Brazil wants to replant the Amazon. Where will he get enough trees?

The new President of Brazil, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, took office this year vowing to make Brazil a green superpower. He has not only promised to end years of accelerating destruction of the Amazon junglebut has called for the large-scale replanting of the world’s largest rainforest.

Returning the Amazon to even a part of its former glory would represent one of the most ambitious ecological restoration projects in history. More than 85 million hectares -200 million acres- of Amazon rainforest have been cleared or degraded, an area twice the size of California. In the last four years alone, during the tenure of former President Jair Bolsonaro, more than eleven million acres have been lost.

Forget for a moment the cost, labor and political will required for such a project. There is an even simpler question: where is Brazil going to get all those tree seedlings? The Amazon is a dense tropical rainforest, with an average of 228 trees per acre and 16,000 different species. It is not to exaggerate, but Brazil is going to need many trees, says an analysis of the World Economic Forum.

The answer lies in the remaining intact Amazon rainforest, particularly in Brazil’s indigenous territories, where indigenous entrepreneurs are already starting tree nurseries and carefully cultivating native seed species, and where Brazil’s biodiversity has yet to be lost. What is needed is support to dramatically expand this fledgling sector.

Look at a satellite map of the Amazon. See those dark green patches surrounded by lighter clearcut areas? Those green islands are indigenous territories, where communities have spent years defending their forests against incredible violence, racism and pressure.

The indigenous biodiversity of Brazil has not yet been lost in these territories, which makes them a rich resource for the project of reversing the damage caused in recent years and repairing decades of destruction for the sake of cattle ranching, mining and other activities. .

An Amazon “bioeconomy” based on forest supply chains for ecological restoration, driven by indigenous communities, is a powerful step towards achieving sustainable development in Brazil and an equitable relationship with indigenous communities.

Paying indigenous peoples for native seeds and seedlings provides a livelihood that is respectful of forests and within reach of women. It is also a recognition of the value of traditional ecological knowledge and care for the land. Our future may literally depend on it: restoring the Amazon, the “lungs of the Earth”, with indigenous species, is one of our best defenses against climate change in terms of profitable carbon storage.

Indigenous communities, including the Zoró and Paiter Suruí peoples, together with the award-winning Xingu Seeds Network and global partners such as the Arbor Day Foundation and Forest Trends, are creating indigenous seed and seedling value chains in eight indigenous territories of the Tupi mosaic of Brazil .

The work supports better monitoring of forest health through satellite data and increased presence on the ground, and has led to improved food security for local communities. The sale of seeds for planting outside the territories has given rise to literal “seed capital” to launch formal businesses. There is a great opportunity to expand this work to the entire Amazon.

This work is different from the image that one can have of planting trees; uses agroforestry techniques and diverse species, rather than a “plantation” approach, so that as the forest regrows, communities can harvest or sell the resulting forest products, such as cocoa, açaí and nuts. Brazil. Agroforestry is a powerful method to help provide food security and economic benefits to local communities, and has many advantages for climate and biodiversity.

A particularly promising agroforestry planting method is muvuca. It consists of the direct sowing of mixtures of autochthonous plants, which include seeds of trees, shrubs and other plants. Each species has its own function in the ecosystem. The seeds of grasses and other fast-growing plants will start to sprout first, and other plants with longer life cycles, such as trees, will lie dormant until the right conditions for germination are in place. In this way we can replace the “seed bank” of a degraded landscape with native species.

The muvuca method is also more efficient than relying exclusively on tree seedlings., whose cultivation in nurseries requires months of work and is much more expensive. The average cost of planting a tree in Brazil can reach 4 dollars per seedling. Rehabilitating the Amazon in this way would cost hundreds of billions of dollars. More seeds can be planted in a single muvuca plantation than a nursery could produce in 10 years.

When we think of supply chains, we often think of raw materials, including the soy, palm, beef, or timber supply chains that have destroyed much of the Amazon rainforest.

Brazil is at a tipping point where it could choose to build supply chains that drive economic growth through restoration, rather than harm the planet. It is a great opportunity for a new “social bioeconomy” in the Amazon, one that takes advantage of much of what makes it so irreplaceable: indigenous biodiverse seed mixtures, techniques such as muvuca and agroforestry, and the knowledge and care of its indigenous advocates. .