An alliance announced at the 2021 U.N. climate summit in Scotland has already allocated $240 million for projects that align increased agricultural productivity with environmental preservation in Brazil. The IFACC, or Financial Innovation for Amazonia, the Cerrado and Chaco, is led by the Tropical Forest Alliance (TFA), The Nature Conservancy (TNC) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). There are 16 signing entities, including Spanish lender Banco Santander and Swiss-based agrochemical producer Syngenta. “We see an important role not only from the financial sector, which is placing money on the table, but also from companies that depend on soybean and cattle farming in Brazil who are helping [the initiative],” said Danielle Carreira, director of financial sector engagement at the TFA. She said the initiative’s main objective is to place farmers on the sustainability agenda while still allowing them to increase their operations. “We want to give farmers a voice in this conversation.” Of the 11 projects funded by the initiative, seven are in the Cerrado, Brazil’s megadiverse savanna biome, and received 98% of the funding allocated to date, or $234.5 million. The money is being applied to projects that recover degraded pastureland to preserve native vegetation and increase productivity in areas that have already been deforested. The Cerrado isn’t just the planet’s largest and most biodiverse tropical savanna — it’s also where 60% of Brazil’s agricultural production takes place. Unlike the Amazon, where deforestation rates dropped in 2023, these numbers continued to rise in the Cerrado, with more than 1.1…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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