Brazilian Savannah Reforestation Project

The project lies in the Brazilian savannah region - Brazil’s second largest biome after the Amazon rainforest. Despite its importance as a centre of biodiversity, only about 1% of the Cerrado is included within the Brazilian protected areas system (compared to 6% for Amazonia and 2.7% for the Atlantic rainforest) and it has been subject to intensifying human pressures. Estimates by Conservation International suggest that roughly 80% of the Cerrado has been completely altered or modified in a major way.

The Cerrado is considered as Brazil’s under-exploited agricultural frontier. Initially, productive activities were limited to extensive cattle raising but, more recently, large-scale agribusiness operations (rice, maize, soy and sugar cane) have been established with considerable environmental and social impacts. In parallel with this, resettlement programs for people without the technical or financial resources to opt for the agribusiness package have ensured the continuation of slash-and-burn subsistence farming and the unsustainable Traditional slash-and-burn agricultural and extensive cattle raising activities would continue the degradation process started early in the last decades, as well as the land concentration, agribusiness model and their few employees offer. Soil fertility loss, erosion, biodiversity loss, changed hydrology regimes and increase of poverty and unequal incomes distribution are some of the critical current effects, expected to worsen.

The BSRP has two different approaches: conservation of natural Cerrado area and reforestation with native and commercial species, associating sustainable income generation with natural vegetation cover recuperation. The conservation area is supposed to avoid emissions from forest deforestation and degradation