“There is already, within the corporate sector, the certainty that preservation and production need to go hand in hand”, highlighted Marina Grossi, president of CEBDS, during a panel that debated the challenges and opportunities generated by the Amazon region in climate discussions. The event was held during the Climate Week NYC 2022, in New York, on Monday (20).
The chat was promoted by the Brazilian Business Council for Sustainable Development (CEBDS), in partnership with re.green, The Coalition Brazil Climate, Forests and Agriculture and the initiative A Concert for the Amazon. The program is part of Climate Week, an event that takes place every year in conjunction with the UN General Assembly to showcase the evolution of global climate action.
For Marina, Brazilians and government officials are seeing the Amazon biome in a different way, seeing the size of the region's potential and all its complexities. The president of CEBDS also reported on the experience of taking a delegation of CEOs for an immersion in the region, where it was possible to see firsthand what the challenges of the local communities were. “You need to listen, if you go to the Amazon you are there to listen”, he says.
The importance of preserved forests for the economy is also defended by Bernardo Strassburg, co-CEO of re.green. “A study by the International Sustainability Institute reveals that 10% from the degraded area of the Amazon could sequester more than 1 billion tons of CO2 and that is R$ 132 billion in revenue”, he says.
The debate was mediated by the CEO of CBKK, Marcello Brito, who highlighted the importance of “amazonizing” people and bringing more and more information about the region to society.
For Bernardo Waack, co-founder of the Uma Concertação pela Amazônia initiative, another issue that needs to be faced more rigorously is inspection and the fight against illegal deforestation. “What we are experiencing today is a complete failure of command and control as a structural strategy. Without command and control, without law enforcement, we can do very little against deforestation”, he points out.
Rachel Biderman, co-facilitator of the Coalizão Brasil Clima, Florestas e Agricultura, took the opportunity to make a recommendation. “The Amazon does not have time to carry out the bureaucracy for simple projects, it is necessary to pay attention to what happens in the field. We found several situations in the communities where they say that if you demand so much governance to use the money, you don't want to preserve the forest, you don't want to see results”, he reports.
To watch the full debate, simply click here.
