- US tech major Amazon and nonprofit The Nature Conservancy have launched a new initiative to sequester carbon and create “a more sustainable income” for farmers in the Brazilian state of Pará.
- Dubbed the Agroforestry and Restoration Accelerator, it will assist smallholder farmers to restore degraded cattle pastures to native forest and develop income-generating agroforestry systems around cocoa and other crops.
- Amazon claimed its initial investment in the Accelerator will support 3,000 farmers and restore approximately 20,000 hectares of forest within three years, removing up to 10 million metric tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere by 2050.
Why it matters:
The partners said that the Accelerator will experiment with innovative farming methods and digital technologies, including satellite-based imaging, to quantify and monitor carbon sequestration.
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“Pará is home to 9% of the world’s tropical forest, but it’s facing unprecedented rates of deforestation, losing 3,300 acres every day in the last year,” Nature Conservancy CEO Jennifer Morris said in a statement.
“Over the last 13 years, small farms in Pará — an area where slash-and-burn agriculture can seem like the only option — were responsible for an average of 40% of the state’s deforestation.”
The partnership with Amazon “will allow us to provide the resources and technical assistance needed [to] demonstrate that regenerative agroforestry and carbon markets are viable business models for communities” in the state, she added.
