 Carlos you're on. Good morning, good afternoon, good evening to all, welcome to this webinar solutions to scale a green sustainable development in the Amazon. Welcome all of you, I will pass on the word to Coimbra who will be moderating this webinar. Coimbra please. This is Coimbra Sirica, can you hear me? Yeah. Oh good. So welcome to this webinar organized by the science panel the Amazon. Today we will have a very exciting group of people speaking. The webinar will begin at 10 o'clock Eastern or was supposed to begin at 10 o'clock Eastern Standard Time. And then it will go on for an hour and a half or two hours actually. So we're going to start with Carlos nobody's going to open the conference and then we will we will have Mr. Guillermo the co-founder of Natura and a member of the SPA strategic committee. We will have Ms. Andrea Alvarez, Natura's vice president of branding innovation, internalization and sustainability and Dr. Susanna Hett, professor at the University of California also a member of the science panel for the Amazon, as well as Professor Ricardo Abramo Bay at the University of Sao Paulo and a member of the science panel for the Amazon. So I think what we'll do is we'll we'll start with this first panel which is going to be on the innovative bioeconomy of forests standing and rivers flowing and I'll introduce the speakers for each session. So that's the first group starting starting now. Should I go on Coimbra? Yes why don't you you could you could go ahead and introduce this panel perhaps maybe say what you see the goal of it as being? Yes okay yesterday let me start just by quoting this chieftain the indigenous chieftain Bepi Proti Meca Granotti Re. He said in an article in the newspaper The Guardian that two models of development were currently facing off in the Amazon the development of destruction and the sustainable development of construction and knowledge. I think it was very wise statement because for the last 50 years the resource intensive development model adopted by most Amazonian countries particularly in Brazil has led to a massive destruction of the rainforest and spread property across the basin. It's urgent to find the sustainable development of construction instead of destruction based on knowledge. So the aims of this webinar as you've seen in the announcement discussed sustainable development pathways for the Amazon highlight synergies between different types of knowledge and an interdisciplinary approach to develop practical and integrated solutions and also engage potential partners in the shared division of a protected and productive forest. A productive Amazon. Fortunately for the first time in 500 years since the Europeans came to South America we are starting to see an alternative way to appreciate the way of living of indigenous people for 12,000 years and we are going also to hear vision of an indigenous leader in the webinar that that is to see value in the standing forest with its immense biodiversity in its terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. There is plenty of evidence that a standing forest flowing rivers by economy that's the kind of a short sentence for this new by economy can be vibrant and also socially inclusive improving the well-being of Amazonian populations and including the economy of the Amazonian countries. We have a number of examples and I'm sure Guillermo Liao and Andrea will give beautiful examples that we have a Brazilian company Natura. Just examples of how you can maintain the forest and still develop the economy. We have also of course these new forest products from the Amazon as I very brings more than 1 billion dollars a year to the Amazon economy improved the well-being of something like 300,000 people and also a few other cacao, Brazil nuts and a few other products but still very far from the potential. Also I think it's important to keep in mind something that the pandemic raised the level of maximum concern globally which is the risk of pandemics. We had two pandemics in 20th century and we have had two pandemics per decade this century including this huge destructive COVID-19. So it's clear today what science and what traditional populations have been saying and claiming for a long time the necessity absolute necessity to preserve all tropical forests and restore ecological balance. So post pandemic the green new deal calls for a full-fledged protection of all tropical rainforests and particularly the Amazon where we still have the largest tropical forest in the planet. But of course it's a huge challenge to construct the pathways for such social biodiversity driven sustainable development paradigm for the Amazon. In sum this is this first webinar promoted by the science panel for the Amazon wants to shed some light on how to move to solution spaces and how to combine ingeniously scientific knowledge with traditional knowledge. So that's the goal of this first webinar and we are going to proceed and we're going to have many such discussions and how to give a scale of to bring some of these initial ideas initial examples that are working very well of a standing forest flowing rivers by economy to reach scales initially circle the Amazon but could serve as a role model for all tropical forests of the planet. So let me then give the floor back to our moderator Queenbred please to introduce our speakers. Hello so to to return to our speakers we want to open now the panel discussion on the innovative bioeconomy of forest standing and rivers flowing. So again this is Mr. Guilherme Leal, Ms. Andrea Alvarez there with both with Natura and and then we have Dr. Susana Hecht at the University of California and Professor Abramove at the University of Sao Paulo. Please go ahead. Good morning everybody are you listening are you are you hearing me? Yes okay great I am not seeing you but it's a pleasure first of all I would like to thank Professor Carlos and all the organizers of the the the science panel for the invitation to share some of our experiences in the the Amazon region. For those that don't know Natura we were born 51 years ago in Sao Paulo as a garage company with an initial investment then less than $10,000. Today we are as Natura and Co that we brought including the the new brands that we brought together like Avon the Body Shop and ASOB an Australian brand we are present presently in more than a hundred different countries with six million representatives and four thousand around four thousand stores. Our long story was designed based on some deep values the first of of them the central one is the interdependency among all of us human beings living beings we are deeply convinced since a long long time that we are all one great earth we are we influence and are influenced by the the action of everyone. The second one of the second deep values is the richness of diversity we have been for a long time in it was 92 1992 at the same time of the Rio 92 when we wrote down these those beliefs and diversity it was one of the the the main values that we committed to. The a third one that is important for our analysis is that uh it was that companies are uh change agents they are uh it's it's part of the whole of the business to promote uh positive change in in society in the in the communities that we they work on and the and the belief that the prosperity and longevity of the companies are deeply connected to the to the deliver of social and environmental positive impact uh and this will make companies be profitable and long and uh uh uh older in in to to stay through the time to share uh uh these beliefs to share those as I said it was 92 when we wrote down those commitments uh and we have been