forest fires, similar to what we are observing today, Nate, were on TV screens, we're on the national news every day in 1999, in 2020, in 2000. So the Brazilian population started to think, well, this is my inheritance. This is my asset. And we are just letting it burn. So there was a discomfort in Brazil. So a government, which was late elected in 2002 and started its mandate in 2003, President Lula, his first mandate,

they said, we have to do something. And the Minister of Environment was structured, led by Minister Marina Silva and the end result was between 2004 and 2012, 80% of the deforestation in the Amazon, the deforestation in the Amazon was reduced by 80%, from 26,000 square kilometers down to 4.5,000 square kilometers. So this is an unprecedented process that took place. Tons and tons, millions of tons of carbon emissions were avoided. many, many biodiversity loss was avoided at the time. However, and here's a big, however, from 4.5, and then we moved to 5 and then to 6, and then to 7 and then to 8,

and then to 12, and then to 15, and now we are beginning to drop it again, because we had a government prior to the current administration for which it wasn't important to fight deforestation. They had a different vision. They had a vision of, you know, to develop the country. We need to open and clear more areas. That was the vision of the previous administration. Is that because the previous administration and the officials didn't understand the ecological systems or because they didn't care?

Or don't you know? I think they didn't care. To be very frank with you, they were just willing to promote development. And that has harmed indeed the forest and harmed the Amazon. We are now, even with the efforts of the current administration, we are now where we were about 12, 13 years ago in terms of the level, the rate of the deforestation. So we are backwards instead of moving forward.

But there's still a challenge there. So under Lula, my understanding is that there's a promise or an intent to stop deforestation by 2030, which is just five years from now. So you said in 20 years ago, we were at 4,500 kilometers per year reduced. And where are we now, like roughly? 13, around 13,000, 14,000 square kilometers in one year.

That's where we are right now. That's a long way to go from 13,000 to zero in five or six years. What is the general, irrespective of one's political, affiliation in Brazil. What is the general citizen in Brazil, their attitude towards the importance of the Amazon? Has that changed? I think according to some pools that we follow, and actually IPAM, my institution have actually ran a pool a few years ago with this question. How important is the Amazon for you? How is your perception of climate and the impacts of climate in your life? So,

Questions like this were asked, and we were very surprised, Nate, that more than 70% of Brazilians were indeed concerned about the future of the Amazon, did understand at some level the implications of the Amazon's degradation and deforestation to their daily life. So, Brazilians are amongst the most interested people, I wouldn't say conscious yet, but interested people into what happens in our backyard, what happens with the Amazon. It's important to say, it's relevant to say, that we are highly dependent upon, you know, the Amazon to survive as a country. I mentioned agriculture, which is not irrigated and depends upon the water cycles that comes from the Amazon. But, you know, more than 70% of our electricity is hydropowered plants.

So we do depend upon a lot of water flows to have electricity in our homes, to cut a long storage. short, that's absolutely necessary. And people realize that dependency. I hadn't thought about that. So if the pump between the Amazon and the ocean and the rivers in the sky, if that slows down or disappears, so does a majority of your electric power. Precisely, precisely. And we have had. I mean, right now, this is, we are having shortages. The water levels of the reservoirs are to the minimum level. So we had to turn on thermal power plants in order to keep the electricity levels that we need in the country. So that has been happening over the past few years, mainly because of droughts and a poor water distribution along the year. So we are facing

challenges and problems with electricity supply in our home. So I'm paying 40% more in my electric bill compared to three months ago because of shortages. in waterfalls and the river headings, and consequently the reservoirs are in low levels. So what have been some of the most effective policies in prior administrations to halting the rate of deforestation and looking ahead to 2030 or beyond? What do you think are some of the most important ways that Brazil might halt deforestation? One thing we've learned back in early 2000s, Nate, when we reduced the deforestation in 80% in the Amazon, was that reducing deforestation is one thing.

Keeping deforestation down is a different thing. So you have different two boxes to deal with one and the other challenge. To reduce deforestation, command and control. Punishment. You know, law. You have to respect the law. If people respect the law, you know, we will reduce naturally deforestation. More than 90% of the deforestation.

in the Amazon is illegal. So fighting illegal loggers, fighting land grabbers, fighting farmers that are not in compliance with the Brazilian Forest Cold, for example, reduces deforestation, right? But keeping deforestation down requires replacing an old-fashioned

unsustainable economy for a sustainable and, you know, green economy. Let me give you an example. There are municipalities in the Amazon, on 8 that more than 50% of their GDP is directly related to illegal activities. I'm talking illegal gold mining, illegal logging, that generate jobs in those municipalities. And I'm not just the direct jobs involved in land grabbing or in chopping down trees, but the hotels in the cities.

