location: Cerrado

location: Cerrado

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Study warns that loosened legislation is driving deforestation in Bahia’s Cerrado
- Unlike Amazonia, where illegality is the rule, authorized deforestation is a greater concern for researchers and environmentalists in Bahia’s Cerrado.
- A new book shows how the appropriation of water by agribusiness is intensifying conflicts in western Bahia, where both deforestation and cattle farming are spreading rapidly.
- Researchers view Brazilian agribusiness operations as agrarian extraction—a model with high social and environmental impact which concentrates wealth, similar to mineral extraction.

NGOs ask to include Brazilian Cerrado in the EUDR at next review
- About 74% of the Brazilian Cerrado falls outside the scope of the EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR).
- Unless illegalities are found, such as breaches to national law, commodities from areas of the Cerrado that are excluded from the EUDR will be able to enter the EU.
- Deforestation rates in the Cerrado increased by 43% in 2023, with the greatest destruction concentrated in Brazil’s state of Bahia, where almost a quarter of its original 9 million hectares (22 million acres) of vegetation have been lost since 1985.
- NGOs are calling on EU authorities to review and expand the regulation at its one-year review period. However, the European Commission recently proposed a 12-month delay in the implementation of the EUDR, which could affect the date of the review.

Report exposes meatpackers’ role in recent chemical deforestation in Brazil
- A new report links Brazil’s top meatpackers — JBS, Marfrig and Minerva — to widespread deforestation across the Pantanal, Amazon and Cerrado; of five farms investigated between October 2023 and February 2024, 86% of the destruction occurred in the Pantanal.
- Fazenda Soberana ranch is at the center of environmental controversy and is under investigation for using toxic herbicides to destroy tens of thousands of hectares of native vegetation, marking the largest environmental crime in Mato Grosso state history.
- Major meatpackers are criticized for failing to fully monitor indirect suppliers and for not ensuring that their supply chains are free from socioenvironmental violations.
- The report calls for supermarkets to cut ties with meatpackers linked to deforestation and for full transparency regarding the origin and supply chains of beef products.

Brazil launches ‘war’ on widespread fire outbreaks & criminal arsonists
- Fire outbreaks are setting records all over Brazil, with flames burning the Amazon, the Cerrado, the Pantanal and the São Paulo state.
- Federal authorities say most fires are criminal and they are launching investigations.
- Smoke from fires spread through 10 Brazilian states, impacting air quality and air traffic.

Streak of falling deforestation snapped at 15 months in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest
- Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon increased in July 2024, marking the first month-over-month rise since March 2023, with 666 square kilometers of forest destroyed.
- Despite the recent increase, deforestation is still 46% lower this year compared to last year on a 12-month rolling basis, though severe drought and wildfires have worsened conditions.
- Cerrado deforestation has declined for four consecutive months but remains near a five-year high.
- The Brazilian government is expected to release a preliminary official deforestation figure for the year ending July 31, 2024, later this year, timed to coincide with minimal cloud cover for accurate year-over-year comparisons.

Brazil’s new pro-agribusiness pesticide law threatens Amazon biodiversity
- A priority project of Brazil’s congressional agribusiness caucus, the so-called Poison Bill eases restrictions on the sale and use of a wide range of agrochemicals dangerous to humans and the environment.
- The bill went into effect as the use of pesticides banned long ago in the European Union exploded in the Brazilian Amazon.
- In the rainforest, use of the fungicide mancozeb skyrocketed by 5,600%, and the use of the herbicide atrazine increased by 575% in just over a decade.
- Experts warn that lax pesticide controls will worsen impacts at the edge of the Amazon, where the chemicals affect intact biodiversity and aggravate risks to Indigenous people, riverside communities and small farmers.

Living under the apartheid of Brazil’s soybean capital
- Brazil produces more soybeans than any other nation, and the city of Sorriso, Mato Grosso, leads this production, which drove the municipal per capita GDP from 27,000 reais to 132,000 reais ($15,800 to more than $25,000) in the last 10 years.
- The highway running through town helps illustrate the contrast between gated communities of luxury homes along one side and precarious homes where agricultural workers and family farmers live amid vulnerable social situations on the other.
- Family farmers struggle to keep producing amid land disputes and clouds of pesticides that destroy their crops, ruin honey production and raise cancer rates — which are twice as high in Sorriso than the state average.
- Lives are also lost to organized crime in Sorriso, the municipality with the sixth-highest murder rate in the nation, and also to agribusiness itself, with dozens dead after becoming engulfed in soybean silos.

New ban threatens traditional fishers in Brazil’s Mato Grosso state
- Legislation in effect since Jan. 1 has banned fishing in Mato Grosso state rivers for five years, with heavy opposition from environmental defenders and traditional fishers.
- The bill affects part of the Brazilian Amazon Rainforest, the Cerrado savanna and part of the Pantanal wetland, one of the largest continuous wet areas on the planet.
- Experts consider fishers in the region guardians of the rivers and fear the bill could eliminate traditional fishing in the state.

Goldman Prize honors Brazilian investigation linking JBS & deforestation
- Marcel Gomes, the executive secretary at investigative journalism outlet Repórter Brasil, is one of this year’s prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize winners.
- Gomes coordinated an international investigation in December 2021 on JBS’ beef chain, using a powerful data platform on Brazilian livestock, investigative teams in different countries and a grassroots network of Indigenous communities, local NGOs and small-scale farmers.
- In an interview with Mongabay, Marcel Gomes said the Repórter Brasil series pressured big European retailers to stop selling illegally sourced JBS beef and public authorities to monitor big beef companies.
- Also known as the “Green Nobel Prize,” the Goldman Environmental Prize honored five other environmental activists on April 29.

