The Brazilian Presidential Election and its Implications for the Amazon and Global Climate Change

Good evening, everyone. Evening. I'm Mike Koh. I'm a senior scientist here at the Woods Hole Research center and director of the Amazon Program. Speak up. Oh, sorry. I'm a senior scientist here and director of the Amazon Program. And I'm extremely pleased to be introducing a friend and longtime partner of the Woods Hole Research Center, Andre Guimaraes. Andre is the director of the Amazon Environmental Research Institute, which many of you know as epom. Many of you also probably know that Woods Hole Research center and Epom have worked together now for 25 years. And we really have a shared mission to end deforestation in the Amazon. And in pursuit of that mission, we perform a great deal of field work to understand the relationships between forests, agriculture and climate and to develop policies aimed towards ending deforestation and mitigating climate change. Woods Hole Research center is extremely lucky to have a partner of this caliber in Brazil. And in large part that's due to Andre's strong leadership there. Andre himself is an agronomist and agricultural economist by training, and he's always applied that in a mission of tropical forest conservation. He previous to epom, he worked as Director, Executive Director of Conservation International Americas, where he essentially oversaw 10 Latin American nations. He's also been CEO or executive director of three or more important conservation organizations in Brazil. So Andre has a deep understanding of the political landscape in, in Brazil and how it relates to Amazon forests, the future of the Amazon. And I'm happy to have him here sharing his insights and his understandings. Thank you, Andre.