since them trying to make them reality not just speech we have been part uh uh of many movements uh uh to spread this kind of perception and believes that companies has a whole a different whole not only to generate profit and we have been part of many movements like uh the creation in 98 of the Eto's institute for responsible uh uh business uh it was a way to to help to to to promote this kind of uh uh uh behavior among the companies our connection connection to the amazon region grows when we were almost 30 years old it was 20 plus years ago at the end of last century late 90s we were reflecting that about what we would like to be when we became adults we were thinking about 20 50 years ahead and uh asking ourselves what we would like to to how we would like to be recognized and that's the deep thought huge discussions we came to the obvious conclusion that to honor our name natura and our origins brazil we should get closer to the amazon and understand how to use in a sustainable way the richness the ultra rich biodiversity of the region creating terrific products to our consumers bringing prosperity to some of its inhabitants and helping to conserve the forest in 2000 as part of this movement we launched the line echoes that is based on natural ingredients from the amazon our conclusion after experience that andrea is going to share with us it is that it is difficult challenging but possible for a company succeed in exploiting in a fair and sustainable way the richness of the region even though to promote the change that we really need for this huge and precious and complex region we need to involve much more than good companies more than business businesses we need to bring together to dialogue the many stakeholders local people indigenous communities local business leaders academy political leaders from the different levels of the federal state and municipal levels to bring to the table and to design a new future for the region in this direction we have been trying to create first of all i applause in this direction the initiative of the science science panel and we are connected to all the actors around a movement called a concertation a great concertation for amazon a build trying to design this this future in this process i would like to to to finish my very quick introduction sharing one interesting thing that connects to carlos open one of the presenters in one of the webinars that we did the concertation had promoted the archaeologist eduardo from the the uspi and other important universities told us about the story of amazon and brought us the the the news that there are many scientific evidence that the forest is the product of more than 10 000 years of interaction between men and nature just in the last 50 years as carlos said we have we create the economy of destruction of deforestation our challenge is to change this let's bring together let's bring to another time the economy of life the economy of the web of life as would say frity or capra or bioeconomy as we used to say today and this is my first initial thought that i would like to share with you and with this i open the floor to my dearest andrea alvarez that will tell us a little bit more about natura's experience the 20 plus years of natura's experience and in the region please andrea go ahead thank you thank you very much it's always a pleasure to hear you talk so passionately about what we need to do collectively about the amazon so that we create this amazon we all want and i'm really pleased to be here today to discuss sustainable development pathways for the region a cause that is so dear to natura has given it just just talked about we've been participating as a member in the discussions held by the strategic committee of the science panel for the amazon and i'm really confident and hopeful that the scientific work and the policy recommendations that come out from of these discussions are going to push us to deliver strong and urgent responses that are needed as carlos also mentioned earlier um in one of the meetings recently the conversation was centered in the need for the amazon to be managed as a system and that the deforestation effects go way beyond the amazon so it is crucial to connect the different stakeholders that are involved in this matter as gillemi just mentioned and create this web of life instead of the web of destruction so um if we could move to the next slide please so at natura we've we've always believed that no one can solve any problem by themselves the interdependency that gillemi was just mentioned and we're really passionate about this idea that it is possible to find different ways to do business and that we can balance economic social and environmental positive impact uh we see sustainability as a leverage to create value uh when we look at social and economic and social and environmental challenges as business opportunities and as society opportunities we usually come out with innovations that help us find the path forward and that's what we've been doing in the amazon for more than two decades now as gillemi said in the late 90s we started exploring that ecosystem and trying to understand it better uh and then our relationship really slowed as of the year 2000 when we launched echoes uh and started using these you know biodiversity ingredients in our cosmetics it was a huge challenge and we intensified this presence of a few years later when we decided to directly engage with the communities as as sourcing uh engagements for us and then we further enhanced that connection in the year 2011 with the launch of of our natura amazonia program and the key objective here was to create sustainable business uh and promote local development based on science innovation entrepreneurship but also valuing the social biodiversity the traditional knowledge in the local culture because it is in that combination that we think uh solutions can arise that are good for all in 2014 we opened uh one of our production sites called eco park it's an industrial park in benediz in par and the purpose was to attract partners who actually shared common views of sustainable development for the region and then later on we identified there was actually a potential for that site to become you know an advanced biobased innovation science unit for us and that's what it also evolved to become later on and then in 2018 we were awarded the union for ethical biotrade certification which for us was an honor because it underscored our commitment to fair trade and biodiversity conservation and then more recently we launched our living amazon cause based on the principle that the forest is worth a lot more for everyone if we keep it standing and then later on June this year we as a group now as a natura co-group we launched what we're calling our commitment to life which is our sustainability vision it's actually a strategic vision for 2030 that aims to foster collective efforts towards zero deforestation in the amazon region by 2025 so that we do not reach that tipping point that we all you know that Carlos has talked about so many times that we want to avoid at all costs and the way we want to do this is by expanding the use of social technologies and promote green economy based solutions using sustainably biodiversity products and services so the idea is to create a social economic model through which the amazon region would no longer be exclusive a supply of raw materials but it would reveal and value its technological vocation um also valuing its culture and driving the emergence of opportunities that can deliver more relevant benefits for society at large and for that region so next slide please so let's look