Tapirs in Brazil’s Cerrado inspire research on human health & pesticides
- Recent research has revealed human contamination by pesticides in the Brazilian Cerrado, following a previous study that also found contamination in tapirs in the region.
- This research shows how animals are providing information and inspiration for research with humans, while emphasizing that the stress endured by South America’s largest terrestrial mammal is also evidenced in people.
- Despite inspiring research on human health, tapirs themselves are not free from the challenges to their survival imposed by human actions; the species is classified as threatened by the IUCN Red List and qualified as vulnerable to extinction.
- The former president of the Brazilian federal environmental protection agency, IBAMA, says the approval of a bill that made the use of pesticides more flexible in Brazil could worsen situations like those reported by the researchers.

Brazil’s Cerrado is main beneficiary of 2021 pledge to end deforestation
- The Financial Innovation for Amazonia, the Cerrado and Chaco, or IFACC, has allocated $234.5 million for projects aimed at expanding agriculture to already deforested land in Brazil’s Cerrado grasslands.
- First announced at the COP26 climate summit in 2021, the initiative aims to place small farms on the sustainability agenda by showing that it’s possible to increase profit without clearing native vegetation.
- Funded projects include soybean farming on degraded pastureland and financial incentives for farmers who maintain more preserved native vegetation on their land than the minimum required by law.

Deforestation from soy shows no sign of stopping in Cerrado, report says
- A recent report from Mighty Earth shows that approximately 26,901 hectares (66,473 acre) suffered deforestation and forest degradation in the Cerrado between last September and December, while 30,031 hectares (74,208 acres) were affected in the Amazon.
- Mighty Earth, in partnership with AidEnvironment and Repórter Brasil, are monitoring short-term soy and cattle ranching activities contributing to deforestation, aiming to highlight recent forest loss cases every three months.
- The report called for improved regulations that protect savanna biomes like the Cerrado, not just the Amazon Rainforest.

Major meatpackers are unlawfully deforesting Brazil’s Cerrado, report says
- In the state of Mato Grosso, some of the country’s largest meatpackers are clearing parts of the Cerrado at an even faster rate than the Amazon Rainforest, a new report from U.K.-based NGO Global Witness says.
- Meatpackers JBS, Marfrig and Minerva have cut down nearly five times more of the state’s Cerrado than they have its Amazon. One in three cows that the companies purchased from the Cerrado had grazed on illegally deforested land.
- A major EU law regulating deforestation in supply chains is scheduled for review this year, and the Global Witness report said its language should be expanded to include “other wooded land” that would protect the Cerrado.

Outcry as Brazil Congress overrides president to revive anti-Indigenous law
- Brazil’s Congress has pushed through a new law that includes several anti-Indigenous measures that strip back land rights and open traditional territories to mining and agribusiness.
- It includes the controversial time frame thesis, requiring Indigenous populations to prove they physically occupied their land on Oct. 5 1988, the day of the promulgation of the Federal Constitution; failure to provide such evidence will nullify demarcated land.
- The decision provoked outrage among activists, who say the new law is the biggest setback for Indigenous rights in Brazil in decades.
- Both President Lula and the Supreme Court have previously called the measures in the bill unconstitutional and against public interests, and Indigenous organizations announced they will challenge the law.

Deforestation falls for 8th straight month in the Amazon rainforest, but rises in the cerrado
- Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon has decreased for the eighth consecutive month, but damage is rising in the cerrado, a tropical woody grassland that’s adjacent to Earth’s largest rainforest.
- According to data released today by Brazil’s National Space Research Institute (INPE), forest clearing in November totaled 201 square kilometers, bringing the cumulative loss for the past 12 months to 5,206 square kilometers – 51% less than last year.
- The decline in deforestation has persisted despite one of the most severe droughts ever recorded in the Amazon.
- However, while deforestation in the Amazon rainforest has decreased, it has reached the highest level in at least five years in the cerrado.

Cargill widens its deforestation-free goals, but critics say it’s not enough
- Cargill has announced its Brazil, Uruguay and Argentina supply chains will be free of deforestation and land conversion by 2025.
- The commitments also expand to all row crops in those countries, including soy, corn, wheat and cotton.
- While conservation groups have welcomed the expanded commitment, they say it still leaves out countries like Bolivia, Paraguay and Colombia, where deforestation from the expanding agricultural frontier continues to increase.

Glyphosate leaves its mark even in protected areas of Brazil’s Cerrado
- A study found lichens dying as a result of exposure to glyphosate in an ostensibly protected area in Brazil’s Goiás state.
- Formed by interaction between fungi and algae, lichens are bioindicators of air quality.
- Glyphosate is the top-selling herbicide in Brazil and the world, used intensively in soybean, corn and sugarcane plantations; around 70% of pesticides sold in the country are applied in the Cerrado grassland biome.
- The study confirms the dispersion of the product into conservation areas from farmland, with aerial spraying a major factor for this so-called drift.

A tale of two biomes as deforestation surges in Cerrado but wanes in Amazon
- Brazil has managed to bring down spiraling rates of deforestation in the Amazon Rainforest in the first half of this year, but the neighboring Cerrado savanna has seen a wave of environmental destruction during the same period.
- The country’s second largest biome, the Cerrado is seeing its highest deforestation figure since 2018; satellite data show 3,281 hectares (8,107 acres) per day have been cleared since the start of the year through Aug. 4.
- The leading causes of the rising deforestation rates in the Cerrado are a disparity in conservation efforts across Brazil’s biomes, an unsustainable economic model that prioritizes monocultures, and escalating levels of illegal native vegetation clearing.
- Given the importance of the Cerrado to replenish watersheds across the continent, its destruction would affect not just Brazil but South America too, experts warn, adding that the region’s water, food and energy security are at stake.