They depend upon the gold miners to create their financial results. So at the end of the day, you have to invest in green jobs. You have to invest in bioeconomy. You have to invest in modern technology so that new jobs are offered to the Amazonian population so that they wouldn't be going to the illegal activities anymore. So keeping the forestation down is still a challenge. You need punishment, command and control, but at the same time you need reward, which is a different incentive because obviously all that illegal act,

activity is because they're being compensated or rewarded by the products of their illegal activity. So if we had, if we favored and preferred whoever they're selling it to something else, then maybe a bioeconomy or something else might take a foothold, yes? Mm-hmm. Yes. What we are living through today was planned, as I mentioned before, in the 60s and 70s. And the mindset was, let's expand the country. Brazil, where I live, was built out of nowhere in the middle of Brazil back in the late 50s, early 60s.

The idea back then was to bring Brazil to the countryside, bring Brazil to its interior. Most of Brazil still today takes place in the coastal area. Some 70% of the Brazilian population lives up to 200 kilometers from the coast, from the Atlantic coast. So Brazil is still the big cities, San Paulo, Rio, South. Salvador, Recife, Puerto Alagre, etc. These are all coastal cities, and most of the population is there. So the idea of bringing Brazil to the country, to Serrado, to the Amazon, begun in the late 50s, have had lots of incentives over the 70s.

Now the challenge, Nate, is to redirect those incentives. The approach that we do promote here at the PAM, that we do believe, and where we are trying to position our science is to indicate where do we need to change the incentives. We are still incentivizing with subsidized money out of my pocket, out of my taxpayer money, we are still subsidizing chainsaws to chop down trees in the Amazon. This is happening today. And why is that?

Because the credit lines that are available and the credit system is still designed with an ancient, I would say, mentality of expansion, we need to expand the frontier in order to thrive. That paradigm has to be shifted to, you know, we need to intensify and redesign the frontier. And in order to redesign the frontier, to stop deforestation and intensify the production, generating more jobs and less deforestation, we need to refocus, rethink the incentives that we have designed, you know, 30, 40, 50 years. ago. So you mentioned that Brazil is probably one of the biggest exporters of environmental services to the world, but you also are one of the largest exporters of beef to the world. How can

these two statements continue to simultaneously be true in the future? What are your thoughts on that? They have to, and let me tell you why. First of all, you know, Brazil, in some, some crops, let's say soybean, for example, or even corn and cotton, and at some extent in beef, Brazil is very competitive. It's very, very efficient. It produces a lot per hectare. It produces a lot per unit of dollar. It produces a lot per input. So it's an efficient. Because you have a lot of sunlight and great soil and the hydrological flows of the Amazon. Nature blast us with those assets. and fortunately, you know, we were able to use that on an efficient manner. When it comes to production, when it comes to economic outputs.

But when it comes to nature outputs, that's not so efficient. So there is a room for improvement in Brazil, but still, Brazil is quite efficient in producing some of those goods. So if we somehow continue exploring the frontier, what's going to happen is that the production will start to fall. actually we are observing that in some regions. So right now, what we need is more forests. We need to restore some areas. We need to replant forests. As I said, we need to redesign the landscape.

Let me just give you one example to illustrate what I'm saying, Nate. Soy, for example, soybeans. They are up to 20% more productive, up to 100 meters away from a forest fragment. So the more contact that I have from my crop lands, With forests, with nature vegetation, more production I have. Because the roots of the trees are helping the soil somehow or they attract more rain because the forest is there? Why are they more productive? It's a combination of factors.

You have natural enemies of insects, for example, which leaves on the trees, it leaves on the forest. You have more moisture closer to the forest. You have more healthy soil and so on. So it's a combination of factors. Except if that's true and if our economic system and our incentives favor higher yields, then what would happen eventually, everything else being equal, is a patchwork quilt of some forest, some soy crop, some forest, some soy crop, because that would give the highest yield for soy, but eventually the connectivity of the forest as a trophic pump, the way you were describing

earlier, would gradually disappear, yes? Precisely, Indonesia. You know, again, back 40, 50 years ago, we didn't know that. I mean, our mindset or our paradigm was that we have to remove nature, remove the trees to plant whatever, plant soy, pasture, whatever, right? Now we know that we need forests. We need the crop land and the pasture land in contact with forest fragment, in contact with natural vegetation, so that it can produce more. So the paradigm has shifted. We need to, again, as you said,

redesign the landscape so that we maximize the connectivity between productive areas and forested areas so that we can produce more. So now we understand that in order to be effective and efficient in producing agriculture, we need forests alongside. These two things are not competitive anymore. They depend upon each other.

Forest depend on human beings. to protect them, and human beings, human activities such as agriculture depend on forests. This is now clear to science. I have a lot of questions on this. So this would be true even 50 years ago when it was, the entire forest was largely intact. But now, according to Carlos Nolbre and many other scientists that I've read and interacted with, we are approaching a tipping point where if we deforest much more, And I think there's a difference between actual deforested, like 17%, and then some other percentage, which is 20 or 25% of forests that are not fully intact.

