ENVIRONMENT: Restoring Brazil’s Unique Atlantic Jungle Ecosystem

By Mario Osava Reprint | | Print |

Mario Osava

RIO DE JANEIRO, Sep 19 2002 (IPS) - Destroying a forest is easy and fast, but restoring a unique tropical ecosystem with native species of trees is a complex and costly undertaking, even if the jungle is only partially replaced, as Brazil is attempting to do along its Atlantic coast.

For that reason, the top priority today must be put on curbing the continued destruction of the country’s Atlantic forests – known as the Mata Atlántica – under the slogan “zero deforestation,” the president of the SOS Mata Atlántica Foundation, Mario Mantovani, told IPS.

Reforesting with the absolute minimum number of trees of native species costs 8,000 reais (around 2,600 dollars) per hectare in the Mata Atlántica forest, which currently covers just 7.3 percent of the 130 million hectares it covered in 1500, he pointed out.

Large-scale reforestation will only be possible with heavy investment. The hope is that the Kyoto Protocol on climate change will promote spending on replanting forests by rich countries in their attempt to live up to their targets for the reduction of greenhouse gases, which are blamed for global warming.

The Kyoto Protocol was approved in 1997, but will only go into effect once it has been ratified by countries that account for at least 55 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions – a goal difficult to reach as long as the treaty is rejected by the United States, which is responsible for one-quarter of all emissions.

The mechanisms put in place by the Protocol allow countries to finance projects abroad, like reforestation, one of the methods of creating “carbon sinks”, which absorb greenhouse gases. Through such investments, they gain credits towards the target of reducing emissions by 5.2 percent on 1990 levels by 2012.

The know-how for re-establishing the native forests of the Mata Atlántica already exists, Paulo Kageyama, a professor at the Luiz de Queiroz Higher School of Agriculture (ESALQ), based in Piracicaba, 100 kms from Sao Paulo, told IPS.

Through long years of research, Kageyama’s team has learned about the reproduction and genetic characteristics of the trees in the Mata Atlántica, and the overall dynamics of the tropical forest ecosystem with the greatest biodiversity in the world.

The forest hugging Brazil’s Atlantic coast is also the most heavily threatened tropical jungle in the world, because it is located in the most densely populated area of Brazil, along the coast and on the nearby hills.

Kageyama estimated that restoring a minimum of 20 percent of the original area covered by the Atlantic coastal forests is essential for the ecosystem to reach some sort of equilibrium.

That would mean replanting 2.5 million hectares in the southern state of Sao Paulo alone – equivalent to half of the land area that has been planted with fast-growing species of eucalyptus and pine for industrial uses, which has made Brazil a major exporter of cellulose.

Mantovani estimated that an operation of this kind in the state of Sao Paulo would cost at least 6.5 billion dollars – a figure that would have to be multiplied by seven to cover 20 percent of the original forested area in the 17 Brazilian states that share the Mata Atlántica forest system.

But the director of SOS Mata Atlántica said environmentalists should demand a much broader replanting effort, of at least 65 percent of the original forested area.

At the very least, the mountaintops and the banks of rivers and streams must be reforested, said Mantovani, which alone would entail a 17 percent restoration of the Mata Altántica.

ESALQ expanded its knowledge of the unique tropical forest ecosystem through the creation of two banks of germ plasm, centres for the preservation of genetic resources from a forest that was flooded by a hydropower dam.

That has made it possible to carry out reforestation efforts with species native to the Mata Atlántica region, like cedar, canafistula, ipé, peroba and aroeira, which provide good lumber and, when planted in the appropriate mix, create a natural equilibrium that prevents the spread of pests without the use of agrochemicals, said Kageyama.

The mixture and diversity is indispensable, because native trees are vulnerable to local natural enemies, to which exotic species like eucalyptus, even when planted on vast extensions of land, are immune, he explained.

The production of timber and other forestry products through this system can be competitive, because tropical species of trees tend to mature in less than 20 years, while countries with colder climates must wait 60 to 100 years to cut down their native species of trees, said the expert.

The situation of the Mata Atlántica is “desperate,” said Mantovani, because 92.7 percent of the original forest found by the Portuguese when they first arrived in the area in 1500 has been destroyed – and the jungle is still being cut down.

Nevertheless, there are some encouraging initiatives, he added.

For example, the government of Fernando Henrique Cardoso extended a programme of soft loans aimed at promoting family farms, to encourage small landowners to replant or preserve their forests, for economic purposes, like sustainable logging.

Some agroforestry activities have also begun to expand, like the planting of fruit trees, and “shade-grown coffee”, which does not threaten natural forest cover, in northeastern Brazil, as well as rainforest ecotourism initiatives, said the activist.

Two years ago, the Foundation headed by Mantovani set up a web site, “clickarvore”. For each click of the mouse on the button provided, a group of companies, landowners, municipal governments and local communities plants one tree of a species native to the Mata Atlántica.

More than one million trees have already been planted as part of the project, which is financed by a group of businesses.

The various efforts and the growing environmental awareness have already reverted the destruction in the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul, where the Mata Atlántica has actually been expanding for the past five years, said the Environment Ministry’s secretary of biodiversity and forests, José Pedro de Oliveira Costa.