Sweet solution: Armadillo-friendly honey helps Brazil beekeepers, giant armadillos
- Giant armadillos in Brazil have been spotted destroying bee hives in search of larvae, causing economic losses to beekeepers and consequent retaliatory killings.
- The species has a low population growth rate, meaning human-wildlife conflicts like these significantly threaten their survival.
- One NGO promotes coexistence between beekeepers and giant armadillos by certifying beekeepers who use mitigation measures to prevent attacks on beehives, allowing them to sell armadillo-friendly honey at a higher price.
- The armadillo-friendly honey project has been applied within the Cerrado savanna and is now being implemented within the Amazon Rainforest region, zeroing armadillo killings in the apiaries involved in the scheme.

Lula wants to mirror Amazon’s lessons in all biomes, but challenges await
- A new decree intends to protect all of Brazil’s biomes and promote sustainable development in arguably one of the country’s most ambitious environmental policies to date.
- The mandate establishes action plans for the Amazon Rainforest, Cerrado savanna, Atlantic Forest, semi-arid Caatinga, Pampas grasslands and Pantanal wetlands, based on past strategies in the Amazon that have already proven successful against deforestation.
- Environmentalists have welcomed the decree amid the country’s surging deforestation levels and rising greenhouse emissions during the past four years under Jair Bolsonaro’s rule.
- The decree’s implementation won’t be easy, experts warn, and its success depends on coordinated action across all levels of the government, increased personnel in struggling environmental enforcement agencies and highly tailored plans for each biome.

Protecting canids from planet-wide threats offers ecological opportunities
- Five species within the Canidae family are considered endangered. These species, while found far apart in North and South America, Asia and Africa, often share similar threats, including habitat loss, persecution, disease and climate change.
- For some at-risk canid species, loss of prey, particularly due to snaring, is a significant concern that can also exacerbate human-wildlife conflict. Ecosystem-level conservation that protects prey species populations is required to protect canids and other carnivore species, experts say.
- Conservationists and researchers emphasize that canids play important roles in maintaining the habitats in which they live. That makes protecting these predators key to restoring and maintaining functional ecosystems.
- In the face of widespread global biodiversity loss, some canid reintroductions are taking place and proving successful. These rewilding efforts are offering evidence of the importance of canids to healthy ecosystems and to reducing various ecosystem-wide threats, even potentially helping curb climate change.

To be effective, zero-deforestation pledges need a critical mass, study shows
- The importance of rapidly halting tropical deforestation to achieve net-zero emissions was a key message at this year’s climate summit, but corporate efforts to this end have stalled for decades.
- Cattle, soy and palm oil are the main commodities driving deforestation and destruction of other important ecosystems. Zero-deforestation commitments from the companies that trade in those commodities are seen as an important way to reduce deforestation globally.
- A new study compares the effectiveness of corporate commitments to reduce soy-related deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon and Cerrado, showing that zero-deforestation commitments can reduce deforestation locally, but only if there is widespread adoption and implementation among both small and big soy traders.
- Overall, the study points to the limitations of relying just on supply chain agreements to reduce regional deforestation and protect biodiverse ecosystems, and highlights the need for strong public-private partnerships.

Growing soy on cattle pasture can eliminate Amazon deforestation in Brazil
- Expanding soy cultivation into underutilized cattle pastureland would help prevent massive deforestation and carbon emissions compared to the current practice of clearing new forest for farmland, a new study says.
- Experts say that Brazil, the world’s No. 1 soy producer and beef exporter, has enough pastureland lying unused that would allow soy production to increase by more than a third without any further deforestation.
- Researchers warn that if Brazil continues with its current method of soy cultivation, it would end up clearing 5.7 million hectares (14 million acres) of Amazon rainforest and Cerrado savanna into cropland over the next 15 years.
- Environmentalists have welcomed intensifying agriculture as a solution to deforestation, but have raised concerns about the potential for increased pesticide use, biodiversity loss, and the expansion of cattle ranching into forested areas.

Habitat loss, climate change send hyacinth macaw reeling back into endangered status
- The hyacinth macaw, the world’s largest flying parrot, is closer to return to Brazil’s endangered species list, less than a decade after intensive conservation efforts succeeded in getting it off the list.
- The latest assessment still needs to be made official by the Ministry of the Environment, which is likely to publish the updated endangered species list next year.
- Conservation experts attribute the bird’s decline to the loss of its habitat due to fires in the Pantanal wetlands and ongoing deforestation in the Amazon and Cerrado biomes.
- Climate change also poses a serious threat, subjecting the birds to temperature swings that can kill eggs and hatchlings, and driving heavy rainfall that floods their preferred nesting sites.

World Bank approves $200 million IFC loan for industrial agriculture in Brazil’s Cerrado
- A $200 million loan was granted to Louis Dreyfus Company (LDC), an industrial soy and corn producer, for monoculture work in Brazil’s Cerrado, a grassland biome that has lost nearly 80% of its habitat cover.
- The loan was granted by the International Finance Corporation (IFC), a sister organization of the World Bank that’s tasked with private sector finance in developing countries.
- Corn, soy and cattle ranching have been connected to a long list of human rights violations, as well as the acceleration of deforestation and greenhouse gas emissions.