Degraded, yeah. Degraded, right. But as we approach those tipping points, these efficiencies, soy near forest conversations change because it's a dynamic system, right? Absolutely. Absolutely. There's a trend in some areas in the Amazon, for example, that it's, it's, it's a dynamic. it's becoming a savannah. So in a savannah, you have one third, maybe less carbon that you have in a rainforest,

a mature rainforest, a climax rainforest. And if you have less biomass, less carbon, you have less environmental services being generated. One mature tree from the Amazon with 30, 40 meters high in eight, it can pump up to 1,000 liters per in one day to the atmosphere, one big tree. The trees in the Cerrado have a very, in a savannah, have a way limited capacity compared to a climax tree in the Amazon. So the more biomass you have, the more services you have available.

On the other hand, the more degraded you have in forests, the less environmental services you have. So the challenge for the future, and this is not for Brazil, I think that's for the planet, is to understand that we do depend upon, nature to thrive. And the more we understand how we do depend, the more we'll be able to protect nature and benefit from it. I think certainly in our circles, people are fully eyes wide open aware of that now. And it's my hope that the world wakes up to that before it's too late.

And we just see it in hindsight. Oh, shit. So I want to get back to the beef question in a second, but I think I read in something you sent me or one of your talks that a kilogram of chicken from Brazil that is consumed in England, in London, including all of the shipping emissions and energy to ship it from Brazil to London, still has a lower environmental footprint than a chicken raised in England. Is that true? That's true. That is true. Why is that true? Corn, which is the basic feed for chicken, is also produced here. So the integration of the system.

So you have cooperatives in the southern part of Brazil, which are extremely efficient in terms of poultry production because the inputs are nearby. Consequently, the efficiency is also an issue. Okay, so then this becomes an issue of scale, because if we had the appropriate scale, then from an economic environmental emission, you know, all in cradle to grave analysis, it would be more, it would be better environmentally for people in England to import their chicken

from Brazil. But if everyone in the world did that, then the incentives in Brazil would be so strong that we would tip over the Amazon tipping points and it would be an ecological disaster, right? So there's a, there's a threshold there. Finding the fine-tuning there is one of the challenges, you're absolutely right, right? Let me give you another example, which, you know, it's a bit away from our conversation. But for example, electric cars, right? People are, you know, everybody advocates for electric cars today, and everybody's willing to

change their six, eight-cylinder cars for electric cars and so on and so forth. But what about the source of energy? If I drive an electric car in Beijing, in China, or 80% of the electricity is thermal power plants. So I'm actually burning coal to fuel my car, right? If I'm using an electric car in Brazil, for example, 70% of the electricity that fuels that car is renewable, hydro, solar, or wind.

So, you know, it's not because the car is electric, that it's emitting less carbon to the atmosphere. You have to look at the whole chain. Have to look at the context. That's the tricky. So you have to look at the feed for the animal, the, you know, the medicines, the equipment, the whole chain to analyze whether or not it's better to import or to produce locally. Sometimes it's better to import, sometimes locally.

So let me ask you this. In my episode with Carlos, we summarized that there are things that Brazil need to do on behalf of the Amazon and its own country for the rest of the world. And there are things that the rest of the world needs to do for Brazil and the Amazon, namely we need to reduce our emissions. Otherwise, the dual threats of threshold of Savannah tipping points and two degree plus climate means that there's a positive feedback and we lose the Amazon. the one thing that Carlos suggested that the rest of the world could do is stop eating beef unless they know the destination.

What is your response to that or how do you think about that situation? I think in the long run, meat, beef is going to be, you know, for a niche product, very expensive, very difficult to produce, to transport, to, you know, to justify the existence of it. I mean, but that's in the future. We still have billions and billions of people on this planet that has deficits of protein, for example. So we need to address nutritional challenges that we still have in many, many countries, including Brazil. We do have a part of our population that still do not have access to good quality and good amounts of protein a day.

And one of the cheapest ways to produce protein is through the beef industry, through the poultry industry. I believe that in the future, we'll have alternatives or more efficient ways to produce protein. Part of it will come from, you know, vegetables, but part of it will come from animals. Eventually part of it will be synthesized in laboratories. So we'll have a different reality in the long run. But we still, again, we still have billions and billions of people that are way below the capacity to, you know, to have, you know, funds or money available to buy, you know, cutting-edge technology of protein. So we need to provide cheap protein to a number of people before we reach a moment

in which you can get rid of it. A small caveat, beef in the way that you describe as the most efficient way is true, but using the wrong prices because we don't include a lot of the externalities and the prices. So is there a difference with soy or beef or any of the other main agricultural products in Brazil between large and small-scale farming operations in terms of the impact on the Amazon? Yes, yes, there's a big, big difference. Specifically in the Amazon, you have, the Brazilian Forests called asks or requires from farmers in the Amazon biome to set 80% of the farm aside for conservation. So if I have a thousand hectares of land, I can only use for

crop land or pasture land, 200 hectares out of those 1,000. That's the requirement of the forest code for medium and large farmers. And what happens to the other 800? They're left alone. They are left alone. They are left alone. They have to be left alone for conservation purposes. It's what we call the legal reserve.

So it's a legal requirement. If I'm in Cerrado, I have to set aside 30% for conservation. If I'm in the Atlantic Forest, the coastal area of Brazil, 20%. So it varies depending on where you are in the country. The Amazon is the most rigorous request, which is 80%. I mean, people that would go to buy a land in the Amazon, they know that. So they buy the land knowing that they have to set 80% aside for conservation. That's the rule of the game, unless they change it, and hopefully it's not going to be changed.

