Category: Human Rights

Monica Piccinini

1 September 2026

Brazil is betting that the Amazon can be protected by making its forests economically valuable, through timber, forest products and carbon credits. But as more public forest is opened to business, the challenge is to establish whether commercial use can stay within the forest’s ecological limits.

The Amazon has always attracted people looking for something valuable. Since Brazil’s colonial times with the arrival of the Portuguese in 1500, natural resources, including wood, sugar, gold, diamonds, rubber, coffee, minerals, cattle and land have all brought waves of extraction into the forest.

Today, public forests can provide oils, seeds, fruits, timber, environmental services and, under newer rules, carbon credits, while remaining officially protected and standing.

Brazil calls this sustainable forest management. The idea is that if a living forest has economic value, there’s less incentive to destroy it. Forest recovery, however, happens on a much longer timescale than commercial planning. Trees take decades, sometimes centuries, to grow. What matters is what remains after logging and whether commercially valuable trees have recovered before harvesting starts again.

A study published in Forest Ecology and Management tested 27 different logging scenarios in the Brazilian Amazon to see whether commercial timber production could be maintained over repeated harvests.

Under conditions like those used in Brazilian forest concessions today, harvesting around 15-20 cubic metres of timber per hectare and returning after 35 years, timber production could be maintained for the first cycle, but not at the same level after that.

Plinio Sist, senior forest scientist at Forests and Societies Research Unit at CIRAD (the French Agricultural Research Centre for International Development) and lead author of the research, explained:

The problem is not necessarily whether the forest remains standing after logging. Forest biomass and biodiversity can recover relatively well when logging is carefully controlled. The problem is the valuable timber trees. They recover much more slowly.

Under the current harvesting cycle, studies suggest that only around half of the original timber volume may have recovered by the time loggers return. So, a forest can look green and healthy from above while no longer containing enough commercial timber to support the same level of harvesting.

The most sustainable scenario in the study involved harvesting 10 cubic metres per hectare every 60 years. CIRAD’s subsequent explanatory material describes the corresponding cutting cycle as 65 years. It also assumed that 90 per cent of potentially harvestable timber species would have commercial value, compared with around 20 per cent under current practices.

Sist argues that for genuinely sustainable timber production, the industry may have to accept taking considerably less from the forest and waiting much longer before returning. He said:

Our simulations suggest that logging should be limited to around 10 cubic metres per hectare, that a wider range of timber species should be used, and that forests should be given around 60 years before being harvested again.

Under those conditions, timber harvesting could be sustainable over the long term. But there is an important trade-off: genuinely sustainable harvesting would produce much less timber than the market currently demands. We must recognise that the forest has ecological limits. We cannot simply ask it to keep producing the same amount indefinitely.

A forest becomes an investment

Pau-Rosa is part of a much wider expansion of forest concessions across the Amazon. The Pau-Rosa National Forest covers around 828,000 hectares, and lies between the Madeira and Tapajós rivers, a region of immense ecological richness. Around 249,000 hectares are currently proposed for sustainable forest management concession. As of August 2026, the project had not yet been auctioned. Brazil’s development bank, BNDES, scheduled the tender notice for late 2026 and the auction for the first quarter of 2027.

Government project documents say the concessions are intended to protect biodiversity and support sustainable development while allowing the forest to be used commercially. The same forest is expected to be both commercially productive and conserved.

Pau-Rosa is only one of several concession projects across the region. The Castanho Glebe Forest, the Amapá Forest, the Jatuarana (four Forest Management Units, FMUs), Iquiri, Anauá, Bom Futuro (two FMUs), and Balata-Tufari National Forests (three FMUs) are among the other Amazonian forests involved in concession projects, although the projects are at different stages, from studies and tender preparation to auction and contracted concessions.

These projects are coordinated by the Brazilian Forest Service (SFB) linked to Brazil’s Ministry of the Environment and Climate Change, and supported in their structuring by Brazil’s development bank, BNDES.

Each concession has its own boundary and management plan, but across the region, more public forest is being expected to produce timber and other forms of income while remaining standing.

Some of these public forests and concession units lie within or are affected by the wider area influenced by transport infrastructure associated with the BR-319 highway corridor.

Research and environmental assessments have repeatedly identified improved road access in this part of the Amazon as a driver of pressure on remote forests protected areas and Indigenous communities. Existing and planned roads can create pathways for illegal logging and mining, land grabbing, organised crime, and other illicit activities, while also increasing the risk of deforestation and degradation.

Sustainable timber

A management plan means little if the origin of the timber cannot be trusted.

A 2025 study published in One Earth examined timber records and satellite observations covering 2009-2019 in the Brazilian state of Pará and found significant gaps between what was recorded on paper and what could be observed in the forest. Although 96 per cent of the timber volume entering the formal supply chain could be linked to a logging permit by location, only 45 per cent of the logging detected by satellite matched areas with legal authorisation.

The researchers also found cases where the amount of timber reported as coming from an authorised area appeared inconsistent with the amount of logging actually visible there. According to the researchers, these inconsistencies create opportunities for logging permits to be used to launder timber illegally harvested elsewhere.

But the problem hasn’t disappeared, as recent enforcement operations and investigations have continued to find evidence that fraudulent permits, forest credits and other documentation can be used to disguise the true origin of illegally harvested timber.

In 2025, an investigation by the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) linked around 53,000 cubic metres of timber associated with sanctioned or irregular operations to supply chains reaching the United States and Europe.

Timber may appear traceable and legal in an official database without the paperwork proving that the wood really came from the forest stated in its records.

Much of the Amazon is remote, and logging beneath the canopy can be difficult to compare with what happens in official records. A management plan can set out how logging should happen but verifying that those rules are followed on the ground is much harder.

A standing tree becomes a commodity

Timber is no longer the only way a forest can generate money. In October 2025, Brazil’s Forest Service introduced rules allowing forest management concessions already in force to add activities aimed at reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation, with a view to generating, certifying and commercialising carbon credits.

On 25 March 2026, Brazil held its first federal auction for a forest concession focused on ecological restoration in the Bom Futuro National Forest in Rondônia. Re.green won the auction for a roughly 51,200-hectare management unit. The concession runs for 40 years and allows revenue to be generated through environmental assets, including carbon credits and products from native species silviculture.

Re.green was the 2025 Earthshot Prize winner. Their customers and partners include Microsoft, Nestlé, Vivo and Danish pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk. Their investment and support come from asset manager Dynamo, private holding company of the Moreira Salles Group – Brasil Warrant (BW), private equity and investment firm Lanx Capital, private equity firm Principia Capital and Gávea Investimentos.

The voluntary carbon market adds another source of revenue. A standing tree can generate income through the carbon it stores. Its carbon is measured, calculated and turned into a credit that can be traded. For restoration projects, carbon credits can provide money to restore degraded land, but they also turn the forest’s natural ability to store carbon into something that can be bought and sold. 

Dr Thales AP West, a tenured assistant professor at the Institute for Environmental Studies (IVM) at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, spoke about the carbon credit market’s safeguards:

If companies buy credits from forest projects, the forest must be there. If it disappears, the credits disappear too. The problem is that even certified and audited calculations may still lack credibility – certification alone doesn’t necessarily guarantee anything. 

Most projects last only a few decades; once they expire, their credits could eventually expire too. Yet no one wants to talk about that because it’s inconvenient. The voluntary market has simply chosen to not take the issue of permanence seriously.”

Timber volumes and tonnes of carbon describe only part of a forest’s value. Forests support soils, water, wildlife and relationships between species. For people who have lived in and depended on them for generations, they are also home, food and medicine.

Voluntary carbon markets put a measurable, tradeable value on one function of a wider system, carbon storage and climate mitigation. Critics have a name for this: “green extractivism”, arguing that it can continue to define forests through the economic value they generate, even when the trees remain standing.

Sist argues that putting a price on a standing forest can help protect it, but only if conservation doesn’t become another justification for endless economic growth. He said:

There is always a danger when we put a financial value on nature. At the same time, generating income from a standing forest can give people a strong reason to conserve it.

I think the concept of bioeconomy is not very useful because it means a lot of things and everyone has their own definition and vision of what is bioeconomy. I think that the bioeconomy should be implemented within an economic system that advocates degrowth, rather than as a miracle solution within a capitalist system that cannot exist without growth.

An old relationship with a greener name

For centuries, the Amazon rainforest has been exploited, viewed as a source of rubber, hardwoods, minerals, oil, cattle pasture and land. Today’s forest concessions operate under regulation and monitoring, with management rules intended to limit the damage associated with uncontrolled extraction.

Those rules do not, by themselves, make the model transparent or sustainable. A system that values forests mainly through timber, oils, carbon and other marketable products still risks overlooking ecological and social values that are harder to price.

Whether these concessions are sustainable will depend on what happens in the forest over time: the recovery of harvested trees, the condition of rivers and soils, the survival of wildlife, the influence local and Indigenous communities have over decisions, and how much of the wealth generated remains in the places where it is produced.

Together, they provide a more meaningful picture of the forest’s long-term condition than the value of a concession or the number of carbon credits it produces.

Brazil needs alternatives to illegal logging, land grabbing and forest clearing. Carefully managed concessions could perhaps reduce some of those pressures, but their long-term sustainability still depends on whether ecological recovery and effective oversight can be maintained across repeated harvest cycles.