EU’s anti-deforestation bill leaves out critical ecosystems, study shows
- New regulation proposed by the European Commission aims to reduce the import of commodities that cause deforestation and forest degradation abroad.
- But according to a report commissioned by the EU Greens parliament members, the narrow definition of forest and deforestation in the revised legislation would not protect ecosystems in South America where EU demand for commodities such as soy and beef create high deforestation risk.
- Soy production is not only destroying native vegetation, but also threatens the livelihoods of hundreds of Indigenous peoples and traditional communities in the Cerrado and Chaco biomes, made of grasslands, savannas and dry forests stretching down the center of South America.
- Broadening the definition of forest to include other types of wooded land, or adopting a definition based on native vegetation rather than forest, would protect much more of the Cerrado and the Chaco, and be much more effective at tackling deforestation, the report says.

Indigenous village harvests seeds to slow deforestation in Brazil’s Cerrado
- Mato Grosso’s Cerrado forest in Brazil is supposed to be protected with set asides when logged for new croplands and pastures. However, farms often get away with protecting less than they’re supposed to.
- In the village of Ripá, Indigenous Xavante people make expeditions for harvesting fruit with seeds for replanting forests, helping to repair some of the damage and supplement their income.
- Ripá and another two dozen Indigenous communities in Mato Grosso sell their harvest to Rede de Sementes do Xingu (RSX), a wholesaler that, since 2007, has sold or given away enough seeds to replant 74 square kilometers (about 29 square miles) of degraded land.
- This story was produced with support from the Pulitzer Center.

Training on pasture recovery is a win-win for Brazil’s cattle ranchers and forests
- A recent study found that providing Brazilian cattle ranchers with customized training in sustainable pasture restoration could bring long-term economic and environmental benefits.
- Trained ranchers saw an increase in cattle productivity and revenue, and a reduction in carbon dioxide emissions over a period of two years.
- Researchers say that recovering degraded pastures could help stop deforestation for agriculture by allowing farmers to increase cattle numbers without needing more land.
- Despite government-led programs that promote sustainable agriculture, experts say pasture recovery is not yet being fully prioritized.

Tropical mammals under rising chemical pollution pressure, study warns
- Pesticides, pharmaceuticals, plastics, nanoparticles, and other potentially toxic synthetic materials are being released into the environment in ever greater amounts. A recent study warns that action is needed to better monitor and understand their impacts on terrestrial mammals in the tropics.
- Mortality and mass die offs could result, but sublethal effects — such as reduced fitness or fertility — are perhaps of greater concern in the long-term, warn experts.
- In the research, scientists raise concerns over an increasing load of chemicals released into the tropical environment, with little monitoring conducted to understand the impacts on wildlife.
- Another study released this year reported that the novel entities planetary boundary has been transgressed. Novel entities include pesticides and other synthetic substances. The boundary was declared breached because scientific assessments can’t keep up with new chemicals entering the environment.

Brazil bill seeks to redraw Amazon borders in favor of agribusiness
- A new bill before Brazil’s Congress proposes cutting out the state of Mato Grosso from the country’s legally defined Amazon region to allow greater deforestation there for agribusiness.
- Under the bill, known as PL 337, requirements to maintain Amazonian vegetation in the state at 80% of a rural property’s area, and 35% for Cerrado vegetation, would be slashed to just 20% for both.
- The approval of the bill would allow for an increase in deforestation of at least 10 million hectares (25 million acres) — an area the size of South Korea — and exempt farmers from having to restore degraded areas on their properties.
- Environmental law specialists warn that the departure of Mato Grosso from under the administrative umbrella of the Legal Amazon would set off a domino effect encouraging the eight other states in the region to push for similar bills.

In Brazil’s northeast, family farmers are guardians of creole seeds
- Families in northeastern Brazil’s Alto Jequitinhonha region have held out against industrial farming by preserving dozens of traditional seed varieties through generations of family farming.
- The tradition led to publication in 2019 of the Alto Jequitinhonha Creole Seed Catalog, which lists 132 varieties preserved and grown by 28 families in the region.
- Guaranteeing food security means dealing with several challenges in this region, including increasingly longer dry seasons as a result of climate change, and competition with eucalyptus monocultures for water.

In destroying the Amazon, big agribusiness is torching its own viability
- A new study has found that the transition zone between the Amazon and Cerrado in the northeast of Brazil has heated up significantly and become drier in the past two decades.
- The research points to deforestation in the Amazon and global climate changes as factors prolonging the dry season and warming up the region, leaving it susceptible to severe droughts and forest fires.
- Ironically, the changes being driven by the intensified agricultural activity are rendering the region less suitable for crop cultivation.
- The authors of the new study say there needs to be a balance of sustainable agricultural solutions and an environmentally focused political agenda to protect the region’s ecosystems, its economy, and its people.

Pay or punish? Study looks at how to engage with farmers deforesting the Cerrado
- Businesses and countries are renewing their commitments to reducing deforestation in supply chains, but disagreements still exist over what the most effective, efficient and equitable tools are to make that happen.
- In the Brazilian Cerrado, the world’s most biodiverse savanna, soybean production is one of the key industries driving rampant deforestation and conversion of native vegetation.
- While some observers favor the “carrot” approach of paying farmers not to deforest, others advocate for a “stick” approach that would cut market access for farmers who deforest.
- A new study says that in the case of the Cerrado, just using a stand-alone policy that pays farmers not to deforest would be expensive, inefficient and inequitable, and that some measure of market exclusion is also needed.

Is a European proposal on imported deforestation too punitive? (commentary)
- One third of global deforestation is linked to international trade, and the European Union plus the UK are estimated to account for 16% of global trade-related deforestation.
- A recent European Commission proposal would require companies to ensure that commodities placed on the European market are not linked to a territory that has been deforested after December 31, 2020.
- A senior scientist at CIRAD argues that as worded, the proposal could punish some countries unfairly while ignoring other useful certification schemes that protect forests.
- This article is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily of Mongabay.

