Hopeful lessons from the battle to save rainforests

When the Portuguese arrived
in Latin America

about 500 years ago,

they obviously found this
amazing tropical forest.

And among all this biodiversity

that they had never seen before,

they found one species that caught
their attention very quickly.

This species, when you cut the bark,

you find a very dark red resin

that was very good to paint
and dye fabric to make clothes.

The indigenous people called
this species "Pau Brasil",

and that's the reason why

this land became "land of Brasil",

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.

Forest products are all around us.

Apart from all those products,

the forest is very important for
climate regulation.

In Brazil, almost 70 percent

of the evaporation that makes rain

actually comes from the forest.

Just the Amazon boons to the atmosphere

20 billion tons of water everyday.

This is more than what the Amazon river,

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 six 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, Canada
and Brazil all together,

in terms of size, to have an idea.

Three quarters of that is
in the temperate zone.

And just one quarter is on the tropics.

But this one quarter, 1 billion hectares,

holds most of the biodiversity.

And very important,

50 percent of the living biomass
in the carbon.

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

50 percent more than what we had
2000 years ago.

We actually lost 2 billion hectares

in the last 2000 years.

But in the last 100 years,

we lost half of that.

That was when we shifted
form deforestation

of temperate forest

to deforestation of tropical forest.

So think of this,

in a hundred years,

we lost the same amount of forest

in the tropics that we
lost 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.

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 powerful
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 year.

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 try and find out

the causes of deforestation

and make a plan to combat that at a
national 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 will 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
deforeatation

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 it 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 make
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 but 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
was 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.

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

in the atmosphere.

This is by far the largest contribution to
reduce greenhouse gasses

contribution to reduce greenhouse gasses
until today.

As a positive action, one may think

that when you do these kinds 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

as 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 champions.

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 change and forests

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

from forests to working with climate change.

I went to visit Canada in British Columbia,

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

We have a kind of alliance with them, like
canada, Russia, India, 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 beetle,

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 beetle

and it became a disease

that is really killing billions of trees.

So I came back with this notion that

the forest is actually the earliest

and the most effected victims
of climate change.

So I was thinking,

if I succeed in working with
all my colleagues

to actually help to stop deforestation,

maybe we will loose the battle

later on for climate change

by floods, heat, fires and so on.

So I decided to leave the forest service

and start to work directly on
climate change,

finding ways to think and understand
the challenge

and go for there.

Now the challenge of climate change
is straightforward,

the goal is very clear.

We want to limit increase of t
he average temperatrure

of the planet by two degrees.

There are several reasons for that.

I'm not going into that now.

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

which was possible for us to survive,
the IPPCC

the International Panel on Climate Change

defines that we have a budget of emmisions

of 1000 billion tons of CO2

from now until the end of the century.

So if we divide this by
the number of years,

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

Now what is one ton of CO2?

It's more or less what one small car,

running 20 kilometers a day,

will emit in one year.

Or it's flight, one way

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

Two ways, two tons.

So 11 billion tons is twice that.

Now the emissions today
are 50 billion tons

and it's growing.

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

Now we need to go down to 10 by 2050.

And while this happens,

the population will grow from
7 to 9 billion people,

the economy will grow from
60 trillion dollars in 2010

to 200 trillion dollars.

And what we need to do is to

be much more efficient in a way

where we can go from seven
tons of carbon per capita

per person per year

into something like one.

We have to choose.

You take the airplane

or you have a car.

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

And that's the exactly the same question

I got when I was developing
a plan to combat deforestation.

It's such a big problem, so complex.

Can we do it?

I think so.

Think of this:

deforestation makes 60 percent of the
greenhouse gas emissions

in Brazil in the last decade.

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

In the world, 60 percent is energy.

If we can tackle, directly, the energy,

the same way we could
tackle deforestation,

maybe we can have a chance?

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

First, we need to disconnect development

from carbon emissions.

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

and agriculture and have economy.

That's what we proved when we
decreased deforestation.

The economy actually grows.

Same thing could happen
in the energy sector.

Second, we have to move these centers

to the right place.

Today, 500 billion dollars a year

goes into subsidies for fossil fuels.

Why don't we put a price on carbon

and transfer this to the renewable energy?

Third, we need to measure and make
transparent

where, when and who is emitting
greenhouse gases

so we can have actions specifically
for each one of those.

Fourth, we need to leapfrog the
routes of development,

which means, you don't need to go
to the landline telephone

before you get to the mobile phones.

Same way we don't need to
go to fossil fuels

to the one billion people who don't have
access to energy

to get to the clean energy.

Fifth and last,

we need to share responsibility
s between government,

business and civil society.

There is work to do for everybody

and we need to have everybody involved.

So to finalize,

I think the future is not like a fate

that you have to just to go
to business and usual.

We need to have the courage

to actually change the route,

invest in something new,

so that we can actually change the route.

I think we are doing this with
deforestation in Brazil.

I think we can do it also with climate
change in the world.

Thank you.

(Applause).