at a few big numbers our goal is to expand our presence in the region even further today we we have ties with 33 local communities numbering more than 5000 families and almost 20 000 people sustainable harvesting has proven its value as a source of income for these families and also as social progress indicators and in the last 10 years we've had a community community cumulative business volume of 1.8 billion reais in the region which is pretty much 350 million dollars um and these efforts and I think this is the most incredible is that through those efforts we've managed to keep 1.8 million hectares of forest standing which is impressive I mean it's half the size of a country like Holland but it's not enough we know it's not enough and that's why one company can't do it this alone what we can do is share the best models we have so that maybe more companies and and thinking can actually also flow to that region so let me give you a specific case which we we like to tell the story because I think it it tells it gives life to this whole idea that you know when we're just talking conceptually it's sometimes hard to comprehend um so next slide please we have um a great story of the ukuba tree and the the ukuba fruit the ukubeda the ukubeda the ukuba tree and ukuba the fruit in 2015 we launched um our product line using ukuba as a key biodiversity ingredient and ukuba is known as the amazon jewel it was inspired by traditional knowledge uh and it took us ears really ears of research and we're still not completely happy with the final like outcome we love it but we always want to tweak it a little bit more but it's an amazing product in terms of hydration um and but it but it shows that the challenge of actually engaging with these biodiversity ingredients and transforming these in cosmetic products that are exceptional in their performance and usability but we crack that code and um we found out this this formulation where we used the ukuba seed because it releases a bomb that has really intensive hydrating properties and stimulates the the production of collagen like naturally producing collagen by the skin um and the story is that before the use of of ukuba as a cosmetic alternative the local communities really saw very little economic value in the tree they actually were chopping it down uh it was on the verge of becoming extinct because it was felled and it was used for to make broomsticks and other petty petty instruments when we started to manufacture the cosmetics with ukuba butter we established the sustainable harvesting model that provided this new source of income for these communities especially for women so through this financial return assessment that we conducted we uh were able to see that the annual harvest of a preserved ukuba data generates three times more income for the communities than logging so making this a really great example of how the forest is worth more standing than felt and then by building these relationships with the local communities and empowering them uh and innovating to develop even greener cosmetics we are actually advancing on our quest to generate positive impact through business model and daily on a daily basis because these relationships they evolve continuously uh next slide please but we knew that we needed more and more people to join us on this journey and we needed to gain scale and that's why we launched um in June like I mentioned our commitment to life which is a division for the natural and co-group that also includes avon the body shop in esop and it was born out of this aspiration that we would dare to innovate to promote positive economic social environmental impact which has been really a motivator and a driver for the company for so many years for so many years and we would do so by addressing a transverse transversal and systemic way with the help of many others so as a as a consultation as as Guillermo says the most pressing issues that we face and one of these challenges we aim to address is the deforestation of the amazon so here are some of the targets that are related to our living amazon cause but as I mentioned we are aware that we're not going to achieve zero deforestation by ourselves we need collective action so next slide so that I can wrap up uh so just another quick example is the Andrea just just to say that because we're running a little late I just wanted to uh make sure that the other couple speakers have a chance and they would have five minutes each okay no so I'm wrapping up okay thank you sorry I really I was right uh the major is a place where we've been doing amazing work uh and it's territory development so that's the only thing that I wanted to talk about it's territorial development so that we can collectively with investment agencies also um create um positive outcomes so with that I'll skip the video maybe because I think I should just stop and I'll hand over to Susanna so she can take it from here am I on yes okay um so uh what I'm going to do is talk about the uh in in this very short time I'm going to talk about um the amount of value that's generated globally in uh Amazonian germ plasm and I've just taken a few things I haven't done uh uh more general things just to give you an impression and then I want to talk about the existing Amazonian technologies that could be deployed in the processes of trends uh of uh economic and um uh livelihood production for the region and then and I'm going to give you three big technologies which actually are in place and well established and could be a part of a system systemic way of looking at this what I would argue is that so much of Amazonian development has taken as its model northern European uh views of landscape which are open and with annual crops as opposed to trees and tubers which remain the sort of our typo form of Amazonian economic and livelihood development well anyway one of the things I just wanted to show is that you know we're really heating up very very extensively and you can see that this is we're having probably the hottest year ever um I'm looking forward next in the next couple of days to 115 degrees uh uh Fahrenheit in the LA basin and 130 degrees one of the hottest temperatures ever recorded on the planet was recorded in death valley a couple of weeks ago so it's important to understand that uh we are in we're we're in more of a crisis than perhaps we realize and that the other thing is that the characteristics of the tropics are expanding so that there's lots that maybe we could learn next slide please well I just did this as a sort of uh quick a quick back of the envelope thing but I wanted to point out a few things which is that most of the value of Amazonian germ plasm is has been elaborated and technologically expanded outside of the region so one of the things that's really important to think about is how you keep value added within the region because right now this germ plasm has been moved all over the world for the most part and also that most of the value that is accrued to it has not stayed in amazonia so I just go through a few commodities here the big ones globally but you can see that even assaille and brazil nuts generate about a billion dollars and are very high in their rate of employment but you can see that with these other these other commodities and I could add a much broader list by the way that we're really looking at half a trillion dollars and these were just numbers from either last year or the year before so just what I could snag rather quickly but you can see that amazonian germ plasm has the capacity to generate really extraordinary amounts of of revenue in their global trade but that the problem that we