As its end looms, Cerrado tracker records 6-year deforestation high
- The satellite-based deforestation-monitoring program focused on Brazil’s vast Cerrado savanna may end in April because of lack of funding, with some members of the team reportedly already laid off.
- Unlike the monitoring program for the Amazon, the one for the Cerrado isn’t included in the government budget and relies on external financing, which dried up in August 2020; since then, the program team has had to scrounge for funding from other projects and institutions.
- Sharing the scientists’ concerns is the agribusiness sector, which relies on the data to prove that its commodity is deforestation-free, and which has blasted the government’s “blurred” vision with regard to failing to fund the monitoring program.
- News of the impending closure of the monitoring program comes a week after its latest data release showed an area six times the size of the city of São Paulo was cleared between August 2020 and July 2021 — the highest deforestation rate in the Cerrado since 2015.

Brazil farming co-op carves a sustainable path through agribusiness stronghold
- Coopcerrado, a farmer’s cooperative of 5,000 families, won the United Nations’ Equator Prize under the category of “New Nature Economies” due to its more than two decades of work in developing a farmer-to-farmer model of mutual support for training, commercializing and setting up organic and regenerative businesses in the Brazilian Cerrado.
- The Cerrado savanna, a biodiversity hotspot holding 5% of the world’s biodiversity is also among one of the most threatened, with almost half of the biome destroyed for agriculture and a process of desertification already underway, scientists say.
- To save the Cerrado, farmers and traditional extractivist communities have developed an expandable model of collective support in knowledge and resource-sharing while restoring the biome and providing an income for thousands of vulnerable families.
- Bureaucratic and logistic hurdles in Brazil traditionally leave small farmers and traditional communities out of mainstream markets and industries, but bridging this gap has been one of the keys to the cooperative’s success.

Timmermans vs. Bolsonaro: Will the EU get deforestation off our dinner plates? (commentary)
- The European Commission is drafting a plan to address deforestation linked with commodity supply chains.
- But Nico Muzi, Europe Director of global environmental group Mighty Earth and member of the EU Commission Expert Group on protecting and restoring the world’s forests, argues the measure has a significant loophole for soy-based animal feed and leather from Brazil.
- “The leaked plan has several major loopholes that would substantially and unnecessarily weaken its impact even as deforestation in Brazil surges,” Muzi writes. “Even while the law would protect parts of the Amazon rainforest, it would still allow big agriculture companies like Cargill to continue to drive large-scale deforestation right next door in Brazil’s Cerrado savanna and Pantanal wetlands and export the products of that destruction to Europe.”
- The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

Fires bear down on Brazil park that’s home to jaguars, maned wolves
- Thousands of fires caused by humans in Brazil’s Cerrado savanna region continue to spread, with several fires around and inside Chapada dos Veadeiros National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
- The park is home to dozens of rare and threatened species as well as the source of many important rivers and waterways; experts warn the intensity of the fires could permanently damage the natural vegetation.
- The fires don’t come as a surprise to many scientists who had predicted earlier this year that ongoing drought, rising rates of deforestation, and lack of enforcement would build up to a severe fire season.
- Every single month this year has seen above-average levels of fire in the Cerrado, with more than 36% of all fires in Brazil this year concentrated in this biome, even though it only covers just over 20% of Brazil’s land mass.

‘On the map’: App shines light on 5,000 ‘invisible’ families in Brazil’s Cerrado and beyond
- A new report shows the results of an application that has mapped out more than 5,000 families in 76 communities from 23 Brazilian states, whose territories amount to 350,000 hectares (865,000 acres) that, until now, have gone unrecognized on official government maps.
- The digital mapping platform, called Tô No Mapa (“I am on the map” in Portuguese), allows traditional communities to demarcate their lands and list significant points of interest and conflict.
- The app was developed by the Brazilian civil society organization Institute for Society, Population and Nature (ISPN), the Amazon Environmental Research Institute (IPAM) and several other Brazilian NGOs working with traditional communities.
- Traditional peoples and communities play a vital role in conserving biodiversity, and guaranteeing their legal rights to land and territory is increasingly being recognized as a key conservation necessity, according to a wide range of studies and reports.

New map identifies risks, and potential sanctuaries, for Brazil’s diving duck
- The Brazilian merganser, a duck that’s the mascot for the country’s waterways, is among the top 10 most threatened birds in the world, with only about 250 individuals left in the wild.
- As part of conservation efforts, scientists have recently published a map showing the critically endangered species’ distribution in its remaining habitat, as well as identifying suitable new areas where it could thrive.
- The map also highlights the threats to this bioindicator species that needs clear, pollutant-free water to survive; the main threat comes from the damming of rivers, which affects water flow and quality for the mergansers.
- The researchers found 36 small hydropower plants planned for areas close to sites where the species lives, potentially impacting 504 square kilometers (196 square miles), or 4.1% of the total area suitable for the duck’s habitat.

End of deforestation tracker for Brazil’s Cerrado an ‘incalculable loss’
- For 20 years, Brazil’s space agency, INPE, has run a program monitoring deforestation and fire risk in the Cerrado savanna, a global biodiversity hotspot.
- But that program may be shut down at the end of this year due to a lack of money, after a funding agreement with the World Bank ended last year.
- Scientists, civil society groups, and the soy industry have all spoken out against allowing the program to end, calling it an “incalculable loss”; soy traders, in particular, depend on the data to prove their commodity is deforestation-free.
- INPE’s data is also crucial in guiding the work of environmental regulators, which has grown increasingly urgent in light of projections that the entire biome could collapse within 30 years under current rates of deforestation.