Thanks, Mike, for the intro. Thank you very much, everyone for being here tonight. And I think the word that we speak the most these days in Brazil is hope. And you probably know why. We know we have a new individual that will be sitting on a very important chair in a few weeks time. And this individual is actually a big question mark for all the work that we do. And I say it's a question mark because we still don't know exactly what's going to happen. But there are some insights that may lead us to some reflections and reflections that must lead us into action. We have to keep the good work that we do, and eventually we have to do more because it urges to have a solution. So thank you very much, Mike, Woods Hole colleagues, for inviting me here today. So I'm going to try to talk to you a little bit about what's happening in the Amazon, what's happening in Brazil, what are the effects locally and what are the potential impacts globally of what's going on in Brazil. So let's See if I can address those points today. Well, this is a kind of a belief that I have is that more than ever, I think we are living at a time where local decisions have global consequences and global implications for bad or for good, depending on how we twist the buttons. The Amazon. I like to call the Amazon a big puzzle. It's a very complex environment. And that Amazon puzzle, we can summarize it into. Well, that's the Amazon. The Amazon is about 3/4 of the size of the United States. Continental United States. It is about 200 times Massachusetts. States where we are, That's Massachusetts over there in proportion. Couldn't help it. 5.5 million square kilometers. 400 billion trees. Each tree pumping up into the atmosphere 250 gallons of water per day. You do the math. I can't do that. It's too big of a number. 16,000 tree species compared to 650 in North America. I remember when I was in another organization, we ran an experiment in the Atlantic Forest, which is similar to the Amazon. And we found in one hectare. One hectare is 100 yards by 100 yards. We found 480 species of trees in one hectare. That gives you the dimension of the richness of these tropical forests. 80% of the forest is still standing. 80 billion tons of carbon, which is about 10 years of global emissions of carbon, is stored in the Amazon. 10% of the plant species in this planet of ours lives in the Amazon. Forest plays a very important role. Not just to protect the biodiversity and to maintain the quality of life of locals, but. But also it plays the role of an irrigation system for Brazilian agriculture. And just a quick note here. Brazil is a third land use. A third of Brazil is land use. One in every three jobs in Brazil is directly related to land use. 65, 70% of our exports are related to land use. One third of our GDP is related to land use. And this land use depends upon water that comes from the sky. 96% of the Brazilian agriculture is not irrigated. So it depends upon the rain, which is at a hard instance produced in the Amazon. But in addition to that, and this is the part I like the most, I'm a very proud Brazilian to say to you that we have 173 ethnical groups in in the Amazon which speak 180 languages. Brazil has one official language, Portuguese, which is compared to 180 native languages. And these are the ones we know because in the Amazon there are still at least 50 tribes that have never been contacted by the civilization so called. But there are 30 million people living in the Amazon. So it's not an empty space. It's not just the forest. There are big Cities. Baleen Almost 2 million people. Manaus, 2.5 million people. So there are big cities in the Amazon. There are 85 million animals, cattle herd. 32 million tons of soy are produced in the Amazon per year, which makes Brazil one of the largest, if not the largest, exporter of soil in the world. But last year we lost little over a state of Delaware in deforestation. This is a small state, but in one year they chopped down 6.6 thousand square kilometers. This picture was taken in 1992. And I really want to take a break here and go back 26, 27 years to 1992. In 1992, I was graduating in agronomy in Brasilia. And I had two job offers at the time. One, I was graduating in agronomy. One job offer was to go to work for a multinational that was planting peace in the central savannah where I graduated. And I remember the salary offer was $2,000 a month. The other offer I had was to go to the north, this big green blur in the Brazilian map. Because that was the only thing I knew about the Amazon. This big green thing on the north of Brazil, in the north of Brazil. Without a single salary. I didn't blink. I took my old car and. And I drove 2,000 miles north and I hit Belen, where I started my career. And I did that because during the event in Rio, the Rio 92, which you probably have heard of, several scientists, young scientists, curious people like myself, smart people, like the ones that set up epam, migrated into the Amazon to try to answer some basic questions. What happens in this place? What is it? What is this biodiversity of this place? What's the role of the Amazon in terms of water? What are the potential impacts of deforestation? We didn't have answers for that. We still have a lot to do, but we know a little bit more than we knew 25, 26 years ago. Look at this picture. This was the beginning of the deforestation in a region southwest of Mato Grosso State, one of the largest agricultural exporters in Brazil. It's an Amazonian state, highly deforested. That's the same area in 2006. Let me go back. Look at the river. That's what we have, 2006. And I stopped here in 2006 because in 2004 we had a peak of deforestation of 1, 2, 3, 4, 4 states of Delaware in one year at that time. But at the same time we had 220 million hectares, or about 42% of the Amazon in 2006, protected like indigenous territories and protected areas, national parks, national forests, and so on and so forth. That's the deforestation in the Amazon in 2006, sorry, 2016, in the Brazilian Amazon in 2016. See more or less the pattern. And this is one of the sites, actually the most important site, that Woods Hole Research center and EPAM works together. We have been developing a lot of studies, analyses. We're trying to understand the dynamics of deforestation. We're trying to understand the impacts of climate change locally. We're trying to understand the relationship between the forest and the agriculture and the ranching that takes place in that region. We have developed a number