Problem

Home to around 30% of the world’s biodiversity, the Amazon is one of the biggest carbon sinks globally. However, it is constantly facing the threat of deforestation. In Brazil, which hosts 62% of the Amazon territory, deforestation is mainly caused by land clearings to create pastureland for livestock on family farms.

In Pará, a region with rapid deforestation, 40% of forest loss occurs across more than 300,000 family farms. Of every 10 hectares cleared, 6 become pastureland, 3 are abandoned, and only 1 is used for crops. This land-use cycle often leads to unintentional soil degradation, as poorly managed pastureland quickly exhausts nutrients, leaving livestock with insufficient grazing. In response, landowners clear more forest, repeating the destructive cycle. This ongoing deforestation ultimately harms both the forest ecosystem and the economic stability of rural communities, reducing income and agricultural productivity over time.

Responses

To break the cycle of deforestation in Brazil’s Amazon, The Nature Conservancy (TNC) has partnered with rural landowners for over a decade, promoting sustainable cocoa-based agroforestry to restore degraded pastureland and improve forest health. In the Brazilian Amazon, over 1.4 million small properties—spanning more than 70 million hectares—could benefit from agroforestry systems.

The program focuses on cocoa, a native crop to the Amazon region. Cocoa has not only shown to be a viable alternative to livestock farming, but it also offers higher financial returns while enhancing food security and biodiversity. By September 2024, over 600 families have embraced this system, growing cocoa alongside crops like corn, cassava, açaí, and bananas, which improves soil quality and provides diverse income sources. TNC aims to engage over 3,000 producers in this model.

Find out more: The Nature Conservancy