Sist warned that concessions should not be treated as the single answer. He said:

Brazil’s forest concession system is among the best in the tropical world, but the harvesting rules will have to change if it is to be sustainable over the long term. And concessions alone cannot provide all the timber the market demands.

Brazil needs a much broader approach: stopping illegal logging, allowing forest communities and small farmers to manage forests sustainably, and restoring the millions of hectares of degraded forest and land. We need to diversify not only where timber comes from, but also who is able to produce it.

The real test begins after the contract is signed and logging starts. The effects cannot be judged only over the next financial year or even the life of a 40-year concession. They will become clearer over much longer timescales, in whether large timber trees continue to regenerate, rivers and forest ecosystems remain healthy, and the people who depend on the forest gain a meaningful role in decisions about its future.

Right of reply: The Brazilian Forest Service (SFB) was approached for interviews to discuss some of the questions raised in this article. At the time of publication, no response to the questions submitted to them had been received.

Featured image: Moving tree trunks from forest to sawmill downstream using the current of the river, logging, Amazon rainforest, Brazil. Credit: Ricardo Beliel / BrazilPhotos / Alamy

Monica Piccinini

3 August 2026

Can the world’s largest beef industry become sustainable – or is sustainability itself being redefined?

For decades, cattle have symbolised the destruction of the Brazilian Amazon and the Cerrado. Ancient rainforest has given way to vast pasture, replacing some of the planet’s richest ecosystems with grazing land. But the industry’s impact extends far beyond deforestation. It has reshaped land ownership, concentrated wealth, altered political power and become deeply embedded in Brazil’s economic development.

Forests were not lost through chainsaws and fire alone. Behind every cleared hectare lay an economic model that rewarded converting living forest into private wealth. Roads opened remote regions, timber financed the first wave of clearing, fire consumed what remained, and cattle turned deforested land into an asset that could be bought, sold, mortgaged and defended. Within that system, a standing forest held little financial value.

Today, cattle are being reframed. As governments, investors and agribusiness seek ways to reduce agricultural emissions, livestock is no longer presented solely as a driver of environmental decline. It’s now being promoted as part of the climate solution through “regenerative” ranching, “low-carbon” beef, digital traceability and green finance.

This shift extends beyond farming practices. It reflects changes in environmental governance, where climate policy, financial markets and conservation are becoming more closely interconnected. The question is no longer simply how to reduce the environmental cost of cattle production, but whether the industry can continue expanding while claiming to operate within ecological limits.

How is this shift taking place, who’s driving it and what does it mean for the future of the Amazon? Does the reinvention of cattle represent a genuine environmental transition or a financial model that allows one of Brazil’s most powerful industries keep growing under the language of sustainability?

Cattle, deforestation and a changing narrative

Around 80 per cent of cleared land in the Amazon has been converted to pasture. In the neighbouring Cerrado, one of the world’s most biodiverse biomes, cattle ranching and large-scale commodity agriculture have replaced native ecosystems across an immense area.

Decades of satellite monitoring, scientific research and government investigations reach the same conclusion: pasture is the dominant land use established after Amazon deforestation, and cattle ranching remains its main direct driver. Not every hectare was cleared solely for beef production. Cattle have also served to occupy disputed land, consolidate speculative claims and prepare properties for resale or conversion to other agricultural uses.

The consequences extend well beyond forest loss. Clearing and burning release carbon accumulated over decades or centuries. Cattle emit methane through digestion, while manure and pasture management generate additional greenhouse gases. Replacing forests and native savannahs with pasture also degrades soils, alters river systems, fragments habitats and accelerates biodiversity loss.

Across parts of the Amazon, cattle expansion has remained closely linked to land grabbing, fraudulent property claims and the illegal occupation of public, protected and Indigenous land. Prosecutors, journalists and human rights organisations have repeatedly documented ranches associated with forced labour, intimidation and violence against Indigenous peoples, traditional communities and smallholders. These abuses do not characterise every producer, but they remain a persistent and well-documented feature of the industry’s history.

Data from Brazil’s Ministry of Labour and Employment, compiled by Repórter Brasil, revealed that 65,600 workers were rescued from slavery-like conditions between 1995 and 2024. More than 17,300 worked in livestock farming, making it the sector with the highest number of recorded cases. As one rescued worker observed: “Here, cattle are treated better than workers”.

For years, international debate framed livestock expansion and forest conservation as opposing forces. The challenge was to limit the environmental damage caused by an industry whose growth had become inseparable from the advance of the agricultural frontier.

Over the past decade, that debate has shifted. Governments, researchers, development agencies, environmental organisations, banks, philanthropies and meat companies have moved from asking whether cattle production should change to asking how it can be aligned with climate policy.

The change began with language. Reports once centred on deforestation now promote “low-carbon beef”, “regenerative’ ranching, “nature-positive” and “sustainable” production. Practices such as restoring degraded pasture, improving animal nutrition, reducing slaughter age and increasing productivity are presented alongside climate finance, satellite monitoring, digital traceability and environmental investment.

Many of these proposals offer genuine environmental benefits. Restoring degraded pasture is preferable to clearing new forest. Effective traceability can expose abuses that have long remained hidden within supply chains. Stronger environmental agencies, reliable land registries and better technical support could all strengthen responsible producers while excluding those who profit from illegal deforestation.

Greater efficiency, however, doesn’t necessarily reduce environmental impact. Producing beef with fewer emissions per kilogram does not automatically reduce total emissions, land use or ecological pressure. Animals may reach slaughter weight sooner, lowering methane intensity, while overall emissions continue to rise if herd sizes and production keep expanding.

That distinction matters in a country with around 238 million cattle, more than its human population, and the world’s largest beef export industry. Brazil is pursuing two ambitions at once: presenting livestock as part of its climate strategy while expanding the scale and competitiveness of its beef sector.

Behind the reports, investment funds and institutional partnerships, another story begins to emerge. The reinvention of cattle is no longer only about forests, pasture or methane. It also concerns credit, environmental data, financial products and the rapidly expanding market for investments described as green, climate-aligned or nature-positive.

The organisations involved do not all share the same objectives, nor does this diminish the work of scientists, public officials and practitioners who have spent decades protecting forests and improving rural livelihoods. The more important question is whether sustainable cattle represent a genuine transformation of livestock production, or a financial and technological model that allows the industry to continue expanding.

Rewriting the language of sustainability

The transformation of Brazil’s cattle industry did not begin on ranches. It began with a change in language.

For decades, debate about Brazilian livestock centred on deforestation, biodiversity loss, greenhouse-gas emissions, illegal land occupation and labour abuses embedded in beef supply chains. The objective, even if politically difficult, was clear: reduce the environmental damage caused by one of the world’s largest cattle industries. But that’s no longer the dominant conversation.

Rather than questioning whether livestock production should continue expanding, policy now largely assumes that cattle will remain central to Brazil’s economy. The challenge has become making the industry more productive, more transparent, more technologically sophisticated and more attractive to climate-conscious investors.

The distinction is subtle but significant. If the problem is the scale of the cattle industry, policy responses might include limiting production in ecologically vulnerable regions, discouraging frontier expansion and reducing pressure for continued growth. If the problem is inefficiency, the solutions become better genetics, restored pasture, digital monitoring, faster animal growth and new forms of rural credit.

Language matters because it shapes policy. It influences what governments measure, where financial institutions invest and what counts as environmental progress. Terms such as “low-carbon” beef, “regenerative” ranching, “nature-positive” and “sustainable” production do more than describe farming practices; they redefine the problem itself.

That shift is reflected in research produced through the Amazônia 2030, a collaboration between the Amazon Institute of Man and Environment (Imazon) and the Climate Policy Initiative (CPI). Its work recognises the role extensive ranching, degraded pasture and deforestation have played in transforming the Amazon, while arguing that future investment should focus on existing production areas rather than new agricultural frontiers.

The recommendations are practical: redirect rural credit towards measurable productivity gains, expand technical assistance, restore degraded pasture, strengthen georeferenced monitoring and clarify the legal status of public forests vulnerable to speculative occupation. The underlying argument is that Brazil can produce more beef on land that has already been cleared, reducing the incentive to destroy additional forest.

The logic is persuasive. If degraded pasture supports only a small number of cattle, restoring it should increase production without requiring new land. In theory, higher productivity could spare land for conservation or ecological restoration. Whether that happens depends less on productivity than on governance.

Higher yields reduce pressure on forests only when environmental protections prevent expansion and restored land is genuinely conserved. Where enforcement is weak, greater efficiency can have the opposite effect, making cattle production more profitable, attracting new investment and increasing pressure to expand.

History offers no simple answer. Agricultural intensification has reduced pressure on land in some regions while accelerating expansion in others. Outcomes depend on demand, infrastructure, credit, law enforcement and whether higher profits are channelled into restoring existing land or acquiring new properties.

One statistic illustrates the point. Research cited by Amazônia 2030 suggests that every hectare of restored pasture between 2000 and 2023 coincided with approximately 2.35 hectares of new deforestation. The figure describes a historical association rather than proving that restoration caused forest loss, but it challenges the assumption that productivity gains automatically displace frontier expansion.

The central question, then, is not whether pasture can be made more productive. It can. The question is whether those gains are accompanied by safeguards that prevent higher profits from financing further deforestation.

The same tension runs through the broader language of “low carbon” livestock.