of analyses, studies. We're trying to understand what's going on with the temperature, what's going on with the water regimes, what's on, going, going on with what are the potential impacts in agriculture. So we have produced a lot. Several institutions have produced tons of information about the Amazon. So we know much better now what happens in that region than we knew several years ago. And a lot of that is due to this partnership between EPAM and wuto. I would say this partnership is probably the partnership that have produced more enlightened ideas about where should we go in the future if we want to keep that forest standing. And I'm very proud of being a part of this team. That wasn't me. So this chart tells us what's happening between late 90s and 2013 in terms of deforestation peaked, as I said, in 2004 and went way down to 4,5000 square kilometers a year. Still a lot. The analogy I like to make is you're driving a car towards a wall. If you're driving your car at 250km an hour, or if you drive in your car at 50, 60 kilometers an hour, it doesn't matter, you're going to hit a wall. So you better stop your car before you hit the wall. So we are still driving our car towards the wall. We have to stop the car, simple as that. But at the same time, which is very interesting, the value of agricultural production in that region increased. So there's no such a thing as, as a correlation between deforestation and development. So you don't have to chop down trees to develop your country. It doesn't make any sense. This is the proof. Now, with all that work done, with all those results, with the reduction in deforestation, with the increase in production and in value of production, the question Is. Is the job done? Let's see. Let's look at this image. Look at the ear over there. This is a projection. It's quite outdated, but it gives us the idea of what may happen with the Amazon if the business as usual continues running the show, if we continue with no governance, if we continue with doing the activities the way we do, that's what's going to happen in the Amazon and that's what we want to avoid. This picture was taken a few months ago inside an indigenous territory by the Brazilian EPA IBAMA officers. This is an illegal operation, but as you can see, pretty structured illegal operation, Highly funded illegal operation inside an indigenous territory. This is a major crime, but it's still going on. May 8, 2018 Then we got our version of Trump, the Tropical Trump. Our Tropical Trump got elected Mr. Jair Bolsonaro, which brought lots of uncertainties. And don't worry about all those words. Basically what saying here is that we are in trouble. And we are in trouble because he says he wants Brazil out of the Paris Agreement. Remind you of something? Paris Agreement represents a threat to national sovereignty. Any connections? Deferred station Not a single line about deforestation in his program. Too many protected areas that stand in the way of development. Agriculture, super federal agricultural body. He suggested he was going to merge the Minister of Agriculture and the Minister of Environment. Or in other words the Minister responsible for pushing the frontier and the Minister responsible for holding the degradation. How do you put those two elements underneath the same leader? Fortunately, well, and that was until two hours ago when I last saw the news in Brazil. He gave up that idea. So he appointed the Minister of Agriculture and is still looking for a Minister of Environment. But you never know. By Monday this may change. We don't know. Not a single word in his plan about the rights for forest people. Not a single word in his program about law enforcement, science and education. Not just he's not proposing anything, but he's talking about creationism. He's talking that Darwin existed. Okay, but I don't have to agree with the guy. Those words came out of my future president. I want you to pay attention to the black areas in this map. Black areas in this map are the so called unclaimed lands. Unclaimed lands means belongs to Brazil. But no one is there or no one have taken the possession or taken the authority over those areas. This is over the so called unclaimed lands, which sum up to an area about the size of Texas. We have a Texas in the Amazon in unclaimed lands, which means that Anyone can go there, put a plot in an area, go to a notary, get a stamp and claim that area. And that's what's happening. Land grabbing, degradation, deforestation, illegal deforestation, substantial portion of it taking place in these areas, these black areas. I listed here. Three major challenges that we believe at EPAM will be the drivers of our work from now on. Three challenges or three obstacles we want to overcome. The very first one is to deal with these unclaimed areas. I mean, if they are not resolved, there will always be someone trying to grab them and increasing the deforestation process. So we have to stop that process. In order to stop it, allocate those areas, make it a park, an indigenous territory, a protected area of some kind, or even an expansion of agricultural land of some sort. But make it right, make it on a planned way, make it in an efficient way. Don't leave it there. Right. Brazil is 518 years old as a country. And we still didn't finish the occupation of the country. We have to do that. So the first challenge we have is to allocate these unclaimed lands and make sure that we guarantee indigenous rights. And why, as I said, there are 65 million hectares, which is about the size of Texas, in unclaimed lands, which sum up to about 8.9 gigatons of carbon, which is one year of global emissions. If these forests are gone, Imagine this. If these forests are gone in one year, which is not going to happen because that's very expensive. But if it's gone in one year, we will double the global emissions. That's the size of the risk that we are facing the traditional people. As I said, it's a richness of Brazil to have 173 ethnical groups, 180 languages in the Amazon alone. I'm not talking the rest of the country. In the Amazon alone, isolated tribes. This is rich, this is culture. This is a potential for tourism. This is a potential for traditional knowledge, for resolved problems, for creating new materials for identifying uses of the forest. These indigenous territories do store 1.5 years, the equivalent of 1.5 years of global emissions. That's the size of the responsibility of this group of Brazilians. The second challenge is to engage the private