Debt deal with deforester BrasilAgro puts UBS’s green commitment in question
- Despite its sustainability rhetoric, Swiss bank UBS has financed controversial land developer BrasilAgro with a bond issuance that raised $45.5 million. The operation is part of a broader strategy to profit from Brazilian agribusiness, including the consolidation of a joint venture with the Brazilian bank.
- BrasilAgro is allegedly responsible deforesting nearly 22,000 hectares (54,000 acres) of native vegetation in its farms in Brazil’s Cerrado region and was fined $1.1 million by Brazil’s environmental protection agency for illegal deforestation.
- The financial product chosen to raise money for BrasilAgro, a CRA or “agribusiness receivable certificate,” is backed by future harvests and has been a favored tool used to raise record amounts of money from the capital markets for Brazilian agribusiness firms over the past several years.
- Although there are hopes that CRAs could support sustainable practices in Brazil, financial data reviewed by Mongabay show that the largest issuances in recent months have all been for highly controversial companies such as BrasilAgro, JBS and Minerva.

Tesco’s meat problem (commentary)
- Campaigners argue new requirements from Tesco, the largest supermarket chain in the U.K., on meat suppliers sourcing from South America are an improvement over the status quo but point to critical issues with the details of the plan.
- Meat has outsized environmental consequences. Raising meat produces more climate pollution, fouls more drinking water, and requires more land for livestock and feed globally than all other food crops combined.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

Cerrado desertification: Savanna could collapse within 30 years, says study
- Deforestation is amplifying climate change effects in the Brazilian Cerrado savanna biome, making it much hotter and drier. Researchers observed monthly increases of 2.24°C (4.03°F) in average maximum temperatures between 1961 and 2019. If this trend persists, temperature could be 6°C (10.8°F) higher in 2050 than in 1961.
- Cerrado air moisture is decreasing partly due to the removal of trees, which bring water up from as much as 15 meters (nearly 50 feet) underground to carry on photosynthesis during the dry season. Replacement of native vegetation by crops also reduces the absorption of sunlight by wild plants and leads to an increase in temperature.
- Even dew, the only source of water for smaller plants and many insects during the dry season, is being reduced due to deforestation and deepening drought. The demise of pollinators that rely on dew may prompt a cascading effect adversely impacting the biome’s biodiversity, which could collapse in the next 30 years.
- The Cerrado is often called Brazil’s “water tank,” as it is the source of eight of 12 Brazilian river basins. Its looming biome collapse and deepening drought mean less water for rural and urban populations and for agriculture. Low flows in rivers will also affect hydropower, likely causing energy shortages.

Soy and cattle team up to drive deforestation in South America: Study
- Between 2000 and 2019, the production of soybean in South America has doubled, covering an area larger than the state of California.
- Soybean farms are typically planted in old cattle pastures, and as soy encroaches, pasture is forced into new frontiers, driving deforestation and fires.
- Although soy was found to be largely an indirect driver of deforestation, policies addressing deforestation have to consider multiple commodities at once, such as the relationship between beef and soy.
- Increased commitments by companies to source from “zero-deforestation” supply chains are a promising strategy, but in order to work, the market needs to be more transparent.

Brazilian Cerrado savanna: Wildcat miners descend on Indigenous reserve
- The Raposa Serra do Sol Indigenous reserve in Brazil’s Roraima state covers 1.75 million hectares (4.32 million acres) along the nation’s border with Venezuela and Guyana. It is home to 26,705 Indigenous people.
- The territory has been under pressure from invaders for decades, even after being demarcated in 2005. But illegal incursions are reaching a new peak now, with an estimated 2,000 to 5,000 gold miners operating in the reserve.
- Incendiary speeches by Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro have emboldened the miners, say experts, while attempts to crackdown on wildcat mining in the Yanomami Territory in the Amazon rainforest may have pushed illegal miners operating there into the Cerrado savanna where most of Raposa Serra do Sol is located.
- The illicit miners are causing deforestation and contamination of the Cotinga River and other waterways with sediment and toxic mining waste, including mercury used to process gold. They’re also putting Indigenous people at risk from Covid-19, violence, and social ills including alcohol abuse and prostitution.

Landmark decision: Brazil Supreme Court sides with Indigenous land rights
- Brazil’s Supreme Federal Court (STF) has unanimously accepted an appeal by the Guarani Kaiowá Indigenous people and agreed to review the process around a past case that cancelled the demarcation of their Indigenous territory.
- The Guarani Kaiowá’s decades-long fight for land rights to their ancestral territory, the Guyraroká land in Mato Grosso do Sul state, had been suspended by a 2014 ruling halting the territory’s demarcation process.
- The STF’s decision to review the process in the 2014 case, which hadn’t allowed for Indigenous consultation, is seen by analysts as a victory for Indigenous groups in Brazil, and as a setback for President Jair Bolsonaro who has declared his opposition to any Indigenous demarcation occurring during his administration.
- In a related upcoming case, the STF is expected to rule on the “marco temporal,” which requires that Indigenous people have been living on claimed lands in 1988 in order to establish a legal territory. But litigators have argued that date is unfairly arbitrary, as many Indigenous groups were forced off ancestral lands by then.

Study sounds latest warning of rainforest turning into savanna as climate warms
- A recent study from Brazil shows that heat stress is disrupting a critical component of photosynthesis in tree species found in the Amazon and Cerrado belt.
- Leaves heat up faster than the ambient air, and sufficiently high temperatures can cause irreversible damage to them and endanger the tree.
- The area has become hotter in recent decades and faced increasingly intense heat waves, fueled not just by global warming but also local deforestation.
- Tropical forests could look more and more like deciduous forests or savannas in the future, which are better adapted to deal with higher temperatures, the study found.

