Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2: For the last thirty years, Dora Dematos Teshera has spent
Speaker 2: many of her days cracking coconuts cool cool Sancha's her
Speaker 2: son Ismaeil, collects them every day and brings them home
Speaker 2: with his donkey's day. Then then Dora gets cracking. She
Speaker 2: says she does this from seven in the morning to
Speaker 2: two in the afternoon. It's tiring work. Dora spoke with
Speaker 2: Bloomberg's Brazil bureau chief Vanessa Dezaim in the backyard of
Speaker 2: her small home in the Amazon. The coconuts shoes cracking
Speaker 2: come from the Babasoo palm tree. It's a hearty species,
Speaker 2: one that survived even as commercial agriculture and other industries
Speaker 2: have cleared much of the rainforest in the area.
Speaker 1: It is really a tree that tests value in every
Speaker 1: single part. For example, the fronts of this tree can
Speaker 1: be woven into touched roofs and mats, and also there
Speaker 1: are the empty shells and they use that for cooking.
Speaker 1: So it's a whole supply chain that has been fed
Speaker 1: by a tree in what this tree produces.
Speaker 2: Dora gets her income from selling babazo to local grocery
Speaker 2: stores and middlemen that feed a local supply chain. Oil
Speaker 2: is produced from the kernels inside these coconuts, which is
Speaker 2: then used for soaps and body lotions. So the more
Speaker 2: Dora breaks, the more she makes.
Speaker 1: She doesn't stop breaking while she's speaking because there's no time.
Speaker 1: She needs to break nuts her whole day long.
Speaker 2: Dora says, if she works hard, she can earn about
Speaker 2: five dollars a day. She's part of the local Babasu economy,
Speaker 2: which has been strengthened in recent years by the Amazon Fund.
Speaker 2: The fund has supported a local cooperative that owns grocery
Speaker 2: stores and a nearby Babasu processing factory. Money from the
Speaker 2: fund helped that cooperative buy new equipment and double its revenue.
Speaker 2: The Amazon Fund is a state initiative that gets donations
Speaker 2: from countries all over the world, and lately it's taken
Speaker 2: a closer look at how to help the people who
Speaker 2: live and work off the land.
Speaker 1: The Amazon Fund has always been looking at the forest,
Speaker 1: but in the less years, it's more and more looking
Speaker 1: into people. Today.
Speaker 2: On the show, a new chapter in Brazil's efforts to
Speaker 2: save the Amazon and why the country is betting that
Speaker 2: you can't protect the environment without investing in local economies.
Speaker 2: I'm Sarah Holder, and this is the big take from
Speaker 2: Bloomberg News. Bloomberg's Brazil bureau chief Finessa Dezaim has been
Speaker 2: reporting on the twin crises of the Amazon, deforestation and poverty.
Speaker 2: To grasp the scale of the challenges, it helps to
Speaker 2: have a sense of the geography. Well, to start, can
Speaker 2: you just help us understand the region you're reporting on,
Speaker 2: Brazil's Amazon.
Speaker 1: So the Brazilian Amazon Territory is larger than the European Union,
Speaker 1: only the Brazilian part of it, and it's hom nowadays
Speaker 1: to thirty million people, more than a third of them
Speaker 1: leave in poverty.
Speaker 2: The number of people living in the region has tripled
Speaker 2: since the nineteen seventies, and more than a fifth of
Speaker 2: the country's rainforest has already vanished. And Vanessa says the
Speaker 2: regions with the most deforestation also face the biggest economic challenges.
Speaker 2: One example is Marino, where Dora lives. It's the most
Speaker 2: densely populated state in the Amazon. Almost fifty eight percent
Speaker 2: of the population there lives below the poverty line.
Speaker 1: It has lost more than three quarters of the original
Speaker 1: forest cover, and that's not a coincidence that it has
Speaker 1: some of the worst social indicators in the whole country.
