How Brazil Can Beat the Odds and Restore a Huge Swathe of the Amazon

But native seed cultivation could represent a valuable source of income for local communities, boosting both conservation and the local economy.

One successful emerging initiative, the Xingu Seeds Network offers payments to indigenous people, settler farmers and urban seed collectors for the seeds they collect.

This kind of initiative is hampered by seed policy which has neglected a vast network of informal seed collectors and producers who are largely ‘invisible’ to the regulatory authorities.

Read more: The world’s forests will collapse if we don’t learn to say ‘no’

To turn its ambitious targets into reality, Brazil needs to involve the Amazon’s local people in developing forest restoration policies, and then give them an incentive to take part.

That means considering local knowledge, and providing socioeconomic opportunities rather than focusing solely on the forest itself.

This issue runs much deeper than mere forest restoration. It will necessitate revising Amazonian land tenure rules, to ensure a clear demarcation of indigenous lands and protected areas.

And it calls for Brazil to make the Amazon rainforest’s values part of the economy, rather than being viewed as something that stands in the way of economic development.

Doing that will help ensure that the Amazon, often nicknamed the “lungs of the planet”, survives to benefit all of humanity.

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2018 Human Wrongs Watch