They suggest the use of agroforestry occupation to generate economic activity in degraded areas
06/06/2022
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Beto Verissimo and Juliano Assunção — Foto: Leo Pinheiro/Valor
The historical process of occupation of the Amazon has created enormous forest loss, but the stock of deforested areas can be recovered and used for the production of items that generate development and income, agronomist Beto Veríssimo and economist Juliano Assunção say. They are the coordinators of the Amazônia 2030 project, which seeks to make a diagnosis of the region’s problems and point out solutions, encouraging the formulation of state policies for the Amazon.
In a live-streamed interview with Valor on Friday, Mr. Veríssimo said that over the last 40 years 83 million hectares have been deforested in the region, which is equivalent to the area of Minas Gerais and São Paulo states. Of this total, only 10% is used in agronomic terms, mainly soybeans. Another 60% are underused areas, generally with low productivity cattle raising, while 30% are abandoned spots.
“There is a myth that it is necessary to deforest to develop. The analyses are absolutely conclusive that it is not necessary. Too much has already been deforested,” added Mr. Veríssimo, who is also a senior researcher and cofounder of the Institute for Man and the Environment of the Amazon (Imazon). “So there’s a long job of making good use of the areas that have already been opened up.”
Mr. Assunção said there is no need to cut down the forest to increase agriculture. “If you look at FAO [Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations] data, food production since the early 1960s has been growing at a very constant rate. But if we look at what is happening in terms of area, in the last 20 years, it hasn’t increased,” said the associate professor at the Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio) and executive director of the Climate Policy Initiative (CPI) Brazil.
He explained that the Amazon territory was allegedly occupied to “integrate” the country, which made sense in the past, but the goal was not to extract value from the forest. “If this brought us a deforestation of 20% of the Amazon, which is something dramatic from the environmental point of view, today we have in our hands, when we look ahead, a stock of area that no country has to expand its agricultural production,” he said.
Mr. Veríssimo affirmed that reforestation can be used to promote the paper and pulp industry: “The expansion of this sector has to take place in the Amazon, but not over the forest. The specialist points out the important role of agroforestry systems, which combine the preservation of the standing forest and the cultivation of species to generate income, such as cocoa and açaí.
According to Mr. Assunção, the sector of products compatible with the Amazon ecosystem has more than 60 quality items for export, but they account for only 0.17% of the world market share. The Brazilian Amazon represents one-third of the world’s tropical forests.
Both specialists also emphasized that it is necessary to have a land title regularization policy for the region, provided it does not promote flexibility for the illegal advance on preserved areas, which, according to them, has been happening in recent years.
Mr. Veríssimo said that the Amazon is experiencing “a perfect storm of problems”, which include, deforestation, youth unemployment, poverty, and violence. While the region covers 59% of the country, it produces only 8% of the GDP.
For Mr. Assunção, there is a “paradox” in the region, which, with a population of 28 million people, is going through a demographic moment that is expected to be favorable. “The working-age population is growing in comparison with the population of dependents, a process that is likely to come to an end around 2030,” he said.
However, those people have few opportunities. “The labor market is very fragile, mostly with informal labor contracts, and the private sector has difficulty in dynamically establishing itself,” he said. Among young people between the ages of 18 and 25, 42% are outside the labor market.
Source: Valor International