Speaker 2: Vanessa says much of the deforestation has been driven by
Speaker 2: commercial agriculture, cattle ranching, and illegal mining operations.
Speaker 1: But another thing that wait it's covered too, is that,
Speaker 1: of course there are people living there and they need
Speaker 1: to make a living.
Speaker 2: In some cases, small time farmers also contribute to deforestation
Speaker 2: by clearing land to grow cash crops like soybeans. Over time,
Speaker 2: their work depletes the soil and they don't have resources
Speaker 2: like fertilizer to replenish it.
Speaker 1: So what they do they cut a little bit of
Speaker 1: more trees and then they can grow beans in a
Speaker 1: new area. But then in years this is going to
Speaker 1: be depleted.
Speaker 2: That's where environmental initiatives like the Amazon Fund come in.
Speaker 3: So the Amazon Fund was created years ago to protect
Speaker 3: first of all, to protect the Amazon Forest, to monitor
Speaker 3: deforestation and to curb deforestation.
Speaker 2: The fund was started in two thousand and eight under
Speaker 2: President Luise and Nacio Lula de Silva with the support
Speaker 2: of Germany and Norway, and since then other countries have
Speaker 2: also made donations.
Speaker 1: We have contributions come from Germany, Norway, UK, US and
Speaker 1: many other countries that now have revealed the intention to
Speaker 1: contribute with the fund.
Speaker 2: For years, the Amazon Fund mostly poured its resources into
Speaker 2: environmental efforts like recovering deforested areas or managing public forests.
Speaker 2: But now Brazil's government is taking a new approach. They're
Speaker 2: trying to address the needs of people in the Amazon,
Speaker 2: like those low farmers, with the understanding that if you
Speaker 2: help people living on the land, you help the land too.
Speaker 1: The challenge is how we can stop deforestation, how we
Speaker 1: can protect the forest, but how can we protect the
Speaker 1: humans that are there.
Speaker 2: Vanessa says the fund's new investments have helped support a
Speaker 2: whole sustainable supply chain. Once you witnessed an action. On
Speaker 2: that reporting trip to Marnyo.
Speaker 1: I saw a type of economy that I've never seen before,
Speaker 1: which is a babasu economy.
Speaker 2: She told me about going to a small supermarket in
Speaker 2: a Brazilian village where locals brought bags of babasu nuts.
Speaker 1: And they were exchanging it for products, for a pasta,
Speaker 1: for beverages, for you know, contents of milk, for everything
Speaker 1: they needed for that day. So they you really use
Speaker 1: babasu as payment as a curancy. What did you.
Speaker 2: Learn about the Babasu economy overall or the challenges facing
Speaker 2: the Amazon region through talking to Dora and to her family.
Speaker 1: First, it is very important to keep trees stand because
Speaker 1: these people depend on them. Second, I was impressed by
Speaker 1: how you can develop a supply chain that feeds into
Speaker 1: your self, that helps a whole region to develop, and
Speaker 1: still you are protecting the forest. So it is possible
Speaker 1: that people can't earn money and keep the forest standing.
Speaker 2: But the Amazon Fund also has critics, people who say
Speaker 2: it's approached to supporting economies in the region, hasn't gone
Speaker 2: far enough. That's next. Bloomberg's Vanessa is A has been
Speaker 2: reporting on how the Amazon Fund is trying to stop
Speaker 2: deforestation in Brazil by giving economic incentives to the people
Speaker 2: who live there, but some say the project has its shortcomings.
Speaker 2: What's the biggest problem with how the fund works? According
Speaker 2: to critics.
Speaker 1: Many analysts and specialists I talk it to, They say
Speaker 1: that the fund for now is really focused in forest
Speaker 1: and also in the countryside. That's where you can easily
Speaker 1: build up thesustainable supply chains, for example. But the big
Speaker 1: cities in the Amazon also face huge challenges with in commerce.