have with amazonia is a kind of colonial problem which is all the value is transported out okay so one so that's my first point there's lots of value in those forests and not even talking about environmental services which a recent study estimates to be you take if you include everything to be about five thousand dollars per hectare okay so we're talking about a place that actually is being destroyed for an extraordinary source of value and virtue that's being destroyed for a very short term unsustainable uses next slide please well first of all they're architect complex technologies in place they're indigenous technologies by the way that give us resilience and durability in this region and these are socio environments in the sense that the environment itself is also doing a lot of the work you know what we have is an input model where you have the you have your soy plant and then you put all the inputs in and then it does stuff and what you have in the indigenous models of all of which is this is that nature itself is doing a lot of the inputs whether these are microbes whether these are trees whether these are the aquatic systems themselves so i'm going to go quickly through three of them i call them the three a's one is the amazonian dark earths this is so let's let's go to that next slide please and these are found all over it's basically a soil an anthropogenic soil which means that it's created by people it's done by soil improvement and one of the things that i always point out is that if you look at the kinds of things that make areas habitable that seem marginal so that marginal so that marginal areas like mountain areas or areas that are very dry what you have are technologies that transform these areas into productive sites now one of the things that's very characteristic of amazonia is that both a lot of the soils are quite poor um they're acid soils highly weathered etc etc but the point is with these anthropogenic soils essentially you have a fertility set of practices that give you a um a soil uh that is very productive and it's durable most of the terra preta sites the amazonian darker sites that we're looking at are are hundreds of years old and many of them thousands of years old simply because the internal processes of microbial growth and organic matter holding are uh are elaborated within them so think of this as being on a par at a geographical scale as with uh and as a soil management innovation on a par with irrigation and on a par with terracing so we know that you can get a lot of productivity you can get a lot of livelihood goods out of these kinds of technologies soil management technologies and here's an indigenous one it's found all over amazonia these are the sites where um that have been mapped and documented of the amazonian dark earth and it's the biochart the techniques for producing it are quite well elaborate so uh next slide this is just what this looks like so these are these are areas this is the same soil type one being the amazonian darker this is about a 700 year old soil anthropogenic soil that's still extremely fertile it's extremely viable versus the other one which if you were to put agriculture on it would become unviable in a few years so this is just to uh emphasize that there are certainly technologies in place and management techniques that you could be using that could be durable and um environmentally sound also these are biochar sites are excellent sources of uh uh controlling of carbon carbon absorption for climate change so next slide please next okay well agroforestry um this of course is a widely developed uh system throughout the tropics but amazonia probably has more different kinds of agroforestry than you could imagine this is of course an asai forest agroforest and it's got kakao and it's got a bunch of stuff um if we were to look at it we'd probably find uh 60 or 70 different species but it's a landscape that is doing a lot of environmental services as well as a lot of livelihood services and of course the asai story is one in which uh first of all i live in california so asai is like everyone is frantic for it all the time um so that they can maintain their good health but the point is that this is a this is a product an amazonian product that amazonians have taught the world to enjoy again this is one of the great success stories with uh high levels of employment and a sustainable system and but there are many of these there are many hundreds of agroforestry systems and land management systems throughout amazonia which can become as they say platforms for livelihood and for economic change the other thing but you have to invest in them you can't just sort of be extracting them and the other thing is that a lot of these agroforestry systems and the complex forests that have been that have been the outcome of the terraforming of indigenous populations in amazonia a lot of them are going very quickly seven more than seven thousand fires are burning as we speak right now next slide um so here's some aquatic uh an aquatic agroforestry system but the point that i also wanted to make is that not only do we have a sort of monoculture episteme by which i mean the way that we understand productive landscapes is through monocultures in in the uh in the western world for the most part but also that we think of it as dry land and one of the things about the tropics and one of the things about a warming world is there's going to be a lot more flooding um as we know there's uh uh arctic and Antarctic ice shells are uh flopping away as again as we speak um you need only look at science every week to start screaming but the point is that there's lots of ways in which wetlands and aquatic systems are managed for livelihood production fish production ecological services that are extremely important and there's huge amounts of knowledge within this it's not knowledge that uh we trained for at UC Davis or any uh most of the universities within the the temperate zone but these are systems that are complex and they require an ecological view of the world and also what i would say is an aquatic episteme the way of thinking about the world as being formed by water now about a third of amazonia is in um is in wetlands of various kinds also you have side lakes and various forms of water management and resource management and fishery management within these that are extremely important and extremely productive so the point on this is simply that you know we there are extraordinary amounts of wealth there's extraordinarily interesting and how shall we say time tested technologies that are available to be thinking about how you might elaborate a uh of an economy based on standing forest and flowing rivers uh next slide please well this is a little bit more about the aquatic systems these are the the raised fields of the benny these are the open grasslands that are periodically flooded and what you can see in this is that this is not and this looks industrial but it's uh it and it is industrial in the sense that it's made by human industry over time the big line in the center is a road that's coming through this but the point is that you had large-scale landscape transformations of very high productivity so the empty amazon the amazon that's at the end of the world in the beginnings of time with the prehistoric human beings on it who you actually had very complex civilizations this is something that we can recognize perhaps if we look at an aquatic uh uh agroforestry system we can't see it but this is something that you can recognize because of its geometry and its openness um but the point being that there are very complex societies that uh