That's the law. That law applies for medium and large farmers. small holders, they are in different, under a different type of compliance requirements from the Forest Code. They oftentimes are in what we call the rural agrarial reform settlements. They are all together. Oftentimes, they are legal reserve or the area that they have to protect is collective, is not individualized each property, so it's a collective area.

So that gives you a different of the, in terms of medium, large farmers with small holders. But most importantly than that, Nate, is the fact of that around 30% of the deforestation in the Amazon takes place inside small holders' property. And why is that? Some 70% of the small farmers in the Amazon, differently from medium large farmers, but small holders in the Amazon, family farmers, more than 70% have never seen an agronomist or a technical person in their lives. The only capital they have is the natural capital. They don't have access to financial capital.

They don't have access to technological capital. They have limited human capacity, human capital because it's only a family. The only capital they have available is the natural capital. It's the natural fertility of the soil. So every year, they have to clear a new half a hectare or a new hectare in order to keep the minimal level of production in their property. So when you sum up one hectare multiplied by 700,000 small holders in the Amazon, you'll see that that's about 30% of the deforestation in the Amazon.

And that's a challenge indeed. How many Brazilians are struggling now to make ends meet a living paycheck to paycheck? And how does that affect the overall trend of deforestation that you're describing? Or did you just give me that? You're talking about Brazil as a whole or Amazon? Both. Both. According to the official data,

somewhere around 30 million Brazilians are still below or near the poverty level. So we're talking here, people that do not have three meals a day, for example. So we still have tens of millions of Brazilians still having to sell, what we call sell their lunch to buy the dinner. In other words, they are not fulfilled in their needs.

In the Amazon, the number is, is smaller, but still a percentage of the population there? Again, the Brazil and the Amazon situation just in so many ways is a microcosm of our global situation. So if we head into a world of less affordability, inflation, more disruption, higher droughts and floods, higher amplitude of natural events, kind of the default pathway, that itself is going to put everything else being equal, which I hope it's not.

That itself is going to put a burden on the Amazon because these people, these 700,000 farmers are not going to have any recourse, but to use the capital they have, which is the one hectare and use it however they can to get either money or food to survive. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Oftentimes to survive. We have about 4 million people in the Amazon today. One thing that is important to say, Nate, we haven't mentioned yet, is that most of the population in the Amazon live in cities. Somewhere around 80% of the population in the Brazilian Amazon, they are in cities, big cities like Benetam and ours, but oftentimes in medium and small-sized cities, 30,000, 50,000, 100,000 inhabitants.

So it's a quite urbanized huge. territory. Out of the 28 million people living in the Amazon, some 20 to 22 live in cities. So we have another, you know, five, six, seven, eight million people living in rural areas. And four million of those living in rural areas are small farmers, are living under, you know, minimum conditions of subsistence. And I see that as a problem. The half empty glass is, well, four million people are living in poverty in the Amazon. The half full glass is, is that if we provide technical assistance to those people, and this is something that we've done,

we've actually tested that hypothesis a few years ago. We've created here within IPAM a group of technical extensionists. So we provided permanent good quality extension services, technical services to 3,000 families in the state of Parah. We were testing the following hypothesis. if we provide technical assistance to those farmers, they will live better and they will reduce the deforestation that would be necessary for them to survive and thrive.

The end result of this project, three years of a project, $25 million involved, $42 technical people involved were two numbers, 140% increase in the income on average, and 80% reduction in deforestation. They don't need to cut trees anymore because now they have access to fertilizers, some equipment that would allow them to produce near their homes instead of chopping down trees every year. So what are some of the farming changes in the methodology, et cetera, that you inform and practice during those extension people?

One of the things that we've looked after was cattle raising. Some 80% of the small holders in the Amazon do have cattle. cattle is like a savings account. This is important to understand. This is like a savings account to small holders. When someone gets sick, they sell a couple of animals, go to the city to get hospital treatment. When someone, you know, the daughter wants to go to school in a city,

they would sell the animals to allow for the kid to go to school and so on. So it's a savings account. They don't have bank accounts, but they have the animals as a savings account. So it's an important part of the economy and the economic safety of those families, right? So again, 80% of smallholders have cattle on an extremely inefficient way. The average head count is half an animal per hectare, right? If you provide, if they invest 300 kilos of nitrogen, and this is not hypothetical, this is reality, 300 kilos of nitrogen per hectare, fences, a little bit of training to the farmer,

and a pump to pump water from the river into a more comfortable area for the animals, you can move from less than one animal per hectare to up to five animals per hectare. And we've done that. So, again, you don't need to chop down every half a hectare to expand your pasture land if you use minimum. this is not rocket science. We're talking here, you know, fences, nitrogen, and a pump. And then you move, you know, five-fold, six-fold, more production of cattle.