sector. We have to engage the private sector. We have to get them to comply with the forest code. We have a very strict forest code in Brazil. For example, if I have a property in the Amazon, I'm a farmer, I have a thousand hectares. I can only use 20% of my farm. That's the rule that's the forest code. People would say, oh my God, that's too much. I'm responsible for a big piece of land, that I have no economic use for it. But then so on and forth. But that's the law. If the farmers and ranchers would respect that law, 80% of their farms would be protected. But there's a lot of illegality. Within the current existing farms in the Amazon, we have 180 million hectares in private properties. But what's most striking is that there are within this 180 million, 27 million hectares, which is about the size of Colorado. So we have one Colorado in private properties, which can be deforested legally. They are allowed to deforest that. And they will do that. And they will do that for the economists around with a very low opportunity cost. They will do it for $100 per hectare per year. That's what they make out of it. Well, that's the bad news. That's the half empty glass. The half full glass is that, well, if I have $100, I pay that guy and he give up or she give up the right to divorce. So there is a potential business here of paying for these guys not to exercise their right to divorce. I'm telling you a few challenges and a few stories here because the compilation of these solutions is what will lead us to the solution for the Amazon. The second challenge, the third challenge, is to provide technical assistance for smallholders, for family farming. And why is that? There are little over 600,000 families all across the Amazon in agrarian reform settlements, in colonies, in smallholders. They are having a hard time producing. They have very little financial capital, if any. They have a limited human capital, which is a family capital. And they have the natural capital which is being eroded little by little because that's the only one available that they can have to survive. Less than 20% of the families, the family agriculture, farmers. Family farmers in the Amazon do have technical assistance. EPAM has ran a project a few years ago in which we had one hypothesis. If we provide technical assistance to smallholders and they increase their income, will they increase their income and reduce deforestation? That was the hypothesis we were trying to test. And the answer was we've worked with about 3,000 families. And the answer was the result was 68% increase in income, 75% reduction in deforestation. Boom. It's possible. The only variable we've moved technical assistance. Well, we have walked a long path to get here, folks. We have invested millions and millions of dollars in science producing information. We have communicated A lot of those results over the course of the past years, we have published a lot. But there are risks. The guy that is going to be sitting on the chair in a few weeks, as I said, represents a risk. But more than a risk represents a question mark. For me personally, it's easier to know, to deal with a known risk than an unknown risk. And that guy is an unknown risk. We have to keep up the good work that we do. We have to do that. I mean, I can't. That's my country, that's the Amazon. I've dedicated 25 years of my career to the Amazon. So did many of us. We have to keep up with the work. We have to keep up producing information, making sure the recommendations reach the right people, influence the public policies. But we also have to try to avoid the kickbacks in the socio economic developments that we have had over the course of the past decades. We have developed a lot, as I mentioned, we've reduced the deforestation, we've delivered indigenous territories to indigenous people. We have done a lot, but we have to continue doing that. And we have to avoid kickbacks in this process. And there are signs in the horizon that there will be kickbacks. We have to be aware of that. So let me go back to the question I've posed before. Is the job done? No, the job is not done. We need more science, we need more cooperation, we need more dialogue among the difference. This is going to be very challenging in Brazil these days. We need more planning, we need more investments. We need different investments. We need investments to intensify agriculture, to make sure that we produce more out of the same area, because that's what Brazil is good at. But we have to make sure that the forests are standing to produce the water that is needed for that agriculture. So there's no such a thing as we either conserve or reproduce. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. This is a wrong dichotomy. This is a wrong paradox. We have to do both. We have to harmonize these two activities, these two land uses, forest protection and agricultural production. That's the challenge for Brazil. And we have to do it fast. We have to do it fast in order to see more of that and less of that. We want the agricultural terroir, the agricultural landscape to blend with that guy who is a family farmer and this guy who is an indigenous person living in the Amazon. That's what we want. We want to harmonize that. These gentlemen, I want to finalize here so that we can talk a little bit about the Amazon and Brazil Today, his name is Hauni Me Tuchiri Honi is the greatest leader, indigenous leader in Brazil for the past several decades. I'm very proud to be friends with him. And I remember a chat we had about 10 years ago when I met him. He's a tall guy. He's 85 years old, 86. Nobody knows exactly how old he is. He's probably 80 something. He's a tall guy and he has this thing in his mouth to really scare you. And he's scared. You can tell he's scared. He behaves scared. And after two or three days together with him, we were in meetings in Rio. I was living in Rio de Janeiro at the time, and I was hosting him in a series of meetings we were having there and discussions about the indigenous territories. And I got courageous at some point and I sat next to him and I said, ronnie, he leads a group of about 46,000 Indigenous people living in a territory the size of Portugal. So I stopped next to him and I said, roni, isn't it too much land for too few indigenous people? He stared at me, you wouldn't imagine the face that he did, stared at me like this and said, there is another way to see it. We are a few Indians taking care of a lot of land for a lot of Brazilians. Thank you very much.