Can ‘Slow Food’ save Brazil’s fast-vanishing Cerrado savanna?
- The incredibly biodiverse Cerrado is Brazil’s second-largest biome after the Amazon. However, half of the savanna’s native vegetation has already been lost to industrial agribusiness, which produces beef, soy, cotton, corn, eucalyptus and palm oil for export.
- Those wishing to save the Cerrado today are challenged by the lack of protected lands. One response by traditional communities and conservationists is to help the rest of Brazil and the rest of the planet value the Cerrado’s cornucopia of endemic fruits, nuts and vegetables that thrive across South America’s greatest savanna.
- These include the baru nut, the babassu and macaúba coconut, the sweet gabiroba (looking like a small guava), the cagaita (resembling a shiny green tomato), the large, scaly-looking marolo (with creamy pulp and strong flavor), the berry-shaped mangaba, which means “good fruit for eating,” the egg-shaped, emerald-green pequi, and more.
- Small family farmers, beekeepers, traditional and Indigenous communities, Afro-Brazilian quilombolas (runaway slave descendants), socioenvironmental activists, and celebrity chefs have become allies in a fast-expanding slow food network, declaring: “We want to see the Cerrado on the plate of the Brazilian and the world!”

Guarani Indigenous men brutalized in Brazilian ‘expansion of violence’
- In the 1960s and 70s, the Guarani Kaiowá Indigenous group was expelled from its ancestral lands in Mato Grosso do Sul state by the Brazilian military dictatorship to expand the country’s agricultural frontier. Today, their traditional Indigenous homeland is occupied by large farms, whose owners refuse to return the property.
- A federal Supreme Court decision resulted in an order to allow the return of the Guarani Kaiowá to their former homeland where they now await the official demarcation of their territory to be approved by the federal government — an approval that still hasn’t come after the passage of ten years.
- The land dispute and standoff between the ranchers and the Guarani Kaiowá has repeatedly flared into violence over the years. In 2011, Indigenous leader Nízio Gomes was murdered in the Guaiviry community area by armed thugs.
- Violence flared yet again in Guaiviry last week when three Guarani Kaiowá men were assaulted, they say, by gunmen from the large Querência Farm. The Guarani Kaiowá say that intimidation of their community members has seriously escalated under the Jair Bolsonaro administration, which has shown hostility toward Indigenous rights.

The art of adaption and survival: A story of Brazil’s Kadiwéu people
- The Kadiwéu Indigenous Land is located in western Mato Grosso do Sul state, Brazil, near the Paraguay border. The protected reserve covers 539,000 hectares (1.33 million acres), spanning both the Cerrado (71%) and Pantanal (29%) biomes.
- The 1,500 Kadiwéu living in the reserve today are descended from larger Indigenous groups decimated by Portuguese and Spanish colonizers. The Kadiwéu were donated their territory by Emperor Dom Pedro II for their role in the 1864-70 War of the Triple Alliance; theirs was the first Indigenous reserve ever established in Brazil.
- The remnant Kadiwéu long seemed headed for extinction, but their culture survived and adapted. Their arts, especially pottery and body painting, were studied by international anthropologists, including Claude Lévi-Strauss. Today, the Kadiwéu are incorporating their designs into international high fashion.
- But the Kadiwéu still face challenges. Their reserve continues to be invaded by illegal loggers and land grabbers. In 2019-20, more than 40% of their reserve burned in the Pantanal biome wildfires — brought on by record drought due to climate change and irresponsible land management by ranchers. COVID-19 also looms.

Brazil must do more to protect its people, forests, and the planet (commentary)
- Amid skyrocketing deforestation and destruction of Brazil’s natural environment, the Bolsonaro government is weakening climate commitments and rolling back domestic environmental protections, driving Brazil’s people and the planet ‘off a cliff.’
- This destruction threatens Indigenous communities, wildlife and the global climate, and it is also unpopular in Brazil, as it threatens the country’s economic standing, with reports emerging that rampant deforestation is blocking Brazil’s accession to the OECD.
- Urgent solutions to this existential threat for irreplaceable biomes include stronger climate targets, restoration of effective environmental legislation, and international pressure on the Bolsonaro government.
- This article is a commentary and the views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

Traditional healers are preserving their knowledge, and with it, the biodiversity of Brazil’s savanna
- The Brazilian savanna contains almost a third of Brazil’s biodiversity but less than 10% is officially protected and its native vegetation is threatened by a rapidly-advancing agricultural frontier.
- Much of the flora and fauna remain unknown to conventional science.
- A network of traditional healers is at the forefront of finding ways to protect, sustainably manage, and document the biodiversity based on their in-depth knowledge of medicinal plants.
- Experts say that finding ways to value the savanna more, such as through recognizing its immense botanical and pharmacological value, could aid in its conservation.

A new app puts invisible communities in Brazil’s Cerrado on the map
- Thousands of Indigenous, quilombola, and traditional communities live in the Cerrado, the world’s most biodiverse tropical savanna. But many lack access to official titles and deeds, and are not registered on official maps.
- As the agricultural frontier pushes into the northern part of the savanna, land-grabbing and violent attacks are increasing. Many of these communities risk losing their land and their resources upon which they depend.
- Now, a new smartphone app developed in collaboration with communities in the northern Cerrado and two Brazilian NGOs allows communities themselves to register their lands on the app, as well as important local sites and conflicts with farmers and land-grabbers.
- The developers of the app aim to halt the rapid and unequal development that threatens the lives and livelihoods of those working to protect the savanna, and ultimately help conserve the last remaining tracts of native Cerrado.

