Giving Compass' Take:

• Bioeconomy could be a potential solution to stimulate economic activity and help with Amazon conservation efforts in Brazil.

• How can donors help Brazil's leaders preserve the Amazon? What is already being done?

• Read about the role of indigenous tribes saving the Amazon rain forest. 

The latest IPCC report on land use highlights that soil degradation accelerates the climate crisis, while sustainable land use is crucial to achieving the objectives set on the Paris Accord and to ensuring food security.

Carlos Nobre, an expert on climate variability and sustainability of tropical forests based in Brazil, proposed an idea he called Amazon 4.0 as an alternative for the country to achieve sustainable development through the exploitation of biodiversity’s economic potential.

This idea has been widely debated in public especially after the publication of the latest figures from the National Institute of Space Research (INPE) which revealed that deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon reached 2.254,8 square kilometers, or 278 per cent more than the same month last year.

Those figures were highly criticised by the Brazilian government, which led to a debate aired over national television where then INPE director, Ricardo Galvão, stated that “every political leader must understand, that when dealing with scientific matters, there is no higher authority over the sovereignty of science”.

Asked about the current and complex scenario in the Amazon, Carlos Durigan, director of the World Conservation Society Brazil (WCS), explained that degradation and invasion of 50 per cent of the Amazon land where most of the indigenous communities live is due to various socioenvironmental phenomena which have been occurring in the region for some time.

First, since five years ago, deforestation rates increased largely due to the expansion of large-scale agribusiness and livestock industries, done mostly through illegal land occupation, Durigan said. Urban footprint from large cities such as Manaus and Belem with new highways being constructed was also linked to an increase in forest fires.

On the contrary, bioeconomy as an alternative for the country’s development has a lot of potential for economic activity that will benefit the people, while preserving the natural ecosystem, Durigan said.

Read the full article about how bioeconomy can save the Amazon by Julian Reingold at Eco-Business.