IDH, the Sustainable Trade Initiative, promotes programmes that combine pasture restoration, technical assistance, finance and market access to support lower-emission cattle production. Its partnerships in Brazil bring together environmental organisations, agribusiness, financial institutions and development agencies around a common objective: transforming livestock through investment rather than contraction.

A similar approach appears in the World Resources Institute‘s New Economy for the Brazilian Amazon, where livestock reform forms part of a broader programme linking universities, NGOs, businesses and policy organisations around climate-compatible economic development.

Other initiatives follow the same pattern. The Brazil Restoration and Bioeconomy Finance Coalition (BRBFC) brings together commercial banks, development institutions, philanthropic foundations and environmental organisations to support large-scale investment in restoration and nature-based enterprises.

These organisations differ in governance, priorities and political outlook, and they should not be viewed as a single coordinated project. But their programmes share a strikingly similar vocabulary: productivity, resilience, restoration, traceability, measurable impact, environmental services and blended finance.

Taken together, these initiatives reveal a broader shift in environmental governance. Livestock is no longer framed simply as an environmental liability requiring tighter regulation. It’s also presented as an opportunity for climate investment, environmental data and participation in emerging markets for carbon, biodiversity and ecosystem services.

The implications extend beyond cattle ranching. Forests, biodiversity and restored landscapes are treated as measurable economic assets. Financial institutions are developing products that reward environmental performance, while digital technologies generate the data needed to verify and trade those assets.

Brazil sits at the centre of this shift. It contains the world’s largest tropical rainforest, the vast Cerrado and millions of hectares of degraded pasture that could be restored or intensified. That combination makes the country not only an environmental priority but also one of the world’s largest potential markets for climate investment.

Because cattle occupy so much of Brazil’s land, they lie at the heart of that opportunity. Pasture can simultaneously be presented as a climate problem, a restoration opportunity and a financial asset awaiting more productive use.

The reinvention of cattle, then, is about far more than reducing methane emissions. It’s about repositioning one of Brazil’s largest economic sectors within a rapidly expanding market for climate finance.

Whether that ultimately places ecological limits ahead of economic expansion remains the defining question.

Brazil’s forest restoration market could deliver $141 billion opportunity for companies and investors, according to an Orbitas report.

Following the money

The reinvention of cattle is not being driven by environmental policy alone. It’s also shaped by a growing financial architecture that links climate targets, agricultural production and global investment.

Programmes promoting low-carbon livestock rarely operate in isolation. Instead, they emerge from partnerships between governments, development agencies, philanthropic foundations, commercial banks, investment managers, meat companies and environmental organisations.

Together, these actors are redefining not only how sustainability is financed but also how it is measured.

Such cooperation is neither unusual nor inherently problematic. Restoring degraded pasture, improving supply chains and supporting responsible producers require long-term investment that public finance alone is unlikely to provide. The more significant question is how these partnerships influence the definition of sustainability itself.

When environmental programmes are designed around the expectations of financial markets, success tends to be measured through investment returns, risk reduction, scalability and quantifiable outcomes. Values that resist simple measurement like cultural survival, territorial rights, biodiversity or the intrinsic value of forests, can become harder to accommodate.

IDH, the Sustainable Trade Initiative, illustrates this changing landscape. Established in 2008 through collaboration between the Dutch government, civil society and the private sector, IDH works across global commodity supply chains, including cocoa, coffee, cotton, palm oil, soy and beef. In Brazil, it supports pasture restoration, technical assistance and financial mechanisms designed to accelerate lower-carbon livestock production.

IDH’s funding reflects the breadth of today’s sustainability economy. Alongside support from the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Switzerland’s State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO), strategic funding has come from Denmark’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (DANIDA), Norway’s Ministry of Environment (NORAD), the European Union, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Laudes Foundation, the Mastercard Foundation, the IKEA Foundation and the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO).

This illustrates a broader change in environmental governance. Policy is no longer shaped solely by governments and regulators. It increasingly emerges through partnerships in which public institutions, philanthropy, financial organisations and commercial interests work together to influence environmental outcomes.

One of the clearest examples is IDH‘s Cria Fund. Developed with investment manager Violet, part of the VERT Group, the fund aims to expand access to finance for small and medium-sized cattle producers across the Brazilian Amazon. It combines rural credit with digital technical assistance and market access, bringing together land, data and capital.

By 2030, the fund aims to mobilise US$50 million, support 1,000 producers and cover 150,000 hectares under practices classified as sustainable. An initial US$10 million investment is intended to reach 250 farmers managing approximately 12,000 hectares.

For many producers, access to affordable finance remains a genuine barrier. Restoring pasture, purchasing equipment and adopting new production systems all require capital that conventional rural credit often fails to provide.

The Cria Fund also illustrates a broader shift. Environmental performance is becoming inseparable from participation in financial systems. Lending decisions increasingly depend on production data, geospatial monitoring and digital technical assistance. Access to capital is linked not only to farming practices but also to the ability to generate and verify environmental information.

For producers, this could improve access to premium markets while rewarding better environmental performance. It also raises important questions. Who owns the data generated through these programmes? How might that information influence future lending decisions? Who determines which production systems qualify as regenerative? And what happens to producers who cannot afford the required technology or whose land documentation remains unresolved?

These are not arguments against environmental data or rural credit. Rather, they show how financial inclusion can create new forms of dependence alongside new opportunities.

The choice of Violet as the fund’s investment partner highlights another significant trend. Companies specialising in structured finance and capital markets are becoming central players in environmental policy. Issues once addressed primarily through agricultural extension services and public regulation are increasingly managed through blended finance, private investment and financial products designed to attract institutional capital.

That evolution was evident during London Climate Action Week 2026, where IDH, CPI, representatives of the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO), investors and financial institutions focused less on forests themselves than on the financial mechanisms needed to make regenerative livestock commercially viable.

The same logic extends beyond cattle. Launched during the G20 Summit in 2024, the Brazil Restoration and Bioeconomy Finance Coalition (BRBFC) brings together public banks, private financial institutions, conservation organisations and international development agencies with the goal of mobilising at least US$10 billion for restoration and bioeconomy projects by 2030.

Its membership includes Banco do Brasil, BNDES, BTG Pactual, Conservation International, IDB Invest, Instituto Arapyaú, Instituto Clima e Sociedade, Mombak, The Nature Conservancy (TNC), re.green, WWF Brasil, the World Bank Group, the World Economic Forum, among others.

By July 2025, coalition members reported commitments of US$2.6 billion. They also aim to restore or protect five million hectares while directing US$500 million towards projects involving Indigenous peoples and local communities.

The ambition is to replace the frontier economy with one that generates value through restoration rather than deforestation. Forests become investable assets rather than obstacles to economic growth.

That vision holds genuine promise. Long-term restoration requires long-term capital, and Indigenous organisations and community groups have often struggled to access conventional finance.

But restoration and the bioeconomy remain broad concepts. They may support the recovery of native ecosystems, but they can also include commercial forestry, carbon markets and agricultural systems with very different ecological and social outcomes.

Although BRBFC is not a livestock programme, it operates within a landscape dominated by cattle. Decisions about restoring, intensifying or repurposing pasture inevitably shape the future of Brazil’s largest agricultural sector.

Taken together, these initiatives point to something larger than individual projects. Environmental governance is becoming more integrated with global finance. Forests, biodiversity, pasture and ecosystem services are being translated into assets that can be measured, valued and incorporated into investment strategies.

Across most of the programmes examined, the future being proposed does not involve producing less beef. Instead, it’s about producing beef more efficiently, monitoring it more closely and connecting it to new flows of capital.

In this vision, sustainability does not replace growth. It becomes the mechanism through which growth is expected to continue.

Can traceability deliver?

If one idea has become central to the promise of sustainable cattle production, it’s traceability. Policy papers, corporate sustainability reports and investment strategies present it as the solution to one of the livestock industry’s oldest problems: knowing where an animal has spent its life.

In theory, every animal would be identified from birth, every movement between farms recorded, and every property checked against satellite imagery, environmental embargoes, Indigenous territories and labour violations. Regulators, investors and consumers could then verify whether beef sold in São Paulo, Brussels or Shanghai came from a lawful and deforestation-free supply chain.

Without reliable traceability, however, claims of low-carbon or deforestation-free beef remain difficult to verify. Brazil has made significant progress in monitoring livestock production, yet the systems on which traceability depends remain fragmented, unevenly implemented and, in some cases, vulnerable to manipulation.

Three mechanisms form the current framework: the Rural Environmental Registry (CAR), the Animal Transit Guide (GTA) and agreements between federal prosecutors and slaughterhouses known as the Meat Industry Conduct Adjustment Agreement (Meat TAC). Together they mark an important advance in transparency, but they also expose the weaknesses that continue to limit effective oversight.

Created under Brazil’s Forest Code, CAR is a digital register in which landholders declare property boundaries, areas of native vegetation, legal reserves and agricultural land. Those declarations can be compared with satellite imagery, protected areas and environmental embargoes, making CAR an essential tool for environmental governance. Its main weakness is that the information is initially self-declared and becomes reliable only after verification by state environmental authorities. That process has progressed slowly, leaving a backlog with millions of registrations awaiting validation.

The consequences extend well beyond environmental regulation. Banks consult CAR before approving rural credit, meat companies use it to screen suppliers and investors rely on it to assess environmental risk. If the underlying information is incomplete or inaccurate, every decision built upon it becomes less reliable.

