Brazil has lost 34 mi of the 82.6 mi hectares of caatinga

Brazil has lost 34 million hectares of the 82.6 million hectares of caatinga, warned the president of the national environmental authority Ibama, Rodrigo Agostinho, during a scientific seminar on the biome. At the assembly, attended by Minister for the Environment and Climate Change Marina Silva, he discussed the challenges of achieving the goal of zero deforestation for the native vegetation that predominates in the Brazilian Northeast.

Agostinho highlighted the need for a specific public policy for the biome, made evident, he instanced, by the high number of unique species that have been transformed by human activity.

“The caatinga has 60 percent of its native vegetation occupied, a large part of which has undergone a process of anthropization—like clear-cutting, repeated burning, selective extraction of vegetation and animals, and the introduction of exotic species,” he pointed out.

As a result, effects such as the desertification of more than ten percent of the biome can already be observed. In his view, this must be tackled through the creation of conservation units, the recovery of native vegetation, and the generation of data for protection and sustainable use.

Improving environmental licensing and demarcating the territories of traditional communities were other needs listed by Ibama’s president. “Several of our traditional populations are not usually recognized—like the sertanejos—and that’s a challenge, because an enterprise might come in all of a sudden and these people are quickly expelled from their areas,” he argued.

The energy transition also demands a careful look at the caatinga, said Agostinho, who noted that, even though the growth of wind and photovoltaic energy is desired by the region, it cannot come at the cost of deforesting native vegetation. “It doesn’t make sense to introduce wind and solar energy if they bring along with them the deforestation of large portions of the caatinga, just because the price of land is cheaper.”

To tackle deforestation, the effects of climate change, the extinction of species and fires in the caatinga, he went on, measures should go beyond combat and control policies.

“Last year we resumed inspection of the caatinga. We brought them back with force and strategy. We increased infraction notices by 69 percent. We increased the fines by almost 600 percent in the biome alone. We expanded the embargoes, which is perhaps the most important strategy in combating deforestation, and we have increased seizures. But what we now realize is that we need robust strategies in order to address this issue,” he stressed.

Minister Marina Silva agreed with Agostinho and recalled that this approach to Brazilian biomes is one of the priorities in the policies being designed by the government.

She noted that the Ecological Transformation Plan unveiled by the Ministry of Finance last year during the 2023 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP28) is an example of this. “Fighting deforestation is a political commitment. It’s an ethical commitment and it’s a social as well as aesthetic commitment, because this diverse world is wonderful,” she said.