elaborated great civilizations and also had the production systems on which to base these next slide this is uh so that's the benny that i'm showing you this is on the other side of the amazon this is in uh this is the work of stefan rosna uh in uh in cayenne and again what you see are these raised bed systems and large mounds and complex interactions between terrestrial management and water uh watered system management which is part of the story of how large-scale uh extensive civilizations with large populations elaborated in these areas so these are these raised mounds and raised mound systems next slide please well i've put a chinopus in this is of course mexico but the point is that we're going to be seeing a world that's a lot more flooded and a lot more flooding in the tropics um and so perhaps it behooves us to look a little bit more intensively at the kinds of complex systems of that integrated land and water and trees and tubers as well as uh open landscapes and also that integrated fisheries and uh aquatic wetlands into the production system so that they maintain both ecological complexity as well as uh uh uh agro agro ecological collect complexity and also that's based in social complexity within these societies and the high diversity of cultural chain cultural types that you have so one of the things is to keep in mind that there we have a world coming up that is look going to look a lot different very quickly um uh and that the technologies for handling that changing world um reside largely in the tropics the next slide please well one of the things is that not only do you have to have technologies but you have to have institutions you have to have inclusive ones you have to have questions of human rights i always like this slide because it has uh basically the kayapa um uh ge groups from uh central brazil and southern amazonia who were part of the uh constitution convention in brazil in 1988 i like to contrast this with the constitution convention of the united states which was largely white men um this was just a picture of a much more complex story which was much more inclusive in the construction of a very interesting although currently quite under attack on both sides it has to be said um uh a set of constitutions that guaranteed land rights to indigenous populations guaranteed environmental rights and environmental concerns and um were much more socially inclusive in the creation of these documents now again we can talk about the current moment but um what you can see is that there's kind of a difference between slave holding white men who were soon rapidly depleting indigenous populations versus the kind of dynamism that we began to see in 1988 of course before that as well um next slide please well uh first of all i guess the thing is that we have we have we have this extraordinarily complex thing and i don't want to just sort of say the thing about amazonia is it has to be all utilitarian it doesn't have to be all utilitarian but at this juncture the development model itself is flawed and it's particularly flawed under the conditions of high inequality that prevail and also the levels of violence the other thing is that the land transformation model really only evaluates the uh value of production that flows into um recognizable markets of various kinds and one of the things that doesn't take into account is the loss the externalities the cost in terms of biodiversity in terms of environmental services in terms of uh social uh social costs and out migration um and so one of the and uh dispossession that is very characteristic of these regions so one of the things is that while um we may see increasing gdps and the importance of export uh product that the cost of producing these and the cost of poisoning those landscapes in order to produce soy with uh roundup ready soy um is predicated on pretending that there's no cost to this other than the cost of purchasing the input when in fact there are huge ramifying costs so if we were to really do as they say full cost accounting we would find that perhaps the land transformation model was much more costly than the revenue it was generating the other thing is this problem of disarticulated accumulation that is that most of the wealth that's generated even now doesn't stay there there's a few models where it does i say you being one uh another being brazil nuts in the west in amazon but the point is sorry susannah yeah i know we're gonna get i'm i'm almost done okay so the point is that we have a problem of simply extraction um the investment strategies focus on moving resources out not on value added in um and then we have current very limited investment in human capital in in amazonia and the problems right right now of authoritarian development uh next slide i think this is it next slide well this is of course how you use up your future um i'm always reminded of the great marlena daytracks line to orson wells as he's about to be shot and he says to her read you know fortune she's a fortune teller in this movie it's the movies the touch of evil and she says fortune teller read my hand and he said she reads it and says future you have no future your future is all used up um and we would really hate for this moment to turn around and actually have the sort of ghost of marlena daytracks turn to us and say your future is used up so it's really imperative that we recast and rethink what a few amazonia future might look like and the irony is that the answers are already in place that's it thank you but next we have we have professor rickardo abramovic uh good morning everyone uh many thanks for this invitation it's a pleasure to be here with susanna andrea gazadu uh guilherme carlos and uh in this event well i'm coordinating with joice ferreira from embrapa occidental amazon the group which is working on in the science panel on bioeconomy and my first movement as a researcher uh was to look at the scientific and public policy literature in on bioeconomy and what i have found out was shocking not only the amazon but more generally the tropical forests are completely outside from this literature the german bioeconomy council published an inquire with more than 4 000 experts from 46 countries on the issue the variety of products and services coming from bioeconomy is striking and concerns all dimensions of social life from a reculture and food sector with alternative protein sources to new materials and energy is a huge amount of product service etc but the report doesn't even mention tropical forests as a field of research and the recently published report of the sciences medicine and engineering academies from the united states the three academies together you need to find something on tropical forests the report estimates that the bioeconomy in the us is a trillion dollar sector with at least five percent of the us gdp but as with the german reports tropical forests are not mentioned in the report this absence is very worrisome not only because of the loss of the of economic opportunities that it represents but also because the bioeconomy is seen nowadays as one of the main pillars of the sustainable development goals the one that could enhance our societies toward a circular economy in my view one of the main conclusions of the science panel is that latin america wants to reduce the gap between the amazon forest and the scientific and technological frontier of bioeconomy it's desirable that enterprises civil society international cooperation and governments establishes goals in this direction there are a lot of conditions to reduce this gap legal conditions property right intellectual rights are among the most important but