Research by the Centre for Climate Crime Analysis, reported by Repórter Brasil, highlights the problem. Between 2019 and 2024, 14,223 properties in the Legal Amazon altered their CAR registrations in ways that removed environmentally restricted areas. Across those changes, around 4.9 million hectares disappeared from declared property boundaries. Such alterations do not in themselves prove wrongdoing, but the scale of the changes, and the removal, in some cases, of environmental embargoes and overlaps with Indigenous territories, raises serious concerns about the integrity of the system.

Tracking land is only part of the challenge. Reconstructing the life of an individual animal is more complex because Brazil’s beef industry operates across multiple farms. One property may breed calves; another raises them and a third prepare them for slaughter. The Animal Transit Guide records those movements, but it was designed primarily to control livestock disease rather than reconstruct an animal’s environmental history.

That distinction has important consequences. Slaughterhouses have traditionally monitored only their direct suppliers, the farms selling animals immediately before slaughter, while earlier stages of the production chain often remain outside the system. An animal may therefore spend much of its life on illegally cleared land before being transferred to a compliant property shortly before slaughter. The final transaction appears lawful even though much of the animal’s environmental history remains hidden.

The practice, commonly described as cattle laundering, doesn’t necessarily rely on forged documents. Instead, it exploits the gaps between systems that record different stages of the supply chain without communicating effectively with one another. The farm supplying the slaughterhouse may satisfy environmental checks while properties where the animal previously lived remain effectively invisible.

Electronic identification, integrated databases, satellite monitoring and automated risk analysis could help close part of that gap by making it far more difficult to erase an animal’s history. These technologies represent genuine advances over the fragmented systems currently in place, but they cannot substitute for effective governance. Electronic tags cannot resolve fraudulent land claims, satellite imagery cannot enforce environmental law, and digital platforms cannot verify inaccurate property declarations or compensate for weak institutions and inadequate enforcement.

Ultimately, traceability is less a technological challenge than a question of governance. Its credibility depends on reliable public registries, independent verification, transparent information, effective regulators and meaningful consequences for those who breach environmental law.

Brazil’s monitoring systems are becoming increasingly sophisticated, but sophistication shouldn’t be mistaken for certainty. Until cattle can be tracked reliably from birth to slaughter, and every stage of the supply chain is subject to effective oversight, claims that beef is deforestation-free will remain only as strong as the weakest link in the chain.

Who defines sustainable cattle?

That question runs through every stage of the debate.

The term “sustainable” cattle appear throughout government strategies, investment prospectuses and corporate reports. Beef is described as “low carbon”, ranching becomes “regenerative”, and supply chains are labelled “nature positive”. The language suggests a settled conclusion, but the meaning of sustainability remains contested.

There is no single scientific definition that determines whether industrial cattle production in the Amazon and Cerrado can be considered sustainable. A farm may satisfy one standard because it hasn’t cleared forest recently while failing another because its animals originated from unmonitored suppliers. It may reduce emissions per kilogram of beef while increasing overall production and it may restore one area while its supply chain expands into another.

Much of the argument for “low carbon” livestock rests on the distinction between emissions intensity and absolute emissions. Better pasture management, improved nutrition, selective breeding and earlier slaughter can reduce greenhouse-gas emissions per kilogram of beef by shortening the time cattle spend emitting methane. These gains are meaningful, but the atmosphere responds to total emissions rather than production efficiency.

If emissions per kilogram fall while herd sizes remain stable or decline, overall emissions can decrease. If productivity improves while cattle numbers and beef production continue to grow, total emissions may remain unchanged or even increase. For a country with the world’s largest commercial cattle herd, that distinction is fundamental.

Methane makes the issue particularly significant. Enteric fermentation remains the largest source of agricultural methane worldwide. Although methane persists in the atmosphere for a shorter period than carbon dioxide, its warming effect is especially powerful during the decades immediately after it is released. Reducing methane emissions can therefore slow near-term warming, yet doing so remains politically challenging because cattle are central to one of Brazil’s most important export industries.

The debate over methane accounting illustrates how contested these questions have become. Some researchers and industry groups support alternative metrics, including Global Warming Potential Star (GWP*), arguing that conventional accounting overstates the long-term warming effect of stable livestock herds by treating methane like long-lived greenhouse gases. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), however, continues to advise against using GWP* for national emissions accounting because it does not fully capture the warming contribution of each methane emission. The debate is technical, but its implications are political because they influence how livestock emissions are interpreted and, ultimately, how sustainability itself is measured.

Technology occupies a similarly prominent place in the reinvention of cattle. Satellite systems detect deforestation, electronic tags follow animal movements, artificial intelligence analyses supply-chain risks and digital platforms integrate environmental, financial and production data. Together, these tools have transformed the ability to monitor livestock production across a country the size of Brazil, providing information that would have been unimaginable only a generation ago.

Technology, however, cannot resolve the political questions at the heart of the debate. Satellite imagery can reveal where forests have been cleared, but it cannot prosecute those responsible. Digital registries can identify overlaps with Indigenous territories, but they cannot guarantee that authorities will intervene. Financial platforms can measure compliance with selected indicators, but they cannot determine whether continued expansion of cattle production is compatible with ecological limits.

A broader pattern emerges. Political and social challenges are repeatedly reframed as technical ones, illegal occupation becomes a problem of data quality, weak law enforcement becomes a question of monitoring, and ecological limits become issues of efficiency and optimisation. Better technology undoubtedly improves oversight, but it cannot replace effective governance.

The same pattern helps explain why finance has become so closely intertwined with environmental policy. Before sustainability can be rewarded by investors, it must first be translated into measurable data. Once quantified, environmental performance can be verified, priced and incorporated into financial decisions. In that process, sustainability becomes not only an ecological objective but also a financial category.

None of this diminishes the value of restoring degraded pasture, improving traceability or supporting producers who want to adopt better practices. Nor does it suggest that the organisations discussed here share identical motivations. Public development banks, environmental organisations, producers and investment funds often participate in the same initiatives for very different reasons.

The evidence does suggest, however, that the authority to define sustainability is gradually shifting. Ecologists may judge cattle production by its impact on forests, biodiversity and climate. Indigenous peoples may judge it by whether their territories, cultures and rights remain intact. Farmers may judge it by whether they can maintain viable livelihoods without losing control of their land or becoming dependent on new financial and technological systems. Investors, by contrast, tend to prioritise measurable indicators, standardised reporting and quantifiable risk.

The question is not whether one perspective is inherently more legitimate than another. It’s who ultimately has the authority to decide which definition shapes policy.

That matters because language guides regulation, regulation directs investment and investment reshapes landscapes. Success cannot be measured simply by the number of cattle fitted with electronic tags, hectares restored or billions of dollars committed to green finance.

The more meaningful test is whether forests remain standing, methane emissions fall in absolute terms, Indigenous peoples retain control of their territories and rural prosperity no longer depends on pushing the agricultural frontier further into natural ecosystems.

Whether the reinvention of cattle proves to be a genuine environmental transition or a more sophisticated justification for business as usual will ultimately be judged not by the language of sustainability, but by those outcomes.

Featured image: a cow with a traceability ear tag is pictured in a ranch in Sao Joao do Araguaia, Para state, Brazil, 12 September 2025. Credit: Zhou Yongsui/Xinhua/Alamy Live News

Monica Piccinini

07 April 2026

A complex network of NGOs, corporations, development banks and philanthropic capital is reshaping the Amazon’s “bioeconomy”. But as money flows into the region, new questions are emerging about power, influence and who really determines the rainforest’s future.

Over the past twenty years, the language used to describe the Amazon rainforest has gradually shifted. Once seen mainly as a vulnerable ecosystem in need of protection from deforestation and exploitation, it’s now increasingly described in economic terms as a system with measurable value and growing importance in financial and policy discussions.

Across governments, financial institutions and environmental organisations, a new language has taken hold. The “bioeconomy” frames biodiversity, ecosystems services and traditional knowledge not just things to preserve, but as resources that can generate income while keeping the forest standing.

Major institutions such as the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), the World Resources Institute (WRI) and global climate funds have been central in promoting this idea, developing frameworks that connect conservation with market-based approaches.

Some of WRI’s donors include Cargill, the Bezos Earth Fund, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, CLUA, Google, the Good Energies Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Meta, Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors, the Skoll Foundation, the Oak Foundation, the World Bank, the US Department of State, Walmart, and many others.

At first glance, the concept is simple and appealing: a living forest can be worth more than a cleared one, if its ecological value is properly recognised and priced.

But this shift comes with consequences. When a forest becomes an economic system, it’s no longer guided by environmental protection or social priorities. Instead, it becomes shaped by financial expectations, by metrics, performance targets and the need to generate returns.

In this context, conservation is no longer just about protection. It becomes tied to ideas of efficiency, productivity and scale.

The Amazon, in other words, isn’t just being preserved, it’s being reorganised.

The hidden architecture

Much of this transformation happens out of sight. Long before projects reach specific territories or communities, their foundations are laid elsewhere, through financial planning, institutional partnerships and investment strategies.

What’s emerging isn’t just funding for conservation, but a system designed to make nature investable.

This system depends on partnerships between public institutions, development banks and private investors. Together, they’re building financial structures that transform conservation into something that can be financed at scale.