This is just an example of how income production can be increased without the needs to open new areas. And the same goals for, you know, food crops like mani-hawk and fruit production. when they have the availability of fertilizers, the availability of minimum technology, you know, how to plant the trees, what's the distance between one tree, one plant and the other, basic information, they can multiply it by two, three, four times the yields, which means that they don't need to go into new areas anymore. They stay closer to home and more efficiently. Let me put you on the spot here, Andre. First, before I do that, what are those symbols on the wall behind you represent? I love the green and then the wood and then the red. There's something artistic in an abstract sense, but what are those? That's very symbolic to me, Nate.

The wall in green is a pump's color. So this is one of our characteristics, our logo, our materials are all in this green. So this is what we call our green. But most importantly are those equipment over here. These are indigenous equipments used for wars. And Chief Raoni, Chief Raoni is probably one of the most known recognized leaders in the Brazilian indigenous groups. And he's 80, he's nearly 90 years old now. He's an old guy. And we have had a relationship with the Institute that carries his name, Instituto Haouni, since a long time. We are partners with the Institute of Haouni, and we have this, I would say, this vocation of bringing indigenous leaders to the environmental discussions globally.

So the climate cops, for example, the conference of the parties of the climate convention, we used to bring, always alongside with our, delegation, we invite two or three indigenous leaders to participate in the discussions, to learn what's going on and so on. And Chief Raoni was invited to come along with us to COP, oh my gosh, COP 26 or COP 27 in Bonn, in Germany. And at the end of the COP, because he was part of our delegation, he was participating in our, and he was very thankful for IPAM. So he took this, actually there are three of them, one on top of the other, and he, you know,

gifted us with those. So I was thrilled because this, and by the way, those were made by him himself. So his hands were used to produce those, those equipments here, which again, are used to war. Of course, I'm not willing to hit nobody on the brain, but if necessary, I can use to educate some of my colleagues here. Please don't take me for literally on this one. I'm going to come back to the question that I was going to ask,

but you brought up the indigenous people in the Amazon. My understanding is there's over 350 tribes in the Amazon. How many of those have your organization, EPAM, worked with, and how are the indigenous peoples and nations playing a role in efforts to preserve the Amazon forest? Well, first of all, around 30% of the Amazon is formed of indigenous territories. We're talking about 200 and so ethnic, different Latinis. We are talking about 150, 160 different languages from different roots. I mean, these are totally different languages.

So there's an enormous cultural diversity in those areas. Again, 30% of the Amazon. Those areas, Nate, they represent less than 5% of the deforestation in the Amazon. despite being 30% of the total territory, less than 5% of the deforestation takes place in those areas. And this is directly related to the presence of indigenous people. You know, they are there. They have fire brigades. They looked after their territories.

This is their land. This is where their ancestors were buried. That's their, you know, ceremonial places are in those lands. So they have a profound respect to the forest. These are people, we are talking. in here some of those ethnic groups, they have thousands of years living in the Amazon harmonically with the forest. So they are the guardians of the forest, the guardians of 30% of the Amazon. Needless to say more. So the survey that your organization did and 70% of Brazilians cared about the Amazon,

that would be a silly survey to give to those indigenous peoples because it would be a dumb question. and they would intuitively know that their livelihoods and their future are intimately connected with the forest. Absolutely. Are there any common principles or ways of life that you've observed that the indigenous people in Brazil help them live in tune with the Amazon, like things that they do or ways that they think? There are some beautiful stories there, Nate, because, you know, the indigenous groups, you know, they have nature as their. clock. They have nature as a calendar. So, you know, that tree, when that tree blooms, that's the time to plant maniac. When, you know, that tree over there, you know, let goes their leaves, this is the time to fish a certain fish that will take place. So they have these, you know, connections, which for

us is absolutely difficult to understand, but this is their daily life. We have to use Google. We need Google, exactly. Their Google is looking at the trees, you know, looking at the rivers, looking at the animals. So the way the animals behave, you know, tells them a story or tells them that this is the time to do something. So, you know, the connection that these folks have with nature is metaphysical. It's not written on books. And so we need to learn from them.

We need to learn from them, not just to, you know, to protect the forest, but to respect the differences. I mean, I tell a lot here at my institution, We are all for the, you know, we are defenders of the biodiversity. What about the cultural diversity? What about the, you know, religious diversity? I mean, we have to be coherent. And I believe that, you know, the future of mankind is a diverse future or no future at all.