let me mention four points four conditions for our discussion the first one concerns the title of this meeting scale scale do not suppose homogeneity or absence of diversity sociogio bio diversity as susana and andrea showed just a few moments ago the tropical forest bioeconomy is inherently an economic an economy of diversity diversity of territories of people of products of service of markets scale can't be considered as the opposite of diversity as in the traditional agricultural activities forest products and service can be scaled not only by the link between forest people and enterprises but also by agro forestry systems and by the integration between forest products and industries like animal nutrition or micronutrients turn to replace pesticides in agriculture there are a lot of successful initiatives in this direction in this direction that will be mentioned in our report in the science panel the main message is scale and diversity have to come together in the case of the bioeconomy of the tropical forest the social bioeconomy of the tropical forests the second condition is the investment in education science and technology in the amazon leticia agreement mentions it and is strategic if you want a nature-based knowledge economy to emerge let me quote just one example uh called frequently by deniz minev the main brazilian amazon research institution has a budget about 15 million dollars just stand for university has a budget of six billion dollars there is already an important team of scholars in the region whose activities have to be improved improved with more investments the third condition is the necessary rethinking of the infrastructure in the amazon we know that infrastructure is a set of devices that determine the paths of economic growth until now the dominant thinking on infrastructure is fundamentally turned toward commodities rares people don't have electric energy internet basic sanitation and access to health an economy of forest social biodiversity has the potential to deliver some of the local solutions to the infrastructure of the amazon population the fourth condition is perhaps the most important every ambitious project as dillerny out told us in beginning of the our meeting every ambitious project must be supported by some values ethical values in our case the value what that we are talking about could be stated in my view as follows the forest is a common good of the human species and its ills must be governed by the respect both for its biological diversity and for the richness of the spiritual and material culture of the people's that inhabit it the forest is not only instrumental its conservation is a value per se this value of the forest doesn't imply economic stagnation as the susana presentation showed just now it's an invitation for something that belong to the green new deal an economic life whose dynamism supposes a nature-based knowledge economy that's it thank you hello uh now we have uh mr. gasoda uh surui who is the founder of the indigenous cultural center uh wago pakoba and a member of the science panel for the amazon and uh you will uh have about 10 minutes to present it after that we will have some questions uh pertains to the clan on the map which is one of the four clan groups that compose the paite society so i belong to the group on the map which in portuguese means maribond black and i am formed in tourism master in geography and i am currently doing a doctorate in geography by the federal university of rondonia and i am coordinator of the cultural center wago pakoba which is the initiative of the paite people to work with the strengthening of the paite culture and at the same time with the value and preservation of our forests here in our territory and 20 years ago the entry of an indigenous within a university was our biggest challenge today every year there are 10 15 surui in the university so this is a achievement for us so that's why i say that nothing is impossible for those who are always looking for better days for their people and for the society what is part right which is our case today we are trying to look for better quality of life for our people and at the same time trying to contribute with society with our thinking with our vision of the future right so today it is through these students who are in the university today we are having this opportunity to create indigenous researchers within the academy who want something that didn't exist in the past our ancients who are our greatest knowledge that today most of us are no longer among us was lost very big so our knowledge the review of our knowledge was only on the basis of orality today what we learn with our parents with our grandparents and what we learn inside the university today it is published so this is already different so this means that what indigenous people think about our life becomes public so this for us is already a achievement so what is missing today in this sense is that people know what we indigenous people think that people recognize when indian says that she needs to have her territory guaranteed that she needs to have her culture valued and respected it's not from the mouth out it's because she really feels that she needs that to live we indigenous people always take care of what is ours right especially our territory in the past the indigenous lands were not marked was not recognized by the government by society today most indigenous lands here in brazil are marked homologated by the government so to make better management of our territory we did ethnic environmental diagnostics participative of our territory that generated in manual to orient the people of paeter not only the generation of now but in the future of how we can use to take care of our territory so from that we created several projects that today are being executed here inside the territory so inside the area of protection we created a group of indigenous environmental agents that are people who work directly on the issue of fiscalization around the area and are always taking care of the natural resources that are inside the forest and in this small space that we have we have to take care of and protect in every sense what is inside for us to offer for our food our culture our health our education so that's why we indigenous people our house here paeter through this management plan we create a management that really tries to always work with the protection of our territory and so we create we capacity these people to work directly on the issue of protection and fiscalization of indigenous land because what we indigenous people do through the planet mainly in the matter of the forest on foot contributes not only to us for many people in the sense of the balance of climate change that really guarantees the well-being for each one so through our research as researchers indigenous we are writing we are publishing this it's not like it was in the past people from outside came to do research with us and write not the way we think so today it's different we indigenous people are writing what we think together with our family together with our community and together with our people so what is missing is this this recognition for everyone right for the university for the government and for organizations that work directly with indigenous issues because I believe that if there is a dialogue of construction and recognition of the importance of each one here will be very promising what we want to think about the future of our people of our society in a collective way the knowledge of each people is important in the life of everyone the knowledge of indigenous peoples is important for the