Organisations such as the International Finance Corporation, IFC (a member of the World Bank Group), the Brazilian development bank, BNDES, and the German state-owned development bank, KfW, are central to building these frameworks, structuring instruments that allow capital to move into regions historically considered too risky for investment.

But funding doesn’t come without conditions. Projects must be measurable, scalable and aligned with investor expectations.

This creates a subtle filtering effect. Initiatives rooted in local traditions and non-market ways of managing land aren’t explicitly excluded, but they often struggle to fit these frameworks and so often remain on the margins.

Blended finance: the engine of the bioeconomy

At the heart of this system is “blended finance”, a model that combines public money, philanthropic funding and private investment to reduce risk and attract large-scale capital.

The IDB, the IFC, and funds like the Global Environmental Facility (GEF) are instrumental in designing these mechanisms, often working in coordination with national actors like BNDES. The intention is to mobilise large volumes of capital for conservation by making projects financially viable for private investors.

In practice, this model redistributes financial risk in a highly structured way. Public institutions and philanthropic actors, such as the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation and alliances such as the Climate and Land Use Alliance, typically absorb early losses or provide guarantees, allowing private investors to participate with more predictable returns.

The mechanism is effective in one sense: it brings in levels of funding that conservation has historically struggled to achieve.

But it also raises a deeper question: if risk is shared, who benefits from the rewards?

The influence of blended finance extends beyond funding, it shapes what projects look like. Because investors require predictability, initiatives are often designed around measurable outputs, such as carbon credits, certified commodities, biodiversity-linked revenues.

This can drive innovation, but it can also limit what’s possible. Projects focused on long-term ecological health, cultural continuity or non-commercial forms of stewardship may find it hard to attract support.

Over time, this has a cumulative effect. The system doesn’t just fund the bioeconomy, it defines it. It determines what’s visible, what grows and what’s left behind.

Risk, too, takes on new forms. It appears when sustainability narratives move faster than reality on the ground, or when small successes are amplified despite ongoing environmental pressures.

Concerns about greenwashing don’t always come from outright false claims. Often, they emerge from the structure itself, from a system where financial returns and reputation are closely linked.

In this process, the Amazon isn’t only being protected, it’s being drawn into financial systems that reshape how nature is valued, and how success is measured.

Intermediaries

Within Brazil, certain organisations act as key intermediaries, such as the Brazilian Biodiversity Fund (FUNBIO), sitting at the centre of these financial flows.

Active since 1996, FUNBIO was established with the support from GEF and multilateral partners. It operates as a financial hub, collecting funds from governments, corporations and philanthropies, and redistributing them to projects across the Amazon and Brazil.

This role gives these institutions significant influence. They don’t just fund initiatives, they help determine which ones succeed, which models are expanded and which approaches are prioritised.

While this concentration can improve efficiency, it also concentrates decision-making power within a relatively small network.

A clear example is the Suruí Forest Carbon Project, launched in 2009 and managed in part by FUNBIO in partnership with the Paiter-Suruí Indigenous people. The project was widely seen as a pioneering effort to link conservation with carbon markets, but it also revealed some of the tensions behind these models.

Over time, some community leaders said payments from carbon credits were slow to arrive and that key decisions were being made by a small group rather than the wider community. At the same time, illegal logging and mining continued in the territory, weakening the project’s impact. For some, this raised difficult questions about who really benefits from these initiatives, and whether the system is as transparent or fair as it appears.

Financial disclosures illustrate the breadth of this network. FUNBIO linked programmes have involved funding and partnerships with entities including BNDES, KfW, IDB, the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, WWF, the Good Energies Foundation, CLUA, Bezos Earth, Petrobras, Eneva, ExxonMobil, Chevron, Vale, Anglo American, Natura, JBS, Heineken and others, spanning public, private and philanthropic domains.

In practice, a single conservation project may involve funding from development banks, oil, mining and agribusiness sectors, philanthropic donors and environmental NGOs all at once. These layered partnerships can mobilise large amounts of money, but they also create complex webs of dependency.

Philanthropy

Philanthropic foundations have become indispensable to this system, often stepping in where others won’t or can’t.

Organisations such as the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, the Good Energies Foundation (Porticus) and the Climate and Land Use Alliance (CLUA) provide early-stage funding that allows projects to develop and become attractive to large investors. Without this initial support, many initiatives wouldn’t get off the ground.

Take the ARPA programme as an example. Created in 2002 and managed by FUNBIO, this alliance has been working to conserve and sustainably manage 60 million hectares of land, an area roughly twice the size of Germany. Its funding comes from a mix of major players, including the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, WWF, the German government (through KfW), GEF, Anglo American, the Amazon Fund, IDB, the World Bank, Margaret A. Cargill and BNDES. The project itself is managed and delivered by FUNBIO.

In 2024 alone, the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation injected over $24 million into projects in Brazil, mainly in the Amazon region.

But philanthropy isn’t neutral. By choosing which initiatives to fund, these organisations influence the direction of the bioeconomy itself.

Projects that promise scale and align with market-driven approaches are more likely to receive backing. Meanwhile, alternatives, especially those focused on land rights or non-market solutions, may struggle to compete.

The Soros Economic Development Fund, backed by George Soros’s Open Society network, has identified Brazil as a key destination for impact investment, particularly in areas such as regenerative agriculture, bio-inputs and nature-based solutions. Its approach emphasises scaling commercially viable models that link environmental preservation with financial returns, reinforcing the broader trend of aligning conservation with market-driven frameworks.

This raises an important question: who’s really shaping the future of the Amazon? Local communities, national governments, or global networks of funders?

Corporate participation

Corporations are now deeply involved in the bioeconomy.

Companies from the oil, mining and agribusiness sectors contribute to environmental funds and participate in conservation initiatives, often as part of broader sustainability strategies.

These efforts can support restoration and local development. At the same time, they operate within a reputational economy, where visible environmental engagement can improve public image and investor confidence.

This creates a clear tension. The same industries historically linked to environmental harm are now helping to finance its repair.

Commercialisation

The expansion of biodiversity-based businesses offers one of the clearest illustrations of how the bioeconomy functions in practice.

Corporations like the Brazilian cosmetics company Natura, are building global markets around products derived from the forest, often in partnership with local communities.

Natura’s involvement in initiatives such as the Amazônia Viva programme, developed alongside the IFC and FUNBIO, illustrates how commercial supply chains can be integrated with conservation finance.

On one level, Natura’s model demonstrates that forest-based economies can generate income without deforestation. On another, it reveals the complexities of scaling such systems.

As demand increases, supply chains must expand and standardise. This can place pressure on local practices, reshaping them to fit global market expectations.

The balance between opportunity and constraint is often fragile.

Sustainable beef narratives

The involvement of major meat producers adds another layer of complexity.

JBS, the world’s largest meat producer, through the JBS Fund for The Amazon, highlights another dimension of the bioeconomy: participation by sectors historically linked to deforestation, environmental degradation and human rights violations. The fund supports conservation and sustainable development projects, positioning the company as part of the solution of environmental challenges.

However, a substantial body of investigative reporting and watchdog analysis has raised ongoing concerns about JBS’s supply chains transparency and environmental impact.

This highlights a broader contradiction: companies can support sustainability initiatives while continuing practices that contribute to social and environmental damage.

Mining capital

A similar pattern can be seen in the mining sector, particularly in the case of Brazil’s mining giant Vale. The company has invested in biodiversity programmes, restoration projects and bioeconomy partnerships, positioning themselves within the language of environmental responsibility.

But Vale’s environmental track record includes one of the most devastating industrial disasters in Brazil’s history. The Mariana dam disaster in 2015, operated by a joint venture between Vale and BHP, releasing millions of cubic metres of toxic waste, causing widespread destruction and triggering legal claims from hundreds of thousands of affected people.

Against this backdrop, Vale’s involvement in environmental and bioeconomy initiatives takes on added significance. Through entities such as Fundo Vale, the company co-finances conservation and development projects alongside public institutions and NGOs, embedding itself within sustainability frameworks that emphasise restoration and resilience.

These initiatives are often presented as part of a transition towards more sustainable practices. At the same time, they exist alongside ongoing extraction activities that carry significant social and environmental impact.

This reflects a wider trend: sustainability initiatives often accompany, rather than replace, extractive industries.

Institutional web and accelerators

Organisations such as the WWF, IDESAM, Conexsus, and Sitawi, occupy a pivotal position connecting finance and implementation on the ground.

They design projects, manage funding and work directly with communities. This gives them an important bridging role but also places them in a delicate position.

Many depend on funding from the same actors they are expected to hold accountable.

New platforms such as Amaz and networks linked to Instituto Arapyaú aim to scale Amazon-based businesses by connecting them with investors, mentors and markets. These accelerators are often presented as vehicles for empowerment, enabling local entrepreneurs to access opportunities previously out of reach.

These initiatives can expand opportunity, but they also draw local enterprises into global systems, where success is defined by growth and financial return. Participation increasingly comes with conditions.

The Amazon Fund

The Amazon Fund represents one of the largest pools of international funding for forest conservation.

Managed by BNDES, it has received billions in contributions, primarily from the Norwegian government. Brazil’s state-owned energy giant, Petrobras, is also a donor. The fund’s structure channels international climate finance into national programmes, often working through intermediaries such as FUNBIO.

