Leaders discuss pathways to bioeconomy ahead of Amazon summit

Bioeconomy is the key to the economic development of the Amazon, and technology and innovation must walk hand in hand in the construction of sustainable food systems and their value-added production. Such is the opinion of the authorities who were in Belém, Pará state, for a Sunday session entitled Dialogues on Amazon Bioeconomy: Inclusive Rural Transformation, held as part of the Amazon Dialogues initiative to devise proposals for the region, to be presented at the summit of Amazon countries on August 8 and 9 in the same place.

In the view of Maria Helena Semedo, deputy director of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the bioeconomy of the Amazon must be based on an inclusive rural transformation that recognizes the role of indigenous peoples and traditional communities. These populations, she argued, must participate in decision making, not just be the subject of consultation.

“We’re talking about the sustainable use of the region’s resources for the production of food and other high value-added products, promoting the responsible and sustainable exploitation of natural resources with the aim of bringing economic, social, and environmental benefits to the region—especially to local communities that have often been left behind,” she stated.

To this end, Maria Helena went on to note, sustainable transformation models must be developed and production chains strengthened. “Research, technological innovation, and science have to be part of the whole transformation. If there’s no knowledge, there can be no solutions or innovation,” she added, highlighting ancestral knowledge as crucial in development.

The debate was supported by FAO and aims to promote common understanding among Amazon countries on the adoption of a bioeconomy model. The debates focus on meeting Sustainable Development Goals 1, 2, and 10: ending poverty, zero hunger, and reducing inequalities.

Bioeconomy

Helder Barbalho, governor of Pará, a Brazilian state in the Amazon region, reported that the state government built its bioeconomy plan for 2022 studying 43 potential products for trade, which, he said, “communicate directly with the forest in a sustainable way.” Exports are estimated to add up to a yearly $120 billion.

“An economic and social vocation operating in conjunction with other vocations in land use [must be] the central strategy for generating green jobs and opportunities linked to conservation, regeneration, and the opportunity to have a thriving, living forest,” said Governor Barbalho, adding that the state produced only $256 million in exports last year. “This means 0.3 percent of all the potential that the bioeconomy can bring to our region.”

The ideas presented by Brazil’s Minister of Agrarian Development and Family Agriculture Paulo Teixeira aim to encourage the production of items from local biodiversity, the development of regenerative agriculture, productive forests, and the installation of plants in the region.

“[I’m talking about] agriculture that can rebuild this great Amazon biome, an agroforestry system of productive forests with investments in açaí, cocoa, chestnut, to name but a few. These are highly valued products that can bring income to the people of the Amazon,” said Teixeira.

Forest protection

According to Brazil’s Minister of Indigenous Peoples Sônia Guajajara, the government’s goals are to protect at least 80 percent of the Amazon forest, slash deforestation to zero, and make progress in the demarcation of indigenous lands and titling of quilombola territories.

“With no legal protection and regularization, we cannot make strides in novel production systems. With no active public policies for ethno-development, we cannot stop those seeking to destroy the forest. With no effective public policies, mining, trafficking, deforestation and violence will grow. We need alternatives to the model of destruction and we need to build them soon,” the minister declared.

João Paulo Capobianco, executive secretary of the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change, endorsed the minister’s speech and said that the first task must be to end the destruction of the forest and the aggression against indigenous and other traditional groups. “It’s work that we all must do together so we have an adequate environment for a forest economy to thrive. Without the forest there’s no bioeconomy,” he said.

The Amazon Fund, Capobianco argued, has invested 27 percent of its resources in supporting the bioeconomy—over BRL 400 million. The government plans to further raise these numbers. “We want the top priority of the Amazon Fund to be the support for economic transition in the Amazon,” he said.