What does this mean for your work? This new president, I have read that he is eager to get rid of Greenpeace and World Wildlife Fund. What does it mean for EPOM and the work with the Rhodes Hole Research Center?

It means an additional risk, of course. We rely upon international resources, international partnerships, and, you know, it's possible that they can squeeze us. They can limit the access to resources, they can limit the access to partnerships and to access to technology and stuff like that and put our business at risk on one hand. On the other hand, we are eager to do more. So we'll compensate eventual constraints that we'll have with more work. That's what we have to do. As I said, I mean, that's the only way. The Amazon is just one. I can't move my stuff into Africa. They don't know how to speak the language. They have no idea how the biodiversity is there. We know about the Amazon and that's what we are going. So in a sense, it poses risks, you're right. But on the other hand, I'm really excited to go forward.

George, talk a little bit about the agencies of government and their resistance or initiatives under this new president.

Which. Sorry, which agencies?

The agencies of government that you work with that control land, water, air and so on and so forth. And political issues. They have probably have some tried and true methods for working. There'd be some resistance to.

Oh yeah, oh yeah, well, and the resistance is already showing, is already appearing in the radio screen. One interesting analysis I like to make is that over the course of the past 20 years, the quality of the public servants have increased substantially. Back 20 years ago, most of the public servants, including the agencies that are important for our cause here, were political appointed. So friends, family, colleagues, neighbors and so on. Since 20 so years ago, until now, it's only by, how do you say, Concuso. Yeah, by merit. So they have to go through a very severe test in order to engage in a public service. So the quality of the workers, of the employees, of the governmental agencies, the today is way better, which means resistance, which means that they will try to do the job that they were assigned to do, but they will need support from the society, they will need qualified information, they will need solutions that science would produce. I mean, they are there, they are eager to work. Most of them are young fellows, especially in the Ministry of Environment. The agencies related to the environment are very young, energetic folks. But they need information, they need to help to point in the right direction. So there's a potential symbiosis there between us, scientists, NGOs, civil society and the government. I think that's the direction that you've asked the question, wasn't it? We have to work with those guys because they will need us and they will represent a resistance within the government because they will stay across governmental cycles.

How much power does the executive have to change policy, to change the direction that the government is going, and to control the budgets of the people who are supposed to care, carry out the policies?

Well, the political system in Brazil is pretty similar to America. Two chambers, two houses, the executive branch. So most of the, let's say, most impactful decisions will have to go through Congress. And that's a hope, a hope that we have because the Congress has been replaced by 50%. So 50% of the lower house has. Has been. There are new deputados, new congresspeople there. The Senate has changed about a third, so we have really a renovation of the Congress. It's still hard to say because they didn't take over the position yet. It's going to happen in January. How these 250 new Congress people will behave, whether they will go to the left, to the right is still hard to say. We are trying to map that. But the expectation I have is that if we are able to pass across a message to the Congress, the Congress will represent a tremendous, let's say, barrier against decisions from the executive branch. Of course they will try and they have ways to try. We have, as you have here in the US the bidi de provisoria here. How do you call that? It's a offices rule or I mean something that the President can define by himself. Executive order. Yeah, we have executive order, similar executive order. However, the executive order, it lasts for a certain period of time, three to four months and then it has to be approved by the Congress. If it is not approved by the Congress, it's voided. So you know, there are mechanisms and there will be lots of fights. So the Congress will be part of the resistance for sure. Hopefully.