This multi-layered system enables significant investment, but they also introduce layers of complexity. Decision-making is shared across multiple actors, making accountability harder to trace.

It’s important to note that Aloisio Mercadante serves as both president of the Amazon Fund and BNDES.

Who benefits?

At the centre of the bioeconomy are Indigenous peoples and local communities.

Their knowledge, practices and long-standing relationship with the land help shape many projects now drawing global attention, and investment. But the share of financial benefits reaching them often remains limited. In many cases, the responsibility for delivering results rests largely on their shoulders, without matching share in the rewards.

This imbalance lies at the centre of the bioeconomy debate. Is the bioeconomy redistributing value or reinforcing existing inequalities?

There is no single answer. Outcomes vary from one project to another, shaped by local conditions and the way each initiative is designed. But the question itself remains unavoidable, and increasingly urgent.

The Amazon bioeconomy isn’t a simple fix. It’s a complex and evolving system shaped by environmental goals, financial interests, political priorities and social realities.

It offers the possibility of directing investment towards conservation and creating new economic pathways that keep the forest standing.

But it also risks embedding nature more deeply into financial systems that have long been driven by extraction.

The tension remains unresolved.

The defining question remains: will the bioeconomy ultimately serve the forest and the people who depend on it, or the systems that finance it?

Featured photo: Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva gives a thumbs up after receiving a traditional Indigenous headdress from Cacique Raoni Metuktire, chief of the Kayapo people, during a ceremony in Brasilia, Brazil, April 2023. (AP Photo/Eraldo Peres/Alamy).

Monica Piccinini

25 February 2026

As artificial intelligence and cloud platforms move into the fields, a new alliance between Big Tech and agribusiness is reshaping who controls food, and who bears the risks.

IPES-Food, the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems, has released Head in the Cloud, a report that challenges one of the most compelling narratives in contemporary agriculture: that digitalisation offers a straightforward solution to hunger, climate instability and rural decline.

The report’s findings are worrying. The rapid roll-out of artificial intelligence, cloud computing and precision farming platforms isn’t focused on farmers’ priorities. Instead, agricultural technology is increasing corporate control over food production, deepening farmer dependency and accelerating environmental harm.

A new alliance

Across multiple regions, major technology companies, including Amazon, Microsoft, Google and Alibaba, have joined forces with agribusiness giants in seeds, agrochemicals and farm machinery. The result is an increasingly integrated digital infrastructure that reaches into every layer of industrial farming.

Satellites scan the fields, remote sensors measure soil moisture and nutrient levels, and automated tractors collect data as they move. This information is sent to cloud-based platforms where proprietary algorithms produce recommendations, such as which seed variety to plant, when to spray crops, and how much fertiliser to use. This data is used to refine products, influence markets and generate profit.

Decisions about what qualifies as “innovation” and which technologies get government support are often political. These decisions influence who holds power in the food system.

Lim Li Ching, co-chair of IPES-Food, describes this shift in stark terms. She said:

We are witnessing a quiet takeover of farming by Big Tech. But farming by algorithm is not the future farmers asked for.

Under the banner of innovation, tech giants are consolidating control over agriculture and biological heritage, sidelining the farmers who already grow our food in sustainable and resilient ways.

We can choose a different path. We must reimagine and govern innovation differently. It’s time to reclaim innovation for people and the planet.

Inequality

Digital farming systems are expensive. Precision technologies require specialised machinery, subscription-based software, reliable high-speed internet, technical training and ongoing technical support contracts. For large industrial operations, these expenses may be absorbed as capital investment, but for small and medium-scale farmers, this means new loans and debt.

The report shows how these technologies create dependency, described as technology lock-in. Once a farmer invests in a specific machinery or digital system, switching becomes complex and costly.

Machinery, seeds and chemical inputs are often designed to work together within proprietary platforms. Data may be stored in non-transferable formats, tying farmers to a single provider and pushing for continual upgrades to remain commercially competitive.

Pat Mooney, an IPES-Food expert, warned that this concentration of power comes at a dangerous moment. He said:

The world’s food security is more uncertain than it has been in decades, amid escalating global crises.

Yet Big Tech and Big Ag are jointly advancing proprietary AI, data platforms, and biotechnologies that narrow diversity when we need more of it, lengthen supply chains that should be shortened, and concentrate information that ought to be shared among farmers.

But our study shows that bottom-up, ecosystem-grounded, farmer-led innovations are already responding to today’s food crises – despite policy barriers and limited public investment.

Instead of changing the root problems of industrial farming, digital platforms often make them stronger. They increase the use of chemicals in large monoculture farms rather than reducing them. And instead of supporting local food systems, they make global supply chains even bigger.

It’s like being stuck on a treadmill. Farmers may see short-term improvements in efficiency or productivity, but prices soon fall and they feel pressure to invest in new technology again. Those who can’t keep up, often small farmers, are forced out, leading to fewer farms and the decline of rural communities.

Rather than making farming more equal, digital agriculture could make the gap even bigger between large industrial farms and smaller, community-based producers.

Control

If land was the defining source of past agricultural empires, data is fast becoming the new frontier.

Farmers don’t own the data generated on their own land, and in many cases, they can’t access the algorithms that transform it into advice. They have limited oversight over how their data is used.

Nettie Wiebe, a farmer and IPES-Food expert, reflects on what that means in practice. He said:

We’re being sold a vision of farming run by AI and robots. But farming is built on judgement developed over years in the field. When farmers lose control over our data and decisions, we lose control over our farms. That’s a dangerous path.

Real innovation doesn’t come from Silicon Valley – it comes from farmers, farmworkers, and Indigenous Peoples working with the land and with each other.

Around the world, farmers are developing tools, restoring soil fertility, breeding crops for a changing climate, and managing pests ecologically. That’s real innovation. It builds resilience without locking us into debt or dependency.

Digital tools focus more on numbers and data than on lived experience. Indigenous peoples and local communities, whose farming knowledge has protected biodiversity for centuries, are often left out of these systems.

The hidden footprint

Digital agriculture is often presented as environmentally progressive, but the infrastructure behind it is material and energy intensive.

Data centres use huge amounts of electricity and water. Servers and devices depend on minerals extracted from already stressed landscapes. Precision technologies might slightly reduce chemical use, but they usually reinforce farming methods that harm soil and biodiversity over time.

The “cloud” isn’t invisible, it leaves a real environmental footprint.

Meanwhile, farmer-led alternatives, participatory breeding, agroecology, and community seed-saving, get little support. These methods build resilience through diversity, shared knowledge and natural ecosystem management, rather than relying on expensive, proprietary technology.

Yiching Song, IPES-Food expert, highlights their significance. She said:

Our research shows that farmer-led seed systems and participatory breeding are among the most effective responses to climate change and biodiversity loss.

These innovations integrate scientific and farmers’ knowledge, strengthening both ecosystems and livelihoods. If we are serious about climate action, policy and investment must recognise and actively support these systems, not sideline them.

Political

The debate over digital farming is ultimately about governance and power.

Who decides which technologies are developed and scaled? Who owns the data? Who takes the risks and who benefits?

In a time of multiple crises, including climate breakdown, biodiversity collapse, and geopolitical instability, food security is already fragile. Concentrating control over seeds, data and decision-making in a handful of corporations just adds another layer of vulnerability.

IPES-Food is asking governments and funders to create stronger rules so that new ideas and technologies are fair and responsible. They also want more funding to go to local, community-led projects that focus on sustainability. In addition, they are calling for limits on the power of large technology and agriculture companies, and for a shift in how people think and talk about innovation.

As the Head in the Cloud report points out, the question isn’t whether farming should innovate, it’s whether innovation will serve big companies or the people and ecosystems that food systems rely on.

Featured image: IPES-Food.

Monica Piccinini

19 February 2026

Brazil’s forests do more than store carbon, they regulate the water systems that sustain rivers, agriculture and cities across South America. As deforestation and degradation accelerates, scientists warn the country is entering a hidden water crisis with global consequences.

At sunrise along the Rio Negro, fishermen often speak about water as if it were alive. They read the river’s moods, measure time by its levels and mark the seasons through its currents. For generations, waterways across the Amazon have shaped daily life. Now, those familiar rhythms are becoming harder to read, and trust.

Brazil is often described as a nation shaped by water. It holds roughly 12 per cent of the world’s freshwater reserves, while the Amazon basin forms the largest freshwater system on Earth. The Cerrado, the country’s vast tropical savanna, feeds rivers that supply cities and agriculture across South America.

On paper, Brazil appears water secure. However, scientists warn that this security depends heavily on ecosystems that are gradually losing their ability to regulate rainfall and river flows.

Augusto Getirana, research scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Centre in the Hydrological Sciences Laboratory, explains how Brazil’s water systems influence global food supply:

Brazil is the world’s largest producer of coffee, soybeans, and beef, among other water-dependent commodities.

A water crisis in Brazil that results in a disruption in domestic food production quickly becomes a global crisis. We saw that in 2021, when prices of these commodities increased substantially worldwide.

Luciana Gatti, senior researcher at Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research (INPE), argues that deforestation and degradation in the Amazon driven by Brazil’s export-driven agricultural expansion is directly tied to the water crisis:

There’s been an enormous increase in exports of wood, beef, soy, corn, and minerals. This is a project based on destroying nature to sell primary commodities.