brazilian society as well as is also important for the indigenous people's life the problem to solve our life within is within the knowledge of any people so that's why we people have to value the knowledge of each one and for society to have access to this knowledge is necessary that it has this junction the indigenous knowledge together with the non-indigenous knowledge and the non-indigenous knowledge together with indigenous knowledge so it's worth for other communities also traditional communities that play because I believe that each people with their culture has their knowledge in every area of knowledge education culture environment health why am I talking about this today in the middle of the pandemic we indigenous peoples we are keeping our traditional medicine to fight this virus so many are taking care of medicine and other cases more serious are not so needing to go to the city so they are needing to go to the city so that's why we still don't know because some knowledge exists cure for this evil but only that we still don't know in which knowledge of people is this problem solution for us so that's why we have to believe in several forms of knowledge of each people because we indigenous people want to very well contribute and at the same time we want people to recognize this accept and say to us we are here let's fight together so that's what we want today through this achievement of space that we have today and we are ready to fight together white black indian so we have this opportunity we take our knowledge in several areas mainly within the academy so that our knowledge has knowledge of everyone and so we try to look for a path that way we can try to understand better so that she can really contribute to the better future of humanity I would just like to say that I am happy to be part of the panel because for me it was a surprise at the same time we are always believing that we can get far because every day that passes we are conquering our space our work is being recognized so this is very important and for me to be part of the panel also I understand this way for me it is a achievement for me so I am very happy and I am always contributing with my knowledge as an indigenous people and show the world who I am because we need to take the fight and the name of our people to the whole world because as I said the whole world we all need to know each other remember back to you okay you hear me now yes okay that's great thank you very much everybody for this really fascinating session I don't have time to summarize I think we had better open up right away to questions given the time so the first the first question is there anyone in the science panel working with development of models for bioeconomy in the amazon region of colombia how is the panel tackling the rapid expansion of cattle production I think we just better start with one this is from jessica lopez is there anyone in the science panel working with development of models for bioeconomy in the amazon region of colombia and if so how's it going hikardo susana hikardo susana susana you may need to unmute yourself there you go okay there we go there there is a lot of work being done on the bioeconomies of all of western amazonia it's an area that has a long history of medicinal and psychotropic plants as I say I live in california where you know the psychotropic plants are extraordinary interest and also abused not just for spiritual advancement but also on using things like ayahuasca on for questions of dealing with addiction which is of course a general problem the this issue is which I raised in my presentation is that there's lots of value that's being generated that exists in amazonia but the elaboration of its complexity and the capture of its value is occurring outside so outside of the amazon so one of the central problems is how does one capture the value and use it to invest in the amazon to improve the general well-being the problem that exists is of course the bio what the biopiracy problem more generally in the question that was also raised about issues of property and intellectual rights indigenous knowledge systems and their rights over these these are not very well resolved and so these these remain complex questions but there's been a lot of work on the bioeconomy and potential bioeconomies of california not to mention that it's the one of the largest economies based on amazonian production which is coca but all of the other okay uh let's can you hear me so sorry about this okay yes so the next question uh for uh for mr gasodá surui uh para fortalecer a sua luta é aqui horário de randonia são 1126 então ainda aqui é bom dia né então é onde nós chegamos pra nós já é uma conquista então eu acredito que é cada dia que passa nós estamos em busca de dias melhores pra todos né como eu falei no video pra todos nós humanos seres humanos do planeta terra e então cada dia que passa é o nosso trabalho como o povo indígena gestão coletiva do nosso território uso sustentável do nosso território tá sendo é reconhecido pelo mundo então isso pra nós já é um motivo de muita alegria né então eu acredito que é isso nós já deixa fortalecido então é então então a ideia é que cada dia que passa mas gente acreditar e os povos indígena precisa ser respeitado porque não é a toa que eles defendem o futuro da humanidade através da preservação das florestas dos territórios da amazônia então porque de alguma forma manter a floresta em pé pode beneficiar a vida humana através de então é isso que nós povos acreditamos povos indígena acreditamos então cada dia que passa as pessoas reconhece isso então é então a gente acredita que as pessoas que reconhece o nosso trabalho falem do nosso trabalho do nosso povo pra sua família pro seu povo pro seu município pro seu estado e assim multiplicar as vozes do conhecimento do povo indígena que pode muito bem contribuir pro futuro da humanidade então é isso que nós esperamos através de escola através de universidade através de organizações não governamentais que trabalham com os povos indígena principalmente essa informação essa realidade chegar até ouvido das nossas autoridades dos nossos governos que são hoje os nossos maiores desafio para o reconhecimento e a importância da luta dos povos indígena hoje no brasil então a gente espera chegar dessa forma conquistar cada um um por um até chegar numa estância maior e assim a gente poder dizer que alcançamos o nosso objetivo que é de contribuir um futuro melhor pro nosso país então é assim dessa forma que nós povos indígena pensamos com a nossa conquista de cada dia então todo dia a nossa luta é importante muito muito muito obrigada então a próxima the next question is from Luciana Cisarino and this is for mr leal is the strategy of working by collab with collaborative collaboratively with communities in the amazon a way to empower those individuals and communities there are some legal criticisms about your methods could you speak a little about that hello are you yes oh sorry we have a long relationship story of relationship with communities we started we we helped to build to build the legislation of the the the how do you say andrea may you help me a little bit about this but we have been involved in the the enhancement of the legislation and the learning about how to be to be connected to different communities and to empower them to to to to help them to enhance the community the quality of life as a whole being partner of those communities the social leaders and connecting in many different ways than with the needs the ones that provide their needs so i think we have a an interesting story it's a challenging as we said it's a learning a