Speaker 2: Vanessa says that even though many people around the world
Speaker 2: imagine the Amazon as a lush rainforest, about eighty percent
Speaker 2: of the region's population lives in rapidly growing cities that
Speaker 2: are struggling to keep up with the influx of new arrivals.
Speaker 1: Many of those cities have these huge islams, we call it.
Speaker 4: VELAs, and these areas are being expanded and really it's
Speaker 4: getting more and more dance and infrastructure is very weak
Speaker 4: in the region, so sewedge treatment, for example, it's very
Speaker 4: it's not well developed.
Speaker 1: In the region, the cities in the region. So this
Speaker 1: is one challenge that the Amazon Fund has still to address.
Speaker 1: It's the city problem.
Speaker 2: The other challenge is political. After President Lula set up
Speaker 2: the Amazon Fund in two thousand and eight, it's been
Speaker 2: vulnerable to the wins of his successors like JR. Balsonaro,
Speaker 2: who took office in twenty nineteen.
Speaker 1: Former President Jeri Bosonato administration getted government agencies that were
Speaker 1: responsible for protecting the Amazon right, so that allowed illegal
Speaker 1: activities including land grads by farmer's lodging and mining. They
Speaker 1: flourished and so the pace of deforestations surged to record
Speaker 1: levels during those years. So because of that Norway and
Speaker 1: other foreign donors halted contributions to the Amazon Fund in protest.
Speaker 1: So it's it's a fund that depends a little bit
Speaker 1: on political will in that sense because donors and its
Speaker 1: international effort, So everybody's watching how is this money being used?
Speaker 2: The necess says the fund has recovered since Lula was
Speaker 2: re elected, but it could face more tests.
Speaker 1: President Lula immediately rebooted the fund when he took office
Speaker 1: in January twenty twenty three, and now the fund is
Speaker 1: in a very good moment. There are many new announcements
Speaker 1: on donations, new countries coming and announcing they will contribute,
Speaker 1: and there's a huge effort on the government to do
Speaker 1: that because that's one of the key pledges of this government.
Speaker 1: But again, who knows how it's going to be in
Speaker 1: the next administration.
Speaker 2: In the meantime, people on the ground are at the
Speaker 2: mercy of these shifting political wins. I asked Vanessa how
Speaker 2: her sources are feeling about the fund's future.
Speaker 1: Everybody talking to you said, oh, it's a start. It's
Speaker 1: a start. The awareness that this is needed is key
Speaker 1: because that's what generates measures and initiatives, and maybe you
Speaker 1: don't need to depend on the Amazon fund. Maybe we're
Speaker 1: going to have more measures focals in this situation. So
Speaker 1: people usually say, well, it's not enough, but it's a start.
Speaker 2: As for Dora, Vanessa asked her where she's hoping this
Speaker 2: will all.
Speaker 1: Lead and a fally Meccas and taking meccas and can
Speaker 1: they tell you Fally Mecca she comes to macas. Dora's
Speaker 1: biggest dream is to have a real house, what she
Speaker 1: calls it, a real house is not a mud house,
Speaker 1: and that's her dream. So she's now really crossing her
Speaker 1: fingers that her son can find another job.
Speaker 2: What kind of job does she hope her son will get.
Speaker 1: In a supermarket nearby? Then he could have like a
Speaker 1: fixed income that he can receive every month a paycheck.
Speaker 2: And then he could use that to help her exit
Speaker 2: her home exit action. This is the big take from
Speaker 2: Bloomberg News. I'm Sarah Holder. This episode was produced by
Speaker 2: David Fox and Adriana Tapia, who also fact checked the episode.
Speaker 2: It was edited by Aaron Edwards and Danielle Balbi. It
Speaker 2: was mixed by Alex Sugia. Our senior producer is Naomi Shaven.
Speaker 2: Our senior editor is Elizabeth Ponso. Our executive producer is
Speaker 2: Nicole Beemster Boor. Sage Bauman is Bloomberg's head of podcasts.
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