Water systems are harmed by these development models, with severe consequences for ecosystems and the Brazilian population, while concentrating wealth and power among large landowners.

A water network

Brazil’s water system depends on a delicate partnership between the Amazon rainforest and the Cerrado. Together, they form a vast hydrological network that moves moisture through the atmosphere, stores groundwater and stabilises river basins across much of South America.

Water insecurity in Brazil isn’t just about declining rainfall. Researchers describe it  as the weakening of natural climate regulation processes, a gradual shift with potentially far-reaching consequences.

Research from the University of São Paulo estimates that the Amazon deforestation accounts for roughly 74.5 per cent of rainfall reduction and 16.5 per cent temperature increase during the dry season.

The Amazon plays a central role in South America’s water cycle. Trees draw moisture from the soil and release it into the atmosphere, generating currents of humid air often described as “flying rivers”.

These invisible air currents carry rainfall far beyond the forest, sustaining agricultural regions, reservoirs, and major urban centres. For example, a large percentage of rainfall supplying São Paulo’s Cantareira water system depends on moisture originating in the Amazon.

For many Brazilians, these atmospheric water currents are invisible, but their effects shape when crops grow, reservoirs refill and whether rivers remain navigable.

According to Brazil’s National Water and Basic Sanitation Agency (ANA), on 30 January, the Cantareira system was reported to be operating at 22 per cent.

As forests shrink, scientists warn that this moisture recycling process weakens. Reduced tree cover means less moisture in the air, rainfall becomes more erratic, and rivers flows grow increasingly unstable. Some regions face prolonged drought, while others experience intense rainfall over shorter periods.

Researchers say these extremes aren’t isolated anomalies but signs of mounting ecological stress. Drier soil reduces groundwater recharge, while rivers respond more sharply to both drought and heavy rainfall.

Large-scale climate events, such as El Niño, La Niña, and warm conditions in the North Tropical Atlantic (NTA) only add to the strain, triggering floods or droughts that cascade through river systems and aquifers.

Along the Amazon’s waterways, communities are already feeling the consequences. Fish stocks are declining, drinking water is less unreliable, and river transport routes are disrupted during dry seasons, isolating villages and restricting access to food and essential supplies.

Brazil’s overlooked water source

While the Amazon often dominates headlines, scientists emphasise that the Cerrado plays an equally critical role in maintaining Brazil’s water balance. Covering roughly a quarter of the country, the biome feeds major river systems, including the São Francisco, Paraná and Tocantins.

Gatti stresses that the Cerrado biome is fundamental in sustaining Brazil’s water systems and river basins:

The Cerrado contains around 80 per cent of Brazil’s hydrographic basins. It functions like an upside-down forest, concentrated in deep root systems. These roots allow rainfall to infiltrate gradually and recharge groundwater reserves.

When deforestation occurs, the natural buffering system disappears. Rainwater is no longer absorbed properly. The soil becomes exposed and water runs off instead of penetrating the ground.

For generations, rural and Indigenous communities have depended on these groundwater-fed streams for farming, fishing and cultural practices tied to seasonal water cycles.

But the Cerrado is disappearing fast. Soy cultivation, cattle ranching, and large-scale monoculture have replaced vast areas of native vegetation. Shallow-rooted crops capture less water, reduce groundwater recharge and accelerate soil erosion. Streams that once supported rural farming communities are shrinking or disappearing altogether.  

Expanding industrial pressure

Brazil’s agricultural sector has become a pillar of economic growth, but it has also intensified pressure on water resources.

Demand for irrigation is increasing, while fertilisers and pesticides frequently run off into river systems polluting the water, soil and wildlife. Globally, agriculture accounts for 70 per cent of freshwater use, a pattern reflected in Brazil’s agribusiness expansion.

Gatti emphasises the role of international commodity demand in sustaining deforestation:

It’s hypocritical to blame Brazil alone for failing to combat deforestation while countries such as the United States, those in Europe, China, the UK, and others continue to buy products linked to deforestation.

If they stopped buying timber, meat, soy, corn and minerals produced in deforested areas, deforestation could end very quickly.

Fires introduce another layer of risk. Burned landscapes absorb and release water unevenly, increasing flood risk during rainy periods and worsening drought conditions during dry months. Repeated fires are altering forest composition in parts of the Amazon, potentially weakening rainfall generation over time.

Gatti argues that fire emissions are among the main contributors to the crisis:

In 2024, the Amazon recorded its highest carbon emissions on record due largely to fires. Brazil’s ministry of science, technology and innovation (MCTI) treats emissions from Amazon fires as net zero in its official methodology. Yet fires represent the Amazon’s largest source of carbon emissions.

In 2024, fires burned across 3.3 million hectares of the Amazon, releasing roughly 791 million tons of CO₂, about what Germany emits in a year. For the first time, forest degradation from fire was overtaken deforestation as the Amazon’s top carbon culprit.

Mining operations further strain water systems. Rivers courses are sometimes diverted, forests cleared and waterways contaminated with chemicals, reducing the amount of safe freshwater available for drinking, fisheries, agriculture, transport and ecosystems.

Scientists warn that if deforestation and ecosystem degradation continue, river flows and rainfall patterns could become progressively less predictable, threatening agriculture and urban water supplies.

The United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health (UNU-INWEH) describes this emerging challenge as “water bankruptcy”, a situation in which freshwater is consumed faster than nature can replenish it.

Experts warn that unequal access to water could deepen social inequality, fuel migration and increase the risk of conflict in vulnerable regions.

Political

Despite mounting scientific evidence, water scarcity is still widely perceived as a distant or regional problem in a country historically defined by abundance.

At the same time, policy decisions are reshaping the rivers themselves. Signed by Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in August 2025, Decree 12,600/2025 added the Tapajós, and Tocantins rivers (state of Pará), as well as the Madeira river (state of Amazonas) to Brazil’s privatisation pipeline to expand shipping along the Northern Arc.

Hydrologists and riverside communities warn that dredging riverbeds and removing rock to keep these routes open for larger cargo vessels could disrupt sediment movement and seasonal flood patterns. In a basin already strained by intensifying droughts, these changes could further weaken water security for ecosystems and the people who depend on them.

Getirana highlights that Brazil’s emerging water crisis is rooted in longstanding political and cultural practices:

Many of Brazil’s political and economic decisions have been based on the idea that it’s a water-rich country. Poor political decisions that resulted in negative impacts on the environment and water availability are not party- or ideology-related.

It’s the culture in the country. It’s been happening for decades, maybe centuries, regardless who’s in power. Poor water management is rooted in Brazil’s culture.

A political change needs, first, a mindset shift in the Brazilian population. Maybe a way to change that mindset is by demonstrating how poor management is impacting their livelihoods and finances.

Gatti warns that in Brazil, scientific research is often overlooked in policy development:

Scientific evidence isn’t reaching decision-makers. Promises of zero deforestation by 2030 risk being too late because parts of the Amazon may already be approaching ecological tipping points.

Although Brazil has experienced political changes in leadership, structural land-use policies driving deforestation have remained largely unchanged.

Recovery

Despite growing concern, some scientists emphasise that recovery remains possible.

Gatti highlights that several measures could make a considerable difference to Brazil’s water security:

Zero deforestation across the entire country by 2027, not just in the Amazon, is essential to stabilise rainfall and water systems.

Reducing cattle herd size, establishing limits on large monoculture farming and requiring forest restoration within agricultural landscapes would help reduce environmental pressure and water instability.

Expanding agroforestry systems on a large scale could help restore ecological balance while maintaining agricultural productivity.

Getirana argues that reforming water governance should be the first step in restoring Brazil’s water stability:

I believe that reforming water governance would be the baseline for other measures, such as restoring degraded land and tackling climate mitigation. Additionally, policies that prevent water from being polluted could have almost immediate impacts.

Some researchers are examining whether recognition of rivers as living entities could provide stronger environmental protection. A project led by the University of Leeds is exploring how such legal frameworks might help prevent pollution, deforestation and industrial over-exploitation.

For communities along the Rio Negro and throughout Brazil’s interior, the crisis is already deeply personal. Rivers are less predictable, rainfall patterns are shifting and water quality is declining. Their daily experiences reflect a broader reality: Brazil’s water future depends on the survival of the ecosystems that sustain it.

Protecting Brazil’s forests may ultimately determine not only the country’s environmental future, but the stability of water systems that millions of people depend on every day.

Disclaimer: Augusto Getirana speaks in his personal capacity and not on behalf of NASA Goddard Space Flight Centre.

Featured image: Parintins, Brazil. September 2023. Boats stand at the edge of a river whose water level has dropped due to drought. The world’s largest rainforest area is suffering from the worst drought in over a century. Credit: Aguilar Abecassis/dpa/Alamy Live News

Monica Piccinini

1 February 2026

Often overlooked in global conservation debates, Brazil’s Cerrado is being rapidly transformed by industrial agriculture, with UK trade playing a direct role in the loss of water systems, biodiversity and climate stability.

As global demand for commodities grows, Brazil’s Cerrado is being lost at an alarming rate, with consequences that reach far beyond South America. This extending mix of grasslands, savannas, and forests plays a key role in South America’s water systems and climate, yet it’s one of the continent’s most threatened ecosystems.

The destruction of the Cerrado reaches the UK through the food we eat, turning a regional crisis into a shared responsibility with global consequences.

