To Save the Amazon, Brazil Is Betting You Can’t Just Save the Trees

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For the last thirty years, Dora Dematos Teshera has spent many of her days cracking coconuts cool cool Sancha's her son Ismaeil, collects them every day and brings them home with his donkey's day. Then then Dora gets cracking. She says she does this from seven in the morning to two in the afternoon. It's tiring work. Dora spoke with Bloomberg's Brazil bureau chief Vanessa Dezaim in the backyard of her small home in the Amazon. The coconuts shoes cracking

It is really a tree that tests value in every single part. For example, the fronts of this tree can be woven into touched roofs and mats, and also there are the empty shells and they use that for cooking. So it's a whole supply chain that has been fed by a tree in what this tree produces.

Dora gets her income from selling babazo to local grocery stores and middlemen that feed a local supply chain. Oil is produced from the kernels inside these coconuts, which is then used for soaps and body lotions. So the more Dora breaks, the more she makes.

She doesn't stop breaking while she's speaking because there's no time. She needs to break nuts her whole day long.

Dora says, if she works hard, she can earn about five dollars a day. She's part of the local Babasu economy, which has been strengthened in recent years by the Amazon Fund. The fund has supported a local cooperative that owns grocery stores and a nearby Babasu processing factory. Money from the fund helped that cooperative buy new equipment and double its revenue.

The Amazon Fund has always been looking at the forest, but in the less years, it's more and more looking into people. Today.

On the show, a new chapter in Brazil's efforts to save the Amazon and why the country is betting that you can't protect the environment without investing in local economies. I'm Sarah Holder, and this is the big take from Bloomberg News. Bloomberg's Brazil bureau chief Finessa Dezaim has been reporting on the twin crises of the Amazon, deforestation and poverty. To grasp the scale of the challenges, it helps to

So the Brazilian Amazon Territory is larger than the European Union, only the Brazilian part of it, and it's hom nowadays to thirty million people, more than a third of them leave in poverty.

The number of people living in the region has tripled since the nineteen seventies, and more than a fifth of the country's rainforest has already vanished. And Vanessa says the regions with the most deforestation also face the biggest economic challenges. One example is Marino, where Dora lives. It's the most densely populated state in the Amazon. Almost fifty eight percent of the population there lives below the poverty line.

It has lost more than three quarters of the original forest cover, and that's not a coincidence that it has some of the worst social indicators in the whole country.

Vanessa says much of the deforestation has been driven by commercial agriculture, cattle ranching, and illegal mining operations.

But another thing that wait it's covered too, is that, of course there are people living there and they need to make a living.

In some cases, small time farmers also contribute to deforestation by clearing land to grow cash crops like soybeans. Over time, their work depletes the soil and they don't have resources like fertilizer to replenish it.

So what they do they cut a little bit of more trees and then they can grow beans in a new area. But then in years this is going to be depleted.

That's where environmental initiatives like the Amazon Fund come in.

So the Amazon Fund was created years ago to protect first of all, to protect the Amazon Forest, to monitor deforestation and to curb deforestation.

The fund was started in two thousand and eight under President Luise and Nacio Lula de Silva with the support of Germany and Norway, and since then other countries have also made donations.

We have contributions come from Germany, Norway, UK, US and many other countries that now have revealed the intention to contribute with the fund.

For years, the Amazon Fund mostly poured its resources into environmental efforts like recovering deforested areas or managing public forests. But now Brazil's government is taking a new approach. They're trying to address the needs of people in the Amazon, like those low farmers, with the understanding that if you help people living on the land, you help the land too.

The challenge is how we can stop deforestation, how we can protect the forest, but how can we protect the humans that are there.

Vanessa says the fund's new investments have helped support a whole sustainable supply chain. Once you witnessed an action. On that reporting trip to Marnyo.

I saw a type of economy that I've never seen before, which is a babasu economy.

She told me about going to a small supermarket in a Brazilian village where locals brought bags of babasu nuts.

And they were exchanging it for products, for a pasta, for beverages, for you know, contents of milk, for everything they needed for that day. So they you really use babasu as payment as a curancy. What did you.

Learn about the Babasu economy overall or the challenges facing the Amazon region through talking to Dora and to her family.

First, it is very important to keep trees stand because these people depend on them. Second, I was impressed by how you can develop a supply chain that feeds into your self, that helps a whole region to develop, and still you are protecting the forest. So it is possible that people can't earn money and keep the forest standing.

But the Amazon Fund also has critics, people who say it's approached to supporting economies in the region, hasn't gone far enough. That's next. Bloomberg's Vanessa is A has been reporting on how the Amazon Fund is trying to stop deforestation in Brazil by giving economic incentives to the people who live there, but some say the project has its shortcomings. What's the biggest problem with how the fund works? According to critics.

Many analysts and specialists I talk it to, They say that the fund for now is really focused in forest and also in the countryside. That's where you can easily build up thesustainable supply chains, for example. But the big cities in the Amazon also face huge challenges with in commerce.

Vanessa says that even though many people around the world imagine the Amazon as a lush rainforest, about eighty percent of the region's population lives in rapidly growing cities that are struggling to keep up with the influx of new arrivals.

Many of those cities have these huge islams, we call it.

VELAs, and these areas are being expanded and really it's getting more and more dance and infrastructure is very weak in the region, so sewedge treatment, for example, it's very it's not well developed.

In the region, the cities in the region. So this is one challenge that the Amazon Fund has still to address. It's the city problem.

The other challenge is political. After President Lula set up the Amazon Fund in two thousand and eight, it's been vulnerable to the wins of his successors like JR. Balsonaro, who took office in twenty nineteen.

Former President Jeri Bosonato administration getted government agencies that were responsible for protecting the Amazon right, so that allowed illegal activities including land grads by farmer's lodging and mining. They flourished and so the pace of deforestations surged to record levels during those years. So because of that Norway and other foreign donors halted contributions to the Amazon Fund in protest.

The necess says the fund has recovered since Lula was re elected, but it could face more tests.

President Lula immediately rebooted the fund when he took office in January twenty twenty three, and now the fund is in a very good moment. There are many new announcements on donations, new countries coming and announcing they will contribute, and there's a huge effort on the government to do that because that's one of the key pledges of this government. But again, who knows how it's going to be in the next administration.

In the meantime, people on the ground are at the mercy of these shifting political wins. I asked Vanessa how her sources are feeling about the fund's future.

Everybody talking to you said, oh, it's a start. It's a start. The awareness that this is needed is key because that's what generates measures and initiatives, and maybe you don't need to depend on the Amazon fund. Maybe we're going to have more measures focals in this situation. So people usually say, well, it's not enough, but it's a start.

As for Dora, Vanessa asked her where she's hoping this will all.

Lead and a fally Meccas and taking meccas and can they tell you Fally Mecca she comes to macas. Dora's biggest dream is to have a real house, what she calls it, a real house is not a mud house, and that's her dream. So she's now really crossing her fingers that her son can find another job.

What kind of job does she hope her son will get.

In a supermarket nearby? Then he could have like a fixed income that he can receive every month a paycheck.

And then he could use that to help her exit her home exit action. This is the big take from Bloomberg News. I'm Sarah Holder. This episode was produced by David Fox and Adriana Tapia, who also fact checked the episode. It was edited by Aaron Edwards and Danielle Balbi. It was mixed by Alex Sugia. Our senior producer is Naomi Shaven. Our senior editor is Elizabeth Ponso. Our executive producer is Nicole Beemster Boor. Sage Bauman is Bloomberg's head of podcasts.