Just a quick question. You mentioned that Bolsonaro labeled his government as pro business. And I was just wondering, as these people, the farmers trying to develop more clean food supply chain over time, over the past 10 years. And if Bolsonaro promotes deforestation via several mechanisms, increasing deforestation protected areas, would that damage that advance in sustainability that the farmers achieved over the past couple of decades?

Well, that's a very good point, Paul. Thank you very much for raising that. Because yes, the platform or the electoral platform of Bolsonaro, the President is from for the market. So he says that, well, we have to reduce the size of the state of the government, we have to be more efficient, we have to export more, we have to produce more, produce better, generate more jobs. And the market is important. I want to privatize lots of institutions and companies from the government and so on and so forth. So that's the speech that's great. So okay, but in order to do that and, and export and be reliable and increase the market share, you have to have a reputation. And in order to have a reputation you cannot deforest the Amazon. So deforesting the Amazon is against building Brazilian reputation. So it's against the market opportunities for Brazil. So that's sort of an opportunity. I see that as. And thank you again, Paulo. I see that as a sort of a half full glass. So the half empty is that well, oh my God, the guy's there, he's kind of nuts. He's going to make a lot of crazy things. But the half full glass that comes along is that, well, he's a market oriented guy. So let's see if we can associate our agenda, which brings in reputation into the country to expand its exports and so on. And that's the language that the Government at least seems to be listening to. Let's see what's going to happen in the next chapters.

At least one administration in Brazil of the last two was wildly corrupt, even by Brazilian standards. And by comparison to the Trump administration, it looks to my eye as though the same thing might be happening with this administration. How do you cope with this?

It's a very good point. Thank you for the question. Could you repeat the question?

The question was about how to deal with corruption in the current or the incoming administration.

Corruption was the question. So, because we've had severe problems with corruption over the course of the past two, three governments, you're right. And actually, Bolsonaro was elected a lot based on arguments against corruption. So one of his platforms was, well, we have to fight corruption. Petey, the former party that was in charge, the Workers Party, was really bad in terms of corruption. Lula, the former president, is in jail. So he really grew up, his outreach was relevant or increased based on this speech against corruption and so on and so forth. And he continues repeating that now, whether he'll be able to clean up the process. He's really eager to do that. The first appointments he did, he took the judge. The. The judge? No, no, the guy that made the sentence against Lula. A judge? Yeah, and put him into the Minister of Justice, which was a kind of a strange move because, well, Guy was a specialist in sending people to jail. Now suddenly he's a Minister of justice trying to having to deal with national security and all these issues. But anyways, so he seems to be coherent with his speech during the elections. Now, Brazil is not for amateurs. It's a huge country, very complex, and it's hard to place a bet. But with regard to corruption, at least the speech is consistent. But once again, let's see how it goes.

What's the ratio of rural population to city population? Because if it's major in the cities, with all its problems, how do you get the resources to address the rural issues?

Excellent point. It varies a little bit from region to region, but more or less 80% urban, 20% rural, which is way less. But as I said, the money is on the rural area. So even the GDP of the cities, for example, the financial services that would go into agriculture are city jobs, but are related to the field. The tractors factory, the inputs factory, the fertilizers companies, they're all in urban areas, but providing services and goods and products for the agriculture. So, yes, most of the people are in the cities, but as I said, most of the employers, most of the jobs depend upon the rural areas. So the sensitiveness over agriculture are very, very high. In cities too, people are very concerned because it's their jobs. They work for a tractor or for John Deere farm, and this is Sao Paulo, but they sell John Deere equipment in cerrado in the Amazon and so on. So there's a lot of connection in Brazil between the rural areas and the urban areas. I don't know if I've answered your question.

Hi, I was interested in the correlation that you made with the increase in agricultural yield going side by side with the decrease in deforestation. I would think that would. Money talks to a government. I would think that would really resonate with them and give you a lot of hope. Or does that not apply as much with large scale operation?

