International Institute for Sustainability (IIS)
The session will discuss the large scale restoration of the Atlantic Rainforest, one of the world’s biodiversity hotspots that have lost 88% of its area. The session will discuss socio-economic and environmental opportunities and challenges of restoration within a landscape approach. These include the potential for public and private investments in economically viable restoration systems, the sustainable increase in productivity of neighboring cattle ranching areas as a way of avoiding a conflict for land, the generation of green jobs and income, the provision of ecosystem services and an associated large scale research effort. There has been a recent interest in reforestation of Atlantic Rainforest within landscape approach that incorporates all components of the landscape, particularly socio-economic implications as this region hosts 62% of the Brazilian population. How to conciliate reforestation with development is a major challenge but also an opportunity to restore ecosystem services for local and global population.
Three key sector- or issue-specific questions the panel will address:
- Economic viability and investments opportunities of ecological restoration in the Atlantic Rainforest.
- Competition for land in the Atlantic Rainforest Region and how to address it.
- Provision of ecosystem services, job creation and income generation.
Background reading:
- Finding the money for tropical forest conservation. Brancalion et al. (2012)
- Emerging Threats and Opportunities for Large-Scale Ecological Restoration in the Atlantic Forest of Brazil. Miguel Calmon, Pedro H. S. Brancalion, Adriana Paese, James Aronson, Pedro Castro, Sabrina C. da Silva, and Ricardo R. Rodrigues (2011)
- Ecosystem restoration is now a global priority: time to roll up our sleeves. Aronson and Sasha Alexander (2013)
- COOPLANTAR: A Brazilian Initiative to Integrate Forest Restoration with Job and Income Generation in Rural Areas. Mesquita et al., Ecological Restoration, Volume 28, Number 2, pp. 199-207 (2010)
Contact details: a.latawiec@iis-rio.org
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Braulio Ferreira de Souza
Executive Secretary of the Convention on Biological Diversity
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Carlos Alberto de Mattos Scaramuzza
Director, Biodiversity Conservation Department, the Brazilian Ministry of Environment
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Bernardo B.N. Strassburg
Founder and executive director, the International Institute for Sustainability in Rio de Janeiro, and Assistant Professor, the Pontific Catholic University, Rio de Janeiro.
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Arnaldo Carneiro Filho
Senior Adviser at the Strategic Affairs Ministry, Brazil
Speakers
Braulio Ferreira de Souza
Carlos Alberto de Mattos Scaramuzza
Bernardo B.N. Strassburg
Arnaldo Carneiro Filho
Moderator
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Agnieszka E Latawiec Research director, International Institute for Sustainability, Brazil, assistant professor at the Opole University of Technology, Poland, and research associate at the University of East Anglia, UK
Agnieszka E Latawiec 
Georges Radjou
In principle, the law said to brazilian entrepreneurs to replant trees,after mining works and excavations for the raw minerals. In fact, they do not replace the trees. When the soil is eroded and peoples need more resources, they are cutting again more forest. It is a vicious cycle of poverty. A forest took 1000 years to grow.They aretaking 10 years to destroy Amazon forest in an irreversible way. At the speed fo tree cutting, there will be no rainforest in brazil by 2030-The rainforests (Amazon, Congo, Papua N. G….) are the lungs of the earth planet. Trees can reduce disasters linked to the water cycle. Also, what happened to the biodiversity, the soil, peoples. Wangari Mathaai won a Nobel prize for planting trees. If only Brazil could follow her leadership role.http://www.nobelprize.org/mediaplayer/index.php?id=1120
Everybeody can be a changemaker (Ashoka)
Georges Radjou
In principle, the law said to brazilian entrepreneurs to replant trees,after mining works and excavations for the raw minerals. In fact, they do not replace the trees. When the soil is eroded and peoples need more resources, they are cutting again more forest. It is a vicious cycle of poverty. A forest took 1000 years to grow.They aretaking 10 years to destroy Amazon forest in an irreversible way. At the speed fo tree cutting, there will be no rainforest in brazil by 2030-The rainforests (Amazon, Congo, Papua N. G….) are the lungs of the earth planet. Trees can reduce disasters linked to the water cycle. Also, what happened to the biodiversity, the soil, peoples. Wangari Mathaai won a Nobel prize for planting trees. If only Brazil could follow her leadership role.http://www.nobelprize.org/mediaplayer/index.php?id=1120
Everybeody can be a changemaker (Ashoka)