So we need to be open to see and respect and sometimes learn with, you know, the different. And the indigenous groups present in Brazil, they offered us. an enormous opportunity. I'm very proud to have, you know, more than 200 different cultures in my country. You know, there are nearly 50 indigenous tribes, they have never been contact yet, living in the middle of the Amazon. We just know that they are there because here and there, we fly over them, so we know they're there, but they're never been contacted. And I have a profound respect to the fact that we are still protecting those groups. Me too. I think there's something in many of us that when you say a fact like that, it lights an ember of hope and reverence

that the superorganism hasn't reached quite that far yet. True. So on this conversation, there are at least four things that need to happen. One is the global human economy needs to reduce emissions and eventually pull out CO2 from the air in order to get back down to a safe operating zone for the Anthropocene or the Holocene. Number two is Brazil needs to stop deforestation. Number three, Brazil needs to eventually reforest so that we go back from that 17% deforested Amazon down to 15% or 13% or eventually maybe we get back to,

where it was 50 years ago. And then the fourth thing is, obviously, as you've brought up, is have a bioeconomic model to support the people in the forest in your country of Brazil. So if you were benevolent dictator on these issues, leaving aside the global emission issue, because that may be out of your benevolent dictator control, what sort of things, what sort of pathways could you envision in Brazil, in the Amazon that would allow us in the next few decades to completely stop deforestation,

to reforest and have economic models that work for the people. I would focus a lot of my attention into incentives. You know, humans react to punishment. Yes, we do react to punishment, but we do react much better, you know, through incentives. And I think we have an opportunity in the Amazon, for example, to redesign incentives. We don't even need to create new incentives. Incentives are there. We have subsidized credit lines.

We have money from the public sector, you know, supporting poor families. But what I think is that we need to rethink those incentives on a new paradigm. The new paradigm is a paradigm of more harmony. And here let me be philosophical. here a little bit because, you know, we are oftentimes trying to, you know, balance the game. So we need to balance the game. But balancing, supposedly we have two sides on a scale. So we need to balance two sides.

When it comes to harmonize, I mean, we are equals. So I think the challenge is to, you know, once again, promote more incentives, we focus the incentives so we have a better harmony. We have people respecting the indigenous groups because the indigenous groups do produce something that is important to the country. They are protecting water services. They are protecting environmental services which we need to our economy. So the understanding those connections, in my view, is fundamental for any human community to, you know, behave properly and, you know, design a future in which will be more harmonic with nature. and consequently be more sustainable in the wrong ground.

Right now, we are not sustainable. We need more than three, four, five planet Earths to survive in the model, the consumption model that we have today. That has to change. And I think that has to change. And we have to change looking at our ancient cultures. They have a lot to teach to us. The indigenous groups, they have a lot to teach to us.

So what is your work, the work of your organization, IPAM? If you're wildly successful, what are some things that you hope to implement? We are science-based organizations. So our raw material is data and our product is information. So we do believe that good quality information have the power to change. That's what we have been doing over the past 30 years. That's what we intend to continue doing. However, it's a need, it's, I have to say, it's quite an inefficient process.

Translating science into policies, translating science into corporate decisions is very difficult, oftentimes more difficult than producing science itself. So I think if I, if I had an opportunity to do one thing, I would try to translate science on a way that, you know, ordinary people on the street of the citizens. decision makers on, you know, political levels could use more efficiently. And this is, this is, you know, I think it's a mistake that many, many scientists do is, you know, they think that their work ends on a paper. I think the work of a scientist begins on a paper. That's when you really defend your ideas and channeling those ideas to make changes.

So I think, you know, my view to this organization in the future is that we approximate the distance between science and decision-making on an individual basis, on a collective basis, on a country basis. It doesn't matter. We need science to be closer to people's decision-making process on a daily basis. This is my personal challenge for my life. many countries are, I've learned recently, are threatening to boycott Brazilian products if Brazil doesn't start to protect the rainforest. What's your opinion of that strategy from the international community? I think boycotts, boycotts have to be very carefully used. Oftentimes, if you look at history of boycotts, they serve the purpose of those that are promoting the boycott,

but not necessarily they solve the problem that the boycott wants to solve. Let me give you an example, concrete example. Right now, as we are speaking, Europe is designing and we will be launching in the years to come a policy called EUDR, European Union Deforestation Regulation. So basically, the UDR says that, well, there's a list of products that they import, and they are not importing from a certain date, products that have promoted deforestation. So they don't want deforestation in those products. So I'm talking here soy, I'm talking here corn, beef, leather, coffee, cocoa, so on and so forth.

Fine. However, the world is a little bigger than Europe. I mean, that EUDR system will certainly solve, you know, the European problem with important deforestation. But my question is, is that going to solve deforestation? I doubt. You know, Europe represents a smaller portion of the Brazilian market, for example. So what about the balance? You know, so at the end of the day, they create two worlds, boycotts in my view, they create

two worlds. One is the word that can attend the boycott demands and the other word that cannot. So the problems continue. You're not sorted out. Okay. I'm going to put you on the spot, Andre. You talked about your mission, both your organization and your personal science and policy.

So I want you to give an elevator pitch, two different ones, about a minute each. Give a pitch to people in the world on the state and the importance of the Amazon and how they should think about it and what to do and then do the same pitch to someone that lives in your country in Brazil. I would say for the globe, something very simple, Nate, you know, it's better to have an Amazon on our planet than not have an Amazon. And you do have a role to play in making sure that your kids and your kids' kids will see the Amazon and will benefit from the Amazon. Simple as that. This is what I would say to the planet. To a Brazilian, something similar, you know, the Amazon is fundamental.