No, it does apply. It does apply. What's happened is that a lot of the cleared land in the Amazon and also in the Cerrado is pasture land. Very low yields, very low intensity, very low capital intensity. So what's happened is that soy production, which is 4, 5, 6, 7 times more profitable than beef production, is replacing these areas. So you have. That's why the value of production of the agricultural production is growing, because it's being replaced a lower profitable activity by a higher one, which is soy. Grain production in general has been taking place, but there's a limit to it, right? Because if you double the production of soy in Brazil, you're going to crack the market. So this thing have to go little by little. But indeed, indeed, it's a clear correlation. And it has a potential to be increased in the future. More income, with even a lower rate of deforestation if this kind of replacement continues.

I know maybe it's a little bit before your time, but 30 years ago, powerful forces assassinated Chico Mendez, who was trying to protect the Amazon. And I just wonder what is the level of fear, particularly among the indigenous people in the Amazon and those small farmers who want to be able to continue to exist.

Thank you very much for the question, because this is something that we ourselves, I mean, EPAM is spread out across the Amazon. We have nine offices in the Amazon. We have 100 people working at EPAM, of which about half of it are around our offices. And we are very concerned about their security. The levels of violence, even during the electoral period have increased a lot. Indigenous people were threatened, environmentalists were threatened. Brazil is the top killer of environmentalists in the world. Last year was a record.

Watch your back.

Yeah. Some of my friends are telling me you have a target in your, your forehead. So watch out. Now it's not. We live in Brazil. I mean, I'm quite comfortable still, but I am concerned with colleagues and friends and partners of ours that are working closer to the action. Let's put it this way, in the Amazon, deforestation is another aspect. Have increased by across the three months before the elections, before people wouldn't even know yet whether Bolsonaro was going to be elected or not. But three months before the elections, the deforestation increased by 67% and so did the violence. So yes, that's a tremendous issue. And we do have to be careful.

Well, we've seen the violence increase here under our crazy new administration.

Right.

Usually with farming you require more irrigation, more water. Have you seen any large diversions of the Amazon river in order to support the farming industry? That's growing loss of water from the Amazon being diverted over?

Not really. The rain system works pretty well between the Amazon. Most of the agricultural production in Brazil is in the central savannahs in the southern border of the Amazon. So that's where 70, 80% of the Brazilian commodity production is. That's a pretty dry area. And most of the rain that flows into that area comes from the Amazon, or a substantial portion of the water comes from the Amazon. There is irrigation, yes, but the irrigation is more to complement the cycle, the agricultural cycle. So I plant the soil, for example, which is a four month cycle during the rain period, and then I have a little bit more of rain and I plant another cycle of usually corn. And sometimes they use irrigation for that additional cycle. But you know, I don't know of any big projects of deriving water from the Amazon. And honestly, it doesn't sound to me like a very good idea.

Are there large logging companies and if so, how much land do they own and are they buying more?

Oh, that's a very good question too. Thank you. Yes, there are in the Amazon there are about 4,000 sawmills. 4,000 sawmills. And I would risk to say that less than 2% of them are certified really work operating. Well, of course, 4,000 are all SISOs, all sorts of loggers. Loggers not necessarily have to have the areas. They can either have their own areas or they can rent areas or they can get concessions from the government. So there are different business models. Oftentimes the ones that have concessions are more robust companies and so on. But yes, there are all sorts of different types. And what's interesting, and that's why I thank you for your question, what's interesting is that oftentimes the beginning of the deforestation process is with the logging industry. So the first, let's say movement into the forest is to identify the trees to chop down the big trees. Because they don't chop it all down, it's expensive. They just go into the forest, take the big trees and so on. But when they go inside, they clear, they open tracks. And when they open tracks, boom, others would go. So they. The effect of the timber industry is very, very, very negative. Not just because of the direct impact, but the indirect impact of opening roads and access to the forest.

My question is actually two questions. One is Bolsonaro has openly said that not 1cm will be given to Indians. What are the real risks that the Amazon and Indians are facing? This first question. And the second one is, it seems from all that you presented, and as a Brazilian myself, what I see seems like I myself feel powerless and I feel like it's really a big concern for environmental and humanitarian issues in the Amazon. What do you think that the international organizations, which role the international organizations can play on those issues?