A scientific review in Nature Conservation finds that over half of the Cerrado’s native vegetation has vanished, mostly in the last five decades. That’s roughly 1,000,000 square kilometres, larger than France and Germany combined, now replaced by farmland, pastures, and expanding towns.

Often described as Brazil’s hydrological engine, the Cerrado feeds eight of the country’s twelve major river basins. Its continued degradation threatens water security far beyond its borders, with consequences felt across much of South America.

According to Cássio Cardoso Pereira, researcher at the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG) and the lead author of the review, the ecological damage extends far beyond habitat loss:

The most urgent consequence is the disruption of the Cerrado’s role as a continental water regulator. The loss of native vegetation reduces aquifer recharge, dries up rivers that supply important hydrographic basins in South America, and exacerbates droughts and extreme heatwaves.

At the same time, we are losing unique biodiversity and enormous underground carbon reserves, which makes this destruction a direct threat to both species and climate stability.

The Cerrado is the second largest Ecodomain in South America, after the Amazon, occupying 23% of Brazil’s surface.

The authors of the review use the term “Ecodomain” to refer to large ecological areas that include multiple ecosystems, biomes, and ecoregions. The term describes these regions as they existed in their original extent, regardless of their current state of conservation.

Soy and beef

The destruction of the Cerrado is not driven by Brazil alone, it’s closely tied to global demand for soy and beef, commodities that bind this landscape directly to the UK’s food system and climate footprint.

Industrial agriculture drives much of this loss. Since satellite monitoring began in 2001, over 326,000 square kilometres of the Cerrado have been cleared, sometimes faster than even the Amazon.

Soy plantations and cattle ranches now dominate large areas that once supported extraordinary biodiversity. These landscapes, mainly monocultures, depend on heavy machinery, fertilisers and agrochemicals, leaving little room for ecosystems to recover.

The review highlights the MATOPIBA region, covering the states of Maranhão, Tocantins, Piauí and Bahia, as a focal point of recent land-use change, where agricultural expansion continues to push deep into remaining native vegetation.

Deforestation is reshaping the Cerrado’s climate: the rainy season now arrives about a month later, overall rainfall has dropped, and daytime temperatures have climbed roughly by 1.5^oC.

As rain becomes less predictable, farming grows increasingly dependent on irrigation. This creates a dangerous feedback loop, accelerating water depletion and deepening ecological breakdown across the region.

Much of the Cerrado’s carbon lies underground, locked in roots that can reach over 15 metres deep. This “inverted forest” helps plants endure long dry seasons while quietly replenishing aquifers.

When native vegetation is cleared, that long-stored carbon is released. Landscapes that once absorbed emissions are transformed into sources of greenhouse gases, intensifying the climate pressures already bearing down on the region.

Ecological breakdown

The Cerrado plays a central role in Brazil’s water system. It gives rise to eight river basins and sits above three immense aquifers holding vast freshwater reserves. Rising demand from industrial farming, hydropower and expanding cities is placing these systems under relentless stress.

Large-scale water extraction, combined with widespread agrochemical use, is contaminating soils and waterways while draining underground reserves. Rivers are shrinking, ecosystems are destabilising and biodiversity is declining as water systems lose their resilience.

Hydropower development has accelerated the damage. Dams fragment rivers, disrupt natural flows and blocks fish migration routes that both wildlife and local communities rely on. Over time, these changes are fundamentally reshaping entire river systems.

The review also documents extensive fire-driven degradation that often goes uncounted in official deforestation figures. Natural fires in the Cerrado are rare, usually sparked by lightening, yet an estimated 99 per cent of fires in Brazil are caused by human activity linked to land clearing and agricultural expansion.

Between 1985 and 2022, around 40 per cent of the Cerrado burned at least once. Nearly two-thirds of that area burned repeatedly, killing fire-sensitive species and encouraging invasive grasses that trap landscapes in cycles of degradation.

The Ecodomain supports around 13,000 plant species, more than 3,200 vertebrates and tens of thousands of invertebrates. Roughly a third of its plant life is endemic, found nowhere else on Earth.

Yet only a small share of the Cerrado is strictly protected. Many threatened species, particularly plants and insects, remain poorly assessed and politically overlooked. Ecosystems with lower tree cover, such as grasslands, continue to be undervalued despite their immense ecological importance.

It’s not only a matter of protecting threatened species. Around 80 Indigenous peoples live on more than 200 recognised territories across the Cerrado, many safeguarding the region’s last stretches of intact vegetation.

For generations, these communities have cared for the land, guiding rivers, protecting wildlife, and keeping landscapes resilient. Many territories remain only partially recognised under the law, leaving both people and ecosystems exposed to the expanding pressures of agriculture and deforestation.

Rodolfo Salm, ecologist, activist, lecturer at the Federal University of Pará (UFPA), and one of the authors of the review, says today’s legal gaps are rooted in a long history of dispossession, now reinforced by new laws:

For much of the Cerrado’s history, Indigenous peoples were progressively expelled from their territories, first by cattle ranching, later by large-scale grain production. This process accelerated with the move of Brazil’s capital to Brasília and deepened under the military dictatorship of the 1960s and 70s.

Today, the recently approved Temporal Framework Law (Marco Temporal), which restricts the right to legal recognition of an Indigenous territory to those areas that were effectively occupied by Indigenous peoples at the time of the 1988 Constitution, combined with complex legal and bureaucratic barriers, has made the recognition of new Indigenous lands in the Cerrado almost impossible.

This is a severe blow to biodiversity, because Indigenous territories are among the most effective and reliable areas for ecosystem protection.

The UK’s stake in the Cerrado

Many people in the UK would be surprised to learn how closely their diets are tied to this distant landscape.

Britain imports millions of tonnes of soy each year, most of it used as animal feed. Around 90% goes to livestock, particularly poultry and pigs, linking the destruction of the Cerrado directly to the meat supply chain.

We’re deeply dependent on the rest of the world, importing around 40 to 50 per cent of our food. And much of this from regions that are hammered themselves by the climatic impacts that we’ve been talking about, said Professor Paul Behrens at the National Emergency Briefing in London last November.

Investigations by NGO Mighty Earth show that major global traders supplying the UK and European markets continue to source soy from areas linked to the Cerrado destruction, despite repeated public commitments to sustainability.

Mighty Earth has also warned that weak UK due-diligence rules risk turning Britain into a dumping ground for deforestation-linked soy and beef, as companies divert high-risk supply away from more tightly regulated markets.

Despite government pledges, UK imports of soy and beef continue to drive the Cerrado destruction through animal feed supply chains.

Philip Fearnside, research professor at Brazil’s National Institute for Research in Amazonia (INPA), and one of the authors of the review, explains why voluntary pledges and sustainability codes have fallen short, highlighting the overlooked indirect impacts of commodity production:

Most soy expansion in the Amazon and the Cerrado occurs not through direct forest clearing, but by converting existing cattle pastures into soy plantations. This transformation is usually the result of ranchers selling their land to soy planters, rather than switching to soy farming themselves.

Because land suitable for soy commands high prices, ranchers often use the proceeds to purchase much larger, cheaper tracts of rainforest deeper in the Amazon, indirectly driving further deforestation. These indirect impacts have largely escaped all existing monitoring and certification schemes.

The UK can establish legally binding rules for companies supplying commodities like soy, requiring them to account for both direct and indirect environmental impacts. By tracking these combined effects, the UK could avoid sourcing soy linked to widespread deforestation in both the Cerrado and the Amazon.

The UK Forest Risk Commodity Regulation (UKFRC) under the Environment Act 2021 has yet to come into force. And because the law only targets illegal clearing, vast areas of land that have been legally converted, but are still wiping out unique habitats, remain unprotected.

Much of this damage remains hidden from view. The soy required for animal feed is a “ghost footprint”, invisible in labels, but very real in climate and ecological terms.

Pereira says the drivers of the Cerrado destruction are well known and largely tolerated:

The rapid destruction of the Cerrado is driven primarily by the expansion of agribusiness, especially soy and livestock farming, enabled by permissive land-use policies and deficient enforcement.

Unlike the Amazon, most deforestation in the Cerrado is still legally permitted, which protects corporations and supply chains from oversight. International accountability has failed because global climate and biodiversity frameworks largely neglect grasslands and savannas, treating them as disposable landscapes rather than critical ecosystems.

A warning, and a choice

According to the Nature Conservation review, the Cerrado is being pushed towards collapse.

Fearnside warns that continued destruction of the Cerrado isn’t just a regional crisis but a global risk, accelerating climate breakdown while undermining water systems, biodiversity and the communities that depend on them:

The loss of the Cerrado contributes directly to global warming and to the breakdown of water recycling, just as Amazon deforestation does. Together, these processes destroy biodiversity and the human societies that depend on native vegetation.

Current practices are pushing the global climate toward tipping points that, if crossed, would be devastating not only for Brazil, but for the world. Avoiding this outcome requires more than protecting forests alone: it means ending the clearing of the Cerrado and the Amazon and rapidly ending the use of fossil fuels.

For the UK, the Cerrado isn’t a distant problem. Its fate connects directly to our imports, diets, and daily choices. Climate responsibility starts long before the shoreline, in our kitchens, on our plates, and through the choices we make every day.

Featured image: Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer (left) meeting with the President of Brazil Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva for a bilateral meeting in New York ahead of addressing the United Nations General Assembly. Alamy/Leon Neal