continuous learning process we deal with this with a high degree of transparency trying to learn day after day and as uh gasoda says the the the culture the knowledge of uh indigenous peoples not non-indigenous business people local people uh hibirinos uh kilombollas and and so on uh uh uh we we we tried to produce this network of knowledge and and sharing value uh i i think perhaps andrea could help me a little bit yeah let me pitch in a little bit uh yes we we do measure the progress in the empowerment of the economic activities and social activities and institutional activities with which we engage with the different communities in the amazon and and yes we were part of the we really influenced the biodiversity law in brazil in the early 2000s as as an organization and we we work together to create the legislative um framework that would help we have been doing this and sharing back both in the investments that have been made in the in the region with the sourcing of the materials and with access benefits sharing be it for traditional knowledge and cultural heritage or biodiversity access and i think i guess the the two indicators we have that you know although not perfect that we are evolving the model and and continuously working towards giving back and empowering these organizations in these these communities to be able to actually thrive is that we have never had um monopolistic approaches they are you know free to negotiate with whomever they want since the beginning there is no uh concentration of of any uh resource that we buy from them and we have worked with them in in strengthening their um cooperative or community resilience with institutions and i think when we were awarded the union for ethical bio biotraic seal from uebt two years ago i think that's a third party endorsement that uh we are doing best that is currently available but like gidemi said this is an ongoing program of learning and improving and learning and improving and just one quick thing well i just wanted to wrap up on one final thing is uh in columbia for the previous question natura has initiated work with um both angiroba and um angiroba and kubasu with bio economic models in the regions of kaketa and lechicia and we're learning from those as well so that that was my question so here's a question for katalus i think from mark jade how can we scale ecosystem conservation activities in a way that they don't conflict with the needs of indigenous peoples and i i think along those lines uh how do you protect the uh investments of indigenous peoples and how do you decide who's provided the information well i will be briefed because we are uh exceeding our uh plan time uh of course the the amazon is is still very large we have uh obviously the obligation to demarcate all indigenous territories to really to give much more uh to respect indigenous rights to their territories uh so there is still a lot of work to do keeping in mind uh also that indigenous people as susana mentioned i mean they practice agroecology for 12 000 years in the amazon so we have to respect their their their way of seeing the the value of forest the rivers uh so but of course the the amazon is is very large in terms of forest so it's quite possible to have to respect indigenous rights in their territories to demarcate what's still to be demarcated particularly in brazil uh but and also to have a huge area for conservation for maintaining biodiversity uh and really to maintaining climate stability maintaining ecosystem services and the third element still totally possible because uh the the current model of development with the structural forest has deforested something like 1 million square kilometers uh 25 percent abandoned very low uh low yield agriculture so there is room for agroforestry systems to be also developed for use of all populations in the amazon so i see that that's actually a challenge how you merge these three systems one is conservation of uh more or less intact forest uh the other is really demarcating all indigenous territories kilombola territories protecting traditional community riverine communities all other communities and third you know how to restore the forest in areas which have been deforested in the last 50 years so this is actually a big challenge for the panel the panel in its part three is seeking for solution spaces a sustainable pathway and we have very large number of authors and we we had a few of them here today sharing their views so i'm very confident that as we advance in making this analysis this part three of the science panel is very important because it's not only a review of existing scientific knowledge really it's it's a proposal it's a proposal that would value tremendously one word that's we hear during the webinar many many times diversity diversity this is a new bi economy focus on diversity it's not focused on removing the forest and replacing with one species or with one type of business it's diversity diversity in all senses respecting cultural diversity all the tremendous ecosystem diversity biodiversity genetic diversity aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems diversity so we have to build the solution pathways on diversity in all aspects so i think that that would certainly be something very important for us to build together and this is the first time we are really putting together all these communities the scientific communities other stakeholders indigenous leaders like like we had gas all down here showing beautifully the views of indigenous people how they feel they must be empowered so i see that we are really moving in the right direction and i'm very hopeful that we this report the science panel will make a big difference a big difference for respecting diversity in all dimensions in the amazon and to construct a very different never thought before in the last several hundred years i would say perhaps that's the way the indigenous people developed the amazon they came 12 000 years ago they kept the forest they are in balance with all this ecological diversity including the micro-organisms so we have really to learn a lot from that and to build this new bioeconomy it's a very general way of describing and the riccardo bravo i also brought some very interesting perspectives susana hilerni leo and andrea that includes this diversity and also includes improving the livelihoods of all amazonian people and particularly a new bioeconomy focus on the amazonian people more than anybody else so i think uh or quimery if you if you think perhaps this will be our wrap up i think that's right yeah well and i would like really again to thank a lot uh gaso da susana andrea hilerni riccardo coimbra and all the organizers i think this was really very inspiring i feel very inspired by your talks fascinating visions and we have really to build this vision the science panel is not only to do a one time product that we are going to deliver in march end of march but really we want to construct a network a network of stakeholders including all traditional people of the amazon and uh really to build a almost permanent uh group of people interested in finding the solution space to maintain the amazon forest it's biodiversity and particularly all its people thanks a lot to all of you this was the first webinar thanks a lot to to emma torres to isabella to all of you who organized this meeting and this is the first one we are going to have a continued number of webinars dealing with many aspects but particularly seeking solutions that's really a very important goal for the science panel thank you very much all of you and see you shortly i hope in the next webinar thank you bye bye