With global temperatures breaking records year after year and wildfires, floods and extreme weather events ravaging countries across the world, there is little question that the climate emergency is the greatest threat facing the world today. The burning of fossil fuels is the leading cause of climate emissions, rightly placing the question of a global energy transition at center stage of environmental decision-making. But it is also critical to act on the second leading cause of climate change – deforestation.
The loss of forest ecosystems is at the intersection of many issues: the climate crisis, the biodiversity crisis, the depletion of fresh water, and an epidemic of violence against environmental human rights defenders. With its vast forests and troubling history of conflicts over land and resources, few countries on earth embody these challenges more than Brazil. And while thought of Brazil’s environmental issues may immediately bring to mind the Amazon rainforest, widely revered as “the lungs of the earth,” a less well-known region, the neighboring Cerrado, is equally in need of attention.