WEBVTT

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When the Portuguese arrived
in Latin America

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about 500 years ago,

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They found this amazing tropical forest.

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And among all this biodiversity

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that they had never seen before, 


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they found a species that caught
their attention very quickly,

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this species, when you cut the bark,

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you find a very dark red resin.

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It was very good to paint
and dye fabric to make clothes

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the indigenous people called
this species "Pau Brasil".

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and that's the reason why

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this land became "land of Brasil",

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and later on, Brazil.

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that's the only country in the world


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that has a name of a tree.

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so, you can imagine that it's very cool


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to be a forester in Brazil,

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among other reasons.

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Our forest's products are all around us. 


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Apart from all those products, 


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the forest is very important

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for climate regulation.

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In Brazil, almost 70 percent 


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of the evaporation that makes rain

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actually comes from the forest.

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Just the Amazon brings to the atmosphere

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20 billion tons of water each day.

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This is more than the Amazon river,

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which is the largest in the world,

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puts in the sea per day,

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which is 17 billion tons.

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If we have to boil water

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to get the same effect 
of evapotranspiration,

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we would need six months of the entire

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power generation capacity of the world.

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So it's a hell of a service 
for all of us.

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We have in the world about 
4 billion hectares of forest.

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This is, more or less, China, US, Canada
and Brazil all together.

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In terms of size, to have an idea, 


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three quarters of that are 
in the temperate zone.

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One quarter is one the tropics.

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But this one quarter, 1 billion hectares

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holds most of the biodiversity.

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And very important,

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50 percent of the living biomass 
in the carbon.

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Now we used to have like 6 billion 
hectares of forest.

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50 percent more than

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what he had a billion years ago.

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We actually use 2 billion hectares

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in the last 2000 years.

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In the last 100 years,

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we lost half of that.

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that was when we shifted 
form deforestation

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of temperate forest

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to deforestation of tropical forest.

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So think of this,

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in a hundred years,

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we lost the same amount of forest

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in the tropics that we
lost in 2000 years.

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That's the speed of the
destruction that we are having.

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Now Brazil is an important 
piece of this puzzle. 


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It's the second largest forest
in the world,

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just after Russia.

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It makes makes 12 percent of all 
the world's forest is in Brazil,

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most of that is in the Amazon.

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It's a large piece of forest
that we have.

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It's a very big large area.

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You can see that you can fit

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many of the world's countries there.

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We still have 80 percent 
of the forest cover,

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which is good news.

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But we last 15 percent in just 30 years.

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So if you go with that speed,

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very soon, we will loose the powerful
pump that we have

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in the Amazon

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that regulates our climate.

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Deforestation was growing 
fast and accelarating

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at the end of the '90s and
the beginning of 2000.

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27 thousand square kilometers 
in one year,

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this is 2.7 million hectares.

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This is almost half of Costa Rica
every year.

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So at this moment,

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this is 2003/2004,

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I happened to be coming to work 
in the government.

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And together with other teammates

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in the National Forest Department,

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we were assigned a task
to try and find out

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the causes of deforestation

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and make a plan to combat that at a 
national level.

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within the local governments,

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the civil society,

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and business, local communities,

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on an effort that could tackle 
those causes.

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So we came up with this plan 
with 144 actions

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in different areas.

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Now I will go through all of them 
one by one,

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just giving some examples

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of what has been done in the last years.

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So the first thing, we set up a system


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with the National Spacial Agency

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that could actually see where 
deforeatation

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is actually happening in real time.

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So now in Brazil, we have this system

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that where every month, or every
two months,

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we gather information on where
deforestation is happening

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So we can actually act when
it's happening.

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And all the information is transparent

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so others can replicate it in 
independent systems.

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This allows us, among other things,

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to apprehend 1.4 million meters of logs

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that were illegally taken.

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Part of that, we saw and sell

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and all the revenue became a fund

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that now funds conservation projects
with an endowment fund.

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This is also allows us to make 
big operations to seize corruption

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and illegal operations

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that end up having 700 people in prison, 


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including a lot of public servants.

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Then we make the connection

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that areas that have been working

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with illegal deforestation should not get
any kind of credit or finance.

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So we cut this through the bank system

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and then link this to the end users:

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to supermarkets, slaughter houses
that but products

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from illegal clearinghouses.

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they also can be liable 
for the deforestation.

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So making all these connections

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to help to push the problem down.

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And also we work a lot on 
land tenure issues.

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It's very important for conflicts.

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50 million hectares of protected land
was created,

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which is an area the size of Spain.

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and from those, 8 million were 
indigenous lands.

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Now we start to see results.

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So in the last 10 years,

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deforestation came down 
in Brazil 75 percent.

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(Applause). 


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So if we compare it with the average
deforestation of the last decade,

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we saved 8.7 million hectares, which is 
the size of Austria.

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Nut more important, it avoids the emission
of 3 billion tons of carbon dioxide

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in the atmosphere.

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This is by far the largest contribution to
reduce greenhouse gasses

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contribution to reduce greenhouse gasses
until today.

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As a positive action, one may think

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that when you do these kinds of actions
to decrease, to push down deforestation,

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you will have an economic impact,

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then you will not be having
economic activities,

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or something like that.

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But it's interesting to know that it's 
quite the opposite.

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In fact, on the period when we have the 
deepest decline of deforestation,

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the economy grew, on average double from
the previous decade

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when deforestation was actually going up.