If you have three kids, one of your kids will be employed. in the future if we keep the Amazon standing. I'm talking about not just the farming of our economy, the farming portion of our economy, but also, you know, the industry of, you know, equipment, the industry of input suppliers, financial services, which are in San Paulo Rio and so on. So you want to get your kids employed in the future,

make sure that the Amazon is protected. So we have multiple, multiple risks and thresholds, both in the world economy and the world ecology. But let me ask you this hypothetical question. So in my opinion, we are headed towards two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial times and probably above. I hope that something happens either technology-wise or economic-wise that that's not the case. But I think that you and I would agree that that's probably... That's a trend.

Yeah, that's the trend. we are also sitting at a state when 17% plus of the Amazon is deforested and although we are reducing deforestation, it's still net positive, which means more kilometers, square kilometers are being removed every year. In the possible scenario where the world does hit 2 degrees Celsius, but Brazil, maybe with your help, yours and your colleagues and others, takes a different path and does start to respect and rebuild the Amazon. In a two degree Celsius world,

how important is it, how critical is it, that the Amazon's component in that world reverses? And we go back, because if we were able to reverse deforestation and go from 17 to 12, to five, so the way that the Amazon used to be, that itself removes a lot of carbon. Like you said, the Amazon contains 10 times as much of our emissions. So if we regrow it by 20%, that's more than the emissions of a couple years. Is it possible that this could happen, that Brazil could

really value the commons, both its own commons and the global commons, which is the lungs and the heart of the planet and the Amazon forest. What are your thoughts on that? It is not just possible, but absolutely necessary. Let's look at some numbers to illustrate my point here. We have about 120, 130 million hectares of land deforested in the Amazon, right? About one third of it, 40 million hectares is degraded, highly degraded, not just, degraded, highly degraded. I'm talking here former pasture land that is now, you know, soils

exposed. So those areas are just sitting there. They have very limited capacity to naturally regenerate. So we need to intervene in those areas. 40 million hectares in the Amazon alone. Let me put it in perspective, Nate.

In the entire country of Brazil have 65, 70 million hectares of crop land. So we are talking more than half of what we have in cropland in the entire country more than half of what we have is degraded land in the Amazon. So we have the chance if we don't do anything else in terms of technology, no, no enhancement of technology, we can multiply by 1.5 or 1.6 our production without chopping down a single tree, just benefiting from, you know, the area that is already degraded, highly degraded. And the Amazon alone, Cerrado has another 20 million hectares and so on.

So we do have enough land to expand the agricultural frontier without chopping down a single tree. So that's one point. But my other point is that we should not do that. We should actually restore some forests within those 40 million. For the reasons that I stated before, we need to redesign the frontier. We need to maximize the contact between pasture and clopland and native vegetation. But in order to do that, we need to build an economic or a financial stream, which is not built yet. So the planting forest has to be looked as a business, not as a philanthropy.

Right now we are restoring forests with philanthropic money. We need to restore forests with the mainstream money. And that means that companies, countries, banks have to benefit from it. They have to profit from it. So it's on us scientists, it's on us, Brazilians, to show to the financial world that there is profit, you know, in restoring forests. And in my personal view, that profit is in two issues. One is environmental services, such as carbon sequestration and maintenance and maintenance on the ground. And the other one is agricultural crop yields improve, right, or increase.

So, you know, there's profit there, potentially. But we need to make sure that, you know, banks, investors, companies observe, realize, and invest. That's the challenge. So there is the possibility of the rebound effect or the backfire effect is that as incomes go up, there's more barbecues and more demand for beef, et cetera. So you make income that is more environmentally sound, but you spend it in the global economy on something that's not so environmentally friendly. Yeah, that's a good point.

point. We have to agree on a moratorium. We will continue to thrive. We will continue to expand production, but we are not chopping down any more trees. We need to agree on that. Boy, I haven't talked about the Amazon yet, and now I met several people in New York at Climate Week, and I have become aware how critical the Amazon situation is not only for the people in South America, but for the whole world. I mean, it is, like you said, the heart of the planet. Do you, I mean, you are, at least since 1991, an ecologist, a scientist looking at the situation of the world. Do you have any suggestions for the viewers of this program who are paying attention to what's happening in the world at this time of anxiety and opportunity?

Yes. I would say that, you know, for everybody, especially, for young people, Nate, I think they need to think global and act local. Let me try to illustrate it. I mean, we need to understand what happens in our planet. This is our planet. This is our home. So we need, you know, I'm sitting in Florida. And, you know, I need to understand, if I was sitting in Florida, I need to understand what goes on in Africa. If I'm sitting in Zimbabwe, I need to understand what goes on in Brazil. The good news is that we have social media, we have internet, we have, you know, technology which allows us to, you know, get the information quick. We are not using well that information.

Look at the elections in some countries there. Look at the politicians, you know, benefiting from the fake news and so on. So I think there is an industry of fake news which is taking advantage of the technology, that this is going to be over at some point. You know, people will realize what is good and what's bad on the Internet at some point in time. And so thinking globally for me means get yourself in. inform what goes on in the country. Make your mind, make your, you know, create your own opinion about things.

