Hopeful lessons from the battle to save rainforests

When the Portuguese arrived in
Latin America

about 500 years ago,

They found this amazing
tropical forest

and among all this biodiversity

that they had never
seen before,

they found species that caught
their attention very quickly,

this species, when you cut
the bark

you find a very dark red resim

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

the indigenous people called
this species "pao brazil"

and that's the reason why this
land became

"land of brazil"

and later on, Brazil.

that's the only country
in the world

that has a name of
a tree

so, you can imagine
that it's very cool

to be a forester in brazil

among other reasons

our forest's products
are all around us

apart from all those
products,

the forest is very important for

climate regualtion

in brazil, almost 70 percent

of the evaporation that makes rain

actually comes from the forest

just the amazon

brings to the atmosphere

20 billion tons of water each day

this is more than the amazon rivers

which is the largest in the world

puts in the sea

per day, which is 17 billion tons

if we have to boil water

to get the same effect of evapotranspiration

we would need 6 months of the entire

power generation capacity of the world

so it's a hell of a service for all of us

we have in the world about

4 billion hectares of forest

this is more or less,

china, us, canda and brazil
all together

in terms of size, to have
an idea

three quarters of that are in
the temperate zone

one quarter is one the tropics

but this one quarter, 1 billion hectares

holds most of the biodiversity

and very important

50 percent of the living biomass

the carbon

now, we used to have like 6 billion

hectares of forest

50 percent more than

what he had a billion years ago

we actually use 2 billion

hectares in the last 2000 years

in the lat 100 years

we lost half of that

that was when we shift form deforestation

of temperate forest

to deforestation of tropical forest

so think of this,

in a hundred years

we loose the same amount of forest

in the tropics that we loose in 2000 years

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

now brazil, is an important piece
of this puzzle

it's the second largest forest in the world

just after russia

(12 percent of the world's forest)

it makes makes 12 percent of all
the world's forest is in brazil

most of that is in the amazon

it's a large piece of forest that we have

it's a very big large area

you can see that you can fit

many of the world's countries there

we still have 80 percent of the forest cover

which is good news

but we last 15 percent in just 30 years

so if you go with that speed

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

in the amazon

that regulates our climate

deforestation was growing fast and accelarating

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

27 thousand square kilometers in one year

this is 2.7 million hectares

this is almost half of costa rica

every eyar

so, at this moment

this is 2003/2004,

i happened to be coming to

work in the government

and together with other teammates

in the national forest department,

we were assigned a task

to chain and find out the causes of deforestation

and make a plan to combat that

at a naitonal level

within the local governments,

the civil society,

and business, local communities,

on an effort that could tackle

those causes

so we came up with this plan

with 144 actions

in different areas.

now i go through all of them

one by one.

just giving some examples

of what has been done

in the last years

so the first thing

we set up a system with the national

spacial agency that could actually

see where deforestation is actually happening

in real time

so now in brazil we have this system

that where every month,

or every two months

we gather information on where
deforestation is happening

so we can actually act when it's happening

and all the information is transparent

so others can replicate

that in independent systems

this allows us, among other things

to apprehend 1.4 million meters of logs

that were illegally taken

part of that we saw and sell

and all the revenue became a fund

that now funds conservation projects

with an endowment fund

this is also allows us to amke

big operations to seize corruption

and illegal operations

that end up having 700 people

in prison

including a lot of public servants

then we make the connection

that areas that have been working

with illegal deforestation should not

get any kind of credit or finance

so we cut this through the bank system

and then link this to the

end users

to supermarkets, slaughter houses

that buy products

from illegal clearinghouses

they also can be liable for the deforestation

so making all these connections

to help to push the problem down

and also we work a lot

on land tenure issues

it's very important for conflicts

50 million hectares of protected land

were created

which is an area the size of spain

and from those, 8 million were

indigenous lands

now, we start to see results

so in the last 10 years, deforestation came

down in brazil 75 percent

(applause)

so if we compare it with the average

deforestation of the last decade

we saved 8.7 million hectares, which is the size of

austria

but more important, it avoids the emmision

of 3 billion tons of carbon dioxide

in the atmosphere

this is by far the largest

contribution to reduce greenhouse gasses

until today, as a positive action

one may think that when you do

these kind of actions to decrease

to push down deforestation

you will have an economic impact

then you will not be having economic activities

or something like that

but, it's interesting to know that

it's quite the opposite

in fact, on the period when we have

the deepest decline of deforestation

the economy grew, on average

double from the previous decade

when deforestation was actually

going up

so it's a good lesson for us

maybe this is completely disconnected

and we just learn by having deforestation come down

now this is all good news

and it's quite an achievement and we

obviously should be quite proud about that

but it's not even close to sufficient

in fact, if you think of the deforestation

in the amazon in 2013,

that was over half a million hectares

which means that every minute

the area the size of two soccer fields

is being cut in the amazon last year

just last year

if we sum up the deforestation we have

in the other biomasses in brazil

we are talking about

still the largest deforestation rate in the world

it's more or less like we are

forest heroes

and still, deforestation champoins

we can't be satisfied

or even close to satisfied

so, the next step

i think,

is to have zero loss of forest cover in brazil

and have that as a goal for 2020

that's our next step

now, i was always interested in the relationship

between climate change and forests

forests because 15 percent of the

greenhouse gas emissions come from forests

so, it's a big part of the problem

also, forests can be a big part of the solution

since it's the best way we know

to sink, capture and store carbon

now, there is another relationship

between climate and forest that really strikes me

in 2008 and made me change my career

from forests to working

with climate change

i went to visit canda in british columbia

together with the chiefs of the forest

services of other countries,

we have a kind of alliance with them

like canda, russia, indian, china

us

and when we were there

we learned about this pine beetle

that is literally eating the forest in canada

what we see here of those brown trees

these are really dead trees

they are standing dead trees

because of the larvae of the beatle

what happens is that this beatle

is controlled by the cold weather in the winter

for many years now

they don't have the sufficient cold weather

to actually control the population of this beatle

and it became a disease

that is really killing billions of trees

so i came back with this notion that

forest is actually the earliest and ost

effected victims of climate change

so i was thinking

if i succeed in working with all my colleagues

to actually help to stop