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So it's a good lesson for us,

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maybe this is completely disconnected

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and we just learn by having 
deforestation come down.

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Now this is all good news

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and it's quite an achievement

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as we obviously should be 
quite proud about that.

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But it's not even close to sufficient.

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In fact, if you think of the deforestation
in the Amazon in 2013,

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that was over half a million hectares,

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which means that every minute,

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the area the size of two soccer fields

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is being cut in the Amazon last year.

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Just last year.

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if we sum up the deforestation we have 


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in the other biomasses in Brazil,

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we are talking about still the largest
deforestation rate in the world.

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It's more or less like we are forest 
heroes, and still,

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deforestation champions.

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We can't be satisfied or even close
to satisfied.

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So the next step, I think

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is to have zero loss of 
forest cover in Brazil

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and have that as a goal for 2020.

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That's our next step.

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Now I was always interested
in the relationship

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between climate change and forests.

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Forests because 15 percent of the 
greenhouse gas emissions

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come from forests.

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So it's a big part of the problem.

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Also, forests can be a big part 
of the solution

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since it's the best way we know to sink, 
capture and store carbon.

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Now there is another relationship between
climate change and forests

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that really stuck me in 2008 and made
me change my career

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from forests to working with climate change.

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I went to visit Canada in British Columbia,

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together with the chiefs of the 
forest services of other countries.

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We have a kind of alliance with them, like
canada, Russia, India, China, US.

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And when we were there,

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we learned about this Pine Beetle

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that is literally eating the 
forest in Canada.

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What we see here of those brown trees.

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These are really dead trees,

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they are standing dead trees.

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Because of the larvae of the beetle,

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what happens is that this beatle

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is controlled by the cold weather
in the winter.

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For many years now, they don't have the
sufficient cold weather

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to actually control the population 
of this beetle

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and it became a disease

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that is really killing billions of trees.

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So I came back with this notion that

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the forest is actually the earliest 


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and the most effected victims 
of climate change.

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So I was thinking,

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if I succeed in working with 
all my colleagues

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to actually help to stop deforestation,

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maybe we will loose the battle

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later on for climate change

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by floods, heat, fires and so on.

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So I decided to leave the forest service

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and start to work directly on
climate change,

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finding ways to think and understand
the challenge

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and go for there.

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Now the challenge of climate change
is straightforward,

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the goal is very clear.

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We want to limit increase of t
he average temperatrure

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of the planet by two degrees.

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There are several reasons for that.

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I'm not going into that now.

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But in order to get into this
limit of two degrees,

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which was possible for us to survive, 
the IPPCC

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the International Panel on Climate Change

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defines that we have a budget of emmisions

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of 1000 billion tons of CO2

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from now until the end of the century.

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So if we divide this by
the number of years,

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what we have is an average budget of
11 billion tons of C02 per year.

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Now what is one ton of CO2?

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It's more or less what one small car,

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running 20 kilometers a day,

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will emit in one year.

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Or it's flight, one way

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from Sao Palo to Johanesburg or 
to London, one way.

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Two ways, two tons.

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So 11 billion tons is twice that.

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Now the emissions today 
are 50 billion tons

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and it's growing.

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It's growing and maybe it will be 60 
by 2020.

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Now we need to go down to 10 by 2050.

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And while this happens,

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the population will grow from 
7 to 9 billion people,

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the economy will grow from
60 trillion dollars in 2010

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to 200 trillion dollars.

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And what we need to do is to

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be much more efficient in a way

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where we can go from seven
tons of carbon per capita

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per person per year

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into something like one.

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We have to choose.

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You take the airplane

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or you have a car.

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So the question is, "Can we make it?"

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And that's the exactly the same question

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
I got when I was developing
a plan to combat deforestation.

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It's such a big problem, so complex.

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Can we do it?

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I think so.

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Think of this:

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deforestation makes 60 percent of the
greenhouse gas emissions

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in Brazil in the last decade.

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Now, it's a little bit less than 30 percent.

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In the world, 60 percent is energy.

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If we can tackle, directly, the energy,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
the same way we could 
tackle deforestation,

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maybe we can have a chance?

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So there are five things that I think
we should do.

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First, we need to disconnect development

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from carbon emissions.

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We don't need to clear-cut all the forests
to actually get more jobs

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and agriculture and have economy.

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That's what we proved when we 
decreased deforestation.

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The economy actually grows.

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Same thing could happen
in the energy sector.

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Second, we have to move these centers

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to the right place

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9move incentives to the right place)

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today 500 billion dollars a year

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goes into subsidies for fossil fuels

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why don't we put a price on carbon

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and transfer this to the renewable energy

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third, we need to measure and make

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
it transparent where, when and who is

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
emitting greenhouse gases

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so we can have actions specifically

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
for each one of those

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fourth, we need to leapfrog the routes of development

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which means, you don't need to go

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
to alandline telephone before you get

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
to the mobile phones

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
same way we don't need to go to fossil fuels

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
to the one billion people who don't

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
have access to energy to

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
get to the clean energy

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
fifth and last

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we need to share responsibilities between government

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
business and civil society

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
there is work to do for everybody

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
and we need to have everybody involved

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
so to finialize

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
i think, the future is not like a fate

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
that you have to just to go to business and usual

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
we need to have the courage

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
to actually change the route

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
invest in something new

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
that we can actually change the route

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
i think we are doing this

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
with deforestation in brazil

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
i think we can do it also

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
with climate change in the world

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
thank you

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
applause