Oh, thanks again. First, on the indigenous groups. Yes, that's what Bolsonaro said, is that he's not going to give another inch of land for the indigenous groups. Although there are several indigenous groups which still do not have their own land. Right. They're still claiming their land. So there's a lot of unfairness in this kind of statement from my standpoint, and I'm not saying that as an environmentalist, but as a citizen of Brazil, I think we should deliver the rights of the indigenous people. It's in our constitution, so we have to do that. Because it's one article of our constitution that says that indigenous people do have the right to their land. So when Bolsonaro says something like that, he's actually against the Constitution. And he says, and he always speaks with the constitution on his hand, saying that that's the map of the way and so on and so forth. So there's a lot of incoherence there, but he can do that. I mean, it depends upon the executive branch to recommend to the Congress the setup, the creation of new protected areas. So if they don't recommend, they're not going to happen. So yes, there is a tremendous risk for newly protected areas and there is also a risk for the existing protected areas, because one of the proposals that is being discussed now is to open some of these areas for mining, for a large scale agricultural production, for capital raising, which would be tragic. Right. So, you know, even more than not creating new protected areas, the risk for the existing protected areas is Real. The second question was about the role.

That the international institutions, especially considering, like, you know how he. You gave the great news that agriculture and environment are not together anymore. And the minister of work, Trabalho, he went back. So he under pressure, there are some actions. So that's considering that I think we.

Are living the time, the era of cooperation. I think we've realized, and that hasn't been a long time ago, we realized that we have one planet, and this planet is small, is fragile. And this concept is very recent. The word sustainability is not over 40 years old. The concept of limitation for the expansion of human activities is no older than 50, 60 or 70 years. So it's very recent. So I think we are now realizing in the world that we need to cooperate and to cooperate so that we all can live in a better world. So there are places in which there are solutions which can be exported to other places. Brazil is several steps ahead in comparison to other countries in the tropical world. And so we do have a responsibility to help other countries and other societies to come up with the solutions, the same way that more developed countries with different assets, financial assets, technological assets and so on, do have to cooperate with Brazil. And well, in a small scale. And example EPAM Wood's whole cooperation of more than 25 years, I think it's an example of this fruitful cooperation, generating information, generating solutions, and generating hope for the situation that will come across.

I'm wondering what's happening with all this unclaimed land? Is it just sitting there or are there different people trying to gain control of it? And how is that done?

Good question. It's sitting there, but there's people living there. The entire Amazon is occupied. You want run a boat for more than 2, 3 hours without having a. Without seeing a community or a small village or a tribe of indigenous groups and so on. So the Amazon is entirely occupied. So certainly, and for sure there are groups of people living in these areas, but at the same time, there are land grabbers, land speculators, looking at them the same way that EPAM has that map. I'm sure that the land grabbers would have the same directions too. So we are still working on the numbers, but I can tell you that a substantial portion of the deforestation taking place in the Amazon today is taking place in those areas. And it's taking place there because if you chop down a tree inside a national park is a crime. If you chop down a tree inside an indigenous territory is a crime. And. But if you chop down a tree in an unclaimed area. It's still a crime, but a lighter one. No one is going to be really going after you because of that. And I think the second part of your question was, how do they take possession of this area? It's quite illegal. But what they do is, how can I say? The land registry system in Brazil is run by notary notaries, and we have every single municipality, we have a local notary. And sometimes I would say, in the Amazon, oftentimes these notaries are corrupt. So someone would go there, would say, well, from this river here to that tree over there, to that little hill over there, that's my land. They take a satellite image of that, they go into the notary. Friend. Corrupt, pay a little bribe and get a document saying that that's legal. So that has been happening a lot, and it's still happening in these unclaimed areas, unfortunately. But that's Bolsonaro is going to solve because he's going to fight corruption. Oh, yeah, right.

Thank you very much.

Thank.

You.

Thank you. An honor to be here. Thank you. Dave, Mike, friends.

Thank you.