The Possible Meat: A Brazilian farmer shows ranching can regenerate the Cerrado
- Matheus Sborgia, a Brazilian chef, decided to bet on regenerative agriculture after inheriting his grandfather’s cattle ranch in the heart of the Cerrado.
- Sborgia embraced the idea of holistic management and rotational grazing preached by Allan Savory, a Zimbabwean ecologist who became famous for his provocative idea that to save the planet from climate change, instead of reducing livestock farming, we would have to increase it.
- Instead of letting his 200 cows range freely, Sborgia lets them eat everything in a small plot of land before moving them on to another plot; by the time they cycle back the original plot has already regenerated.
- The Brazilian Cerrado is one of the country’s most overgrazed regions. It suffered one of its worst wildfire seasons ever during the past year, and while the ranches around Sborgia’s property were dry, his own land was green and full of life.

The Kalunga digitally map traditional lands to save Cerrado way of life
- The Kalunga represents a grouping of 39 traditional quilombola communities — the descendants of runaway slaves — living on a territory covering 262,000 hectares (647,000 acres) in Goiás state in central Brazil, within the Cerrado savanna biome.
- This territory has been under heavy assault by illegal invaders, including small-scale wildcat gold miners, and large-scale mining operations, as well as land grabbers who have destroyed native vegetation to grow soy and other agribusiness crops.
- To defend their lands, the Kalunga received a grant from the Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund (CEPF), supported by Agence Française de Développement, Conservation International, EU, the Global Environment Facility, Japan and the World Bank. With their funding, the Kalunga georeferenced the territory, pinpointing homes, crops, soils, 879 springs, and vital natural resources.
- In February 2020, the U.N. Environment Programme and World Conservation Monitoring Centre (UNEP-WCMC) recognized the Kalunga Historical and Cultural Heritage Site as the first TICCA (Territories and Areas Conserved by Indigenous and Local Communities) in Brazil, making it what UNEP-WCMC calls a “Territory for Life.”

New platform gathers data on Brazil’s disappearing Cerrado biome
- An online and collaborative tool created by Brazil’s Federal University of Goiás brings together the largest and oldest collection of data available on the Cerrado biome.
- The Cerrado Knowledge Platform will be constantly updated as a national reference on the biome, consolidating information to be used by researchers working for its preservation and management.
- The bilingual platform includes figures on deforestation, land use, biodiversity and socioeconomics; users can also contribute by uploading data, maps and geospatial information.
- Its creators say they hope the website will provide solid knowledge to support researchers in making public policies or designing programs for the conservation of a biome that has already lost more than 50% of its native vegetation.

Big dream: NGO leads in creating 1,615-mile Amazon-Cerrado river greenbelt
- The Black Jaguar Foundation plans to reforest 1 million hectares (2.4 million acres) along Brazil’s Araguaia and Tocantins rivers in the Amazon and Cerrado biomes. The 2,600 kilometer (1,615 mile) long natural corridor will require the planting of around 1.7 billion trees. Tens-of-thousands have already been planted.
- This natural corridor will be established on private lands, and it will have dual ecological and economic goals, resulting in both land conservation and sustainable agroforestry production. It would cross six Brazilian states (Goiás, Mato Grosso, Mato Grosso do Sul, Tocantins, Pará and Maranhão).
- BJF is well funded and well organized, so the greatest barriers to accomplishing the NGO’s goals are many initially resistant rural property owners who need to be sold on the economic benefits of the green corridor. 24,000 privately owned lots are included in the planned green corridor.
- “Brazil has a huge liability in degraded areas, and the BJF [green corridor] initiative is a huge outdoor laboratory for ecosystem restoration in the center of the country, in the agricultural frontier region,” said one researcher.

‘What’s at stake is the life of every being’: Saving the Brazilian Cerrado
- The Cerrado boasts a third of Brazil’s biodiversity and is the largest savanna in South America with 44% of its 10,000 species of plants endemic. And yet, since the colonial period, this semi-arid region was largely ignored, and has even been portrayed as an “infertile, uninhabited region,” nothing more than “a place between places.”
- That all changed over recent decades with agribusiness declaring the Cerrado to be Brazil’s last great agricultural frontier. Today, half of the vast savanna which covers two million square kilometers (770,000 square miles) has been converted to crops of soy, cotton, corn and eucalyptus, or to pasture covered in massive cattle herds.
- As the savanna has been lost, its communities have simultaneously risen to save what’s left. The National Campaign in Defense of the Cerrado, launched in January 2016, has fought an uphill political battle to preserve the region’s native vegetation and biodiversity. The effort has grown more dogged during the Bolsonaro presidency.
- Working with Indigenous and traditional peoples, the organization is striving to build global awareness of the Cerrado’s natural significance and to get more of the region declared as World Heritage sites. “Defending the Cerrado is defending its people,” declares one activist.

As the Amazon unravels into savanna, its wildlife will also suffer
- The transformation of the Amazon and Atlantic rainforests into savanna-like environments will change the makeup of both the flora and the fauna of these biomes.
- A study by Brazilian researchers evaluated the impacts of climate change and deforestation on more than 300 mammal species under various scenarios of savannization.
- Species like primates, which depend on a dense canopy of trees to survive, could lose up to 50% of their range by the end of the 21st century.
- Meanwhile, species from the Cerrado scrubland, such as the maned wolf and the giant anteater, would be able to move into degraded areas of the Amazon even as their own native range is cleared by human activity.

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