We’re growing a new bioeconomy in the Amazon
“There is a vicious and unsustainable cycle in the Amazon,” award-winning filmmaker Estevão Ciavatta tells us in an interview published this month on his new film about land grabbing in Brazil.
“[Vulnerable people] have to use forest resources because they don’t have work. And they don’t have work because [in Brazil] we don’t have a plan.”
Land grabbing – a form of organized crime that seizes unprotected lands for speculation – is on the rise in Brazil, although thanks in part to Ciavatta’s important film, the media, banks, and communities are pushing back.
But it is not enough to stop the forces behind environmental destruction. As Ciavatta points out, we need an alternative – a plan.
In this Resilience Dispatch, we share a look at our work to help build a new kind of economy. Instead of relying on single-product supply chains, such as beef, soy, or palm oil, produced on cleared forestland, we envision a sustainable, regenerative, forest-based economy, or a “bioeconomy.”
An Amazon bioeconomy is built on a diversity of supply chains based on the incredible natural wealth of the forest. It supports sustainable livelihoods and strong communities for indigenous and rural people. And it sustains the great Amazon forest – the lungs of our planet – that we so desperately need to protect if we’re to have any hope of a safe climate in our future.
With our partners, we’re creating new forest-based value chains. We’re also supporting indigenous communities to access climate and biodiversity funding that rewards them for their stewardship. This creates positive economic forces that counter all of the incentives in Brazil that support forest destruction. It’s the only way we can turn the tide.
Be well,
Michael |