This is number one. So look at the planet. But act locally. For example, Nate, I have it with my family an agreement that if I have two products, it doesn't matter what the price is. If I have two products that I can buy, two similar products that I can buy in a supermarket. And one of them was produced closer to my house.

I would choose that one. Simple choices like that. Let's look at the planet. Let's learn globally about the global issues, but acting locally. You know, go visit the cities that are close to your city. You know, do tourism next door to your city instead of catching a plane or in addition to catching a plane to visit Paris. I mean, you know, these are individual decisions on a daily basis that if you sum up them all up, we may have a better planet. What advice do you have for young people in their late teens, early 20s,

who are becoming aware of climate and the Amazon and the economic and energy issues, et cetera? Spend some time, you know, learning about the Amazon. Let me give you my example, Nate. Why did I choose to go to the Amazon and become, you know, a scientist and gave up my agronomic career? You know, the salary that was offered to me was five times more in the business sector than it was to be a scientist. But it wasn't a variable in my life. So what I would advise young people, too, is, you know, don't be, you know, excited about making millions and millions of dollars, being so competitive and so on. competitiveness and is the more harmonic you are to the environment that surrounds you,

the more competitive you are to survive, the more competitive your kids will be because they have a better culture coming from you. So, you know, look at the planet. It's a beautiful planet. Learn about the planet and help the planet to survive in the long run. You do have a role to play. We all have a role to play. And just to finalize that message, Nate,

A few years ago, I used to say that, well, the work that I do is for my grandkids. You know, I'm working for my grandkids. I have two kids, but I'm working for my grandkids because the impact of climate change will take, you know, 20, 30, 40 years to arrive. A few years back, I started thinking that, well, not really to my grandkids, but maybe I'm working for my kids because, you know, things are happening, you know, sooner than later. Now I'm thinking, well, maybe I'm working for myself. And a few weeks ago, I realized that actually I'm working for my parents, which are in their 80s, because they are breathing smoke as we speak in the capital of my country today. So their health is being affected by the degradation of the Amazon today, not in 30 years' time.

So please, young people, we have a job to do. And that job is today, not tomorrow. What do you care most about in the world, Andre? People living in harmony, harmony, you know, being equals. I mean, I meet a millionaire. Of course I admire that guy. But, you know, when I talk to this millionaire, I look at him or her in the eye, same level. When I meet someone in the middle of the Amazon with no income, no money at all, no assets at all, you know, I have to look at that person as an equal.

I have to look at her or him in the eye. and we are all the same. I mean, we are born naked and we die naked. We are all the same, Nate. What happens in between, you know, borny and dying is what's going to make the difference. And I think the difference is made not in, you know, building more things, not in accumulating more goods, not in making more money, but instead, you know, in making more friends, in learning more about the planet, in, you know, being in, in, you know, being in. in harmony with nature, harmony with the others, especially if they are different from you. So we value the differences and the diversity.

If you could wave a magic wand and there was no recourse to your status or security, what is one thing you would do to improve human and planetary futures? I would stop poverty. I would cancel poverty from this species. We don't have any more poor people. This is an absurd, Nate. In 2024, we have to live with poverty. We have to live with families and kids starving to death.

You know, we have enough food for everybody. We have enough food. What we don't have is money to buy food. So, you know, income distribution, making sure that, you know, everybody has the minimum conditions to live, to thrive, to be happy, right? So I would stop poverty. Thank you.

And thank you for your time today. If I were to ask you back in the future for a repeat conversation, what is one topic that you're passionate about and you know a lot about that's relevant to our global ecological and economic futures that you would be willing to take a deep dive on? food, food production. We are in the merge of a revolution in food production for good, hopefully. You know, we need to feed seven, eight billion people. This is not easy, but we have to feed those people with quality, with, you know, good level of protein, good level of carbohydrates, good quality of carbohydrates, good quality of carbohydrates, vitamins, vegetables, you know. I do have a very, very diverse and, you know, nutrition. But I would like that nutrition to be available to everybody,

regardless of where they are, regardless of their religion, regardless of their gender. I would like to talk about food. And I think that has everything to do with climate change, that has everything to do with forests, tropical and non-tropical, that has everything to do with the essence of being humans. Right. We do eat before we drive cars. We do it before we learn to read books. We have to go back to our origins and make sure that we understand who we are. And who we are is based on what we eat. So let's talk about food, my friend, if you want. Okay. Sounds like a plan. Thank you so much. And I've never been to Brazil, maybe one day, but thank you for all your work. We've got to fix this.

Thanks for all your important work And I have high hopes for people in Brazil And the world waking up to protect our forests and earth systems An honor, Nate, and looking forward to talking more about food and other issues My pleasure. I'm really honored to be here. If you enjoyed or learned from this episode of the Great Simplification, please follow us on your favorite podcast platform.

You can also visit the Great simplification.com for references and show notes from today's conversation. And to connect with fellow listeners of this podcast, check out our Discord channel. This show is hosted by me, Nate Hagen's, edited by No Troublemakers Media, and produced by Misty Stinnett, Leslie Battlutz, Brady Hyann and Lizzie Siriani.