November 25, 2022

11:11

Iury Lima – from Amazon Agency

VILHENA (RO) – Zero deforestation, fighting climate emergency, forest recovery. The list of environmental challenges awaiting the president-elect, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT), from 2023 is long. And the attention paid to what should be a priority in the management of the politician, who was re-elected for the third time, will not be only from the opposition. Civil society organisations are mobilising with proposals for innovations and improvements, pointing out what they expect from the new president.

Two major strategies to recover and strengthen the country’s sustainability agenda are the recovery of 12 million hectares of degraded forests by 2030 and investment in forestry concessions. These proposals are considered crucial and possible to implement, according to specialists from the Choices Institute.

“These proposals are in direct dialogue with what President-elected Lula said in his speech at COP27 in Egypt, when he said that nature and the forest are allies – and not enemies – of income generation and improvement of living conditions”, explains the executive director of the Choices Institute, Sérgio Leitão, in an interview to AMAZON AGENCY. “And these proposals meet exactly this desire of the president, because they show how this can be done in practice”, he said.

The goals are presented in the document “The forest that generates employment and income as a priority of the new Lula Government”, released this week, the first of the series “Proposals for Transition”, as part of a material that will be delivered to the team of the new president of the Republic.

Handling as shielding

In practice, the next government should take advantage of the bases already laid to carry out these actions. One of the first steps, according to Choices, would be a joint effort with Congress to approve Bill (PL) No. 5,518 of 2020, which expands the object of forest concessions, making bidding more flexible and thus increasing the economic competitiveness of the forest areas granted. 

It works like this: when receiving authorization for management, the company must be limited to the sustainable use of the ecosystem, with extraction and processing of timber and non-timber products. Tourism services also apply. 

With the approval, Brazil would have an income of R$ 125 million per year, using at least 37 forest concession areas in the Amazon. Leitão recalls that granting public areas that, in some cases, have no intended use, works as a kind of shield against invasions, illegal deforestation and agrarian conflicts. An initiative that began with Lula, in his first mandate, when the federal lawmaker elected from São Paulo, Marina Silva, commanded the Ministry of Environment.

“They [public forests] end up becoming the target of land-grabbers, of speculators who invade and deforest so that they can later ask the government to carry out what is called land regularisation”, explains Sérgio Leitão. He also says that it is necessary to rescue what was started in the first mandate of the elected president, that is, increase the economic attractiveness of forest concessions and attract more interested parties.

Carbon credits

Another important point in the concessions bill is the authorisation to sell credits, resulting from avoided carbon emissions, through forest conservation. “One of the needs that this law needs to resolve is that carbon credits, which today are a global market, may also be granted to the holders of these concessions so that they may have an extra income”, proposes Sérgio Leitão.

“Whoever explores an area granted by the government, in the Amazon, suffers unfair, brutal competition from those who invade public land, remove wood, sell without any concern for replanting the forest and, therefore, keeps the profit and leaves the loss to society”, he laments.

Record Reforestation

In terms of reforestation, the target is even more ambitious: Brazil needs to reforest an area almost the size of England. For that, 8 billion trees would be necessary; one for each inhabitant of the planet. The commitment is old, since the COP of Paris, held in 2015. Achieving this would be like planting “money feet”, taking into account the billion-dollar return. 

“Based on the Brazilian commitment to recover 12 million hectares of forest, which is what has been deforested and needs to be recovered, we can generate, initially, 215,000 jobs, a tax collection of R$ 6.5 billion and revenue from wood that can be extracted and replanted under the so-called sustainable management system, showing that, from preservation and replanting, it is possible to generate income and employment”, Leitão points out enthusiastically.

“It’s no longer time to break deforestation records. It’s time to break forest replanting records”, concludes the executive director of the Choices Institute.