CSRio, in partnership with PUC-Rio and University of East Anglia (United Kingdom) hosted the workshop Back to Roots: the value that comes from the soil, from 11th to 13th March, in Rio de Janeiro. Professionals from various areas of knowledge joined to discuss the valuation of soil ecosystem services, and the importance of communicate it to rural producers and policymakers. Watch the video (in portuguese) for the highlights of the event.

A new study from CSRio reseachers published in Nature Ecology and Evolution presents a novel approach to identify optimal priority areas for restoration, considering multiple criteria such as biodiversity conservation, climate change mitigation and reduction of costs. In a context of multiple local, national and global targets for ecosystem restoration, the study presents a flexible tool capable of increasing restoration cost-effectiveness by up to eight times. “These restoration targets, if achieved, will bring multiple benefits for people and nature. But we show that using science to help deciding where to restore can multiply benefits and save billions of dollars in costs”, says Bernardo Strassburg, lead author of the study, coordinator of CSRio and director of International Institute for Sustainability (IIS) The study involved 25 researchers from several countries and was focused in the Brazilian Atlantic Forest, a global Biodiversity Hotspot that has lost approximately 80% of its natural cover. Brazil´s National Plan for Native Vegetation Recovery aims to restore 12 million hectares of natural vegetation, approximately 5 million of which in the Atlantic Forest. The researchers engaged with the Brazilian Ministry for the Environment since the study design, and its results are now going to be used to help defining the priority areas for restoration in the Atlantic Forest biome. Studies of priority areas setting largely focus on the conservation of existing habitats, when the distribution of species and carbon stocks can be observed in the field. Applying this approach to restoration presented unique challenges, as the distribution of its potential benefits had to be modelled. The research group estimated the original (pre-human disturbance) distribution of 762 endemic species, the potential sequestration of carbon dioxide as the forest would regrow and the costs of restoration, all of it across 1.3 million pixels of one square kilometer each. If focused on biodiversity conservation, restoration of 4% of the biome could save 30% of its species from extinction; if focused on climate change mitigation, the regrowth of the forest would remove 1.3 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. But these solutions that focus on only one of the goals are not very effective for the other goal and are very expensive. The solution that focus on climate change, for instance, would only deliver half of the avoided extinctions that the biodiversity focus solution could bring. This is where the multicriteria part of the algorithm developed comes in. By searching across 363 different scenarios, the study identifies some that perform very well for both objectives while keeping costs low. One such solution, labelled as the “Compromise” scenario, could deliver 94% of the maximum gains for biodiversity, 79% of those for climate change, while achieving 83% of the maximum reduction in costs possible. When compared with a baseline scenario where no spatial intelligence is applied and restoration is spread throughout the biome in small patches, this compromise solution increase benefits for biodiversity conservation, climate change mitigation and costs reduction by 257%, 105% and 57%, respectively. “Societies throughout the world have decided to go on this remarkable journey of recovering nature at a truly planetary scale. It is perhaps an unique opportunity, and by applying spatial intelligence to it we can have vast benefits while keeping costs at the low end. It is an approach that shows a practical way of reconciling the interests of nature conservation and agricultural production”, complements Strassburg. Read the full article: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-018-0765-2

The next CSRio Seminar, on wednesday (5), will debate “Social Innovation, Popular Education and Agroecology” with Prof. Cristhiane Amâncio, who will present his experience in the transfer of social technology and implementation of intervention methodologies in rural communities. Cristhiane is a PhD in Social Sciences with emphasis in Development, Agriculture and Society by the Federal Rural University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRRJ) and works in the areas of Rural Sociology, Popular Education and Methodologies of Intervention in Rural Communities. She is a researcher at Embrapa and professor of the Post-Graduate Program in Territorial Development and Public Policies at UFRRJ. In the last 10 years he has developed works with traditional riverside populations in the Pantanal Sul Matogrossense and professional artisanal fishermen. Currently works with family farmers and traditional communities, studying about sociology and rural extension. The event is free, open and will be held in the auditorium of Law (B8) of the Frings Building, at PUC-Rio. A certificate will be issued to participants who request it.

The next CSRio seminar invites Prof. Maureen Santos to speak about the perspectives and challenges of the Brazilian socio-environmental agenda. Prof. Maureen is an environmentalist and political scientist. She is coordinator of the Socio-Environmental Justice Program of the Heinrich Böll Foundation Brazil, and one of the organizers of the Brazilian version of the Atlas of Agribusiness: facts and figures about the corporations that control what we eat. She is a professor at the Institute of International Relations at PUC-Rio and a researcher at the Brics Policy Center. The event is free and open, and a certificate will be issued to participants who request it.