MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Study shows Brazil needs some US$47bn to recover forests

If reforestation had started in 2016, it would have required an investment of about US$ 10.7 billion, it was explained

According to Instituto Escolhas, a Brazilian organization promoting sustainable development, South America's largest country will have to invest US$ 47 billion to recover a large area of forests in the country's six biomes, which would result in employment generation, food production, and a reduction of carbon emissions among other advantages.

In a study published Sunday, Escolhas also highlighted Brazil would need a long-standing commitment to plant 12 million hectares of forests as per the Paris Agreement on climate change it signed in 2015. “That promise was not duly fulfilled, in fact, we can say practically nothing was done,” said Sérgio Leitão, executive director of Instituto Escolhas, who noted only 79,000 hectares of forest have been recovered in the country's six areas (Amazon, Cerrado, Atlantic Forest, Caatinga, Pantanal, and Pampa).

The largest number of forests should be planted in the Atlantic Forest (5 million hectares), where deforestation was skyrocketing, with an increase of almost 60% between August 2015 and July 2016, compared to the previous year. It is followed by the Cerrado (3.4 million), Amazon (2.1 million), Caatinga (833,985), Pampa (471,761), and Pantanal (39,581).

If reforestation had started in 2016, it would have required an investment of about US$ 10.7 billion, four times less than what is needed today. “But just as the value remained much higher, the benefits from the economic results of that investment are much greater than what would have been obtained in 2016, when we did the first study,” the expert explained.

With the 12 million forests recovered, 4.3 billion tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) will also be eliminated. “Twice Brazil's carbon emissions in the years 2020 and 2021,” Leitao said.