By Márcia Soares, Amazon & Partnerships Manager,
and Liz LacerdaProject Coordinator,
both of the Vale Funda founding member of Latimpacto.
This year marks the 30th United Nations Climate Change Conference in Belém, Pará, Brazil. Although the Amazon is not the conference’s main focus, choosing this venue spotlights the biome’s pivotal role in the climate debate. This is one of the planet’s most biodiverse tropical forests and a key regulator of global climate through its influence on the carbon cycle and rainfall patterns across South America. Due to deforestation and land use, Brazil ranks sixth among greenhouse gas–emitting countries.
The reality that occurs “beneath the tree canopy”—that is, in rural and urban communities—reflects at least three cross-cutting themes of COP30: adaptation to climate change, climate finance for developing countries, and climate justice.
According to the PNAD 2023, approximately 30 million people live in the Legal Amazon; it is the region with the highest proportion of young people and working-age population in the country. In parallel, the Amazônia Revelada project, carried out by a diverse group of Amazonian researchers, has documented ancestral socioecological technologies developed by indigenous peoples for the management and cultivation of the forest. Current agroforestry systems, the domestication of plant species, and the ability to coexist with diversity and complexity are part of the legacy of these peoples.
However, the potential of this biome is threatened by insufficient investment in youth retention and training, the limited use of traditional knowledge to address the climate crisis, and a financial structure that has not yet adapted to the needs and opportunities of the sociobioeconomy.
Vale, the mining company that has been operating in the Amazon for 40 years, defined three priority areas for its participation in COP30: decarbonization; nature-based solutions (NBS); and just transition. The Vale Fund, created 15 years ago to promote a more sustainable, fair, and inclusive economy, focuses its philanthropic efforts on the latter two.
We believe this COP is a call to action and a debate on concrete solutions. We already have abundant scientific information on the state of the planet, and the situation is critical. It's time to show what's being done, share solutions adaptable to different contexts, and commit to collaborative actions. It's also time to attract more solid international investments—since this is a global cause—that reach the territories and unify Pan-Amazonian wills in a collective agenda.
For us, nature-based solutions are key to ensuring greater resilience and adaptation to the effects of climate change, while placing people and communities at the center of the transition to a low-carbon economy. In the Amazon, our priority territory of action, we conceive the bioeconomy as the convergence of these two components: NBS and just transition.
Command and control measures, while essential, have not been enough to curb deforestation. The Vale Fund is committed to the bioeconomy as a high-impact complement. According to the World Bioeconomy Forum's State of the Global Bioeconomy report, this sector is already worth $4 trillion, and the Boston Consulting Group estimates it could reach $30 trillion by 2050. How can this potential be harnessed in the Amazon?
A study by Salo Coslovsky of New York University identified 64 products exported from the Amazon between 2017 and 2019. Fish, fruits, and peppers represented just 0.17% of a global market worth $176 billion annually. The Brazil nut trade, for example, generates $350 million annually; Bolivia leads with 74%, followed by Peru (16%) and Brazil (11%). Cocoa production in Pará reaches a productivity of 950 kg/ha. These data show enormous scope for growth, conservation, and local income generation. The rainforest is not an obstacle, but a driver of prosperity. We must convince the public that conserving and restoring forests is good business, both economically and for the climate.
We support and invest in initiatives to keep the forest standing or restore it, and at COP30 we will share lessons and results from these collective efforts. We believe in the power of networks and alliances, and Belém will be an opportunity to strengthen those ties.
One example is the Vale Forest Goal, a commitment to protect and restore 500,000 hectares by 2030, which promotes productive agroforestry models. To date, more than 18,000 hectares have been restored in four biomes and nine states, with an investment of R$220 million in nine impact businesses, generating approximately 1,300 jobs and planting more than 60 species.
We also support strengthening and acceleration programs, such as Sustenta.Bio (with the federal government for production chains in Extractive Reserves), AMAZ (the main accelerator in Northern Brazil), Jornada Amazônia (innovation ecosystem for forestry startups) and Assobio (75 sociobioeconomy ventures that promote food based on a positive nature at COP30).
Our support also includes land tenure regularization policies, infrastructure improvements in Belém, the use of predictive technologies, public policies against deforestation, connectivity for traditional communities, adapted financial instruments, and market access programs, among others. The COP30 Presidency letter calls on the 197 signatory countries to a global "mutirão" to address climate change, highlighting the importance of the Amazon and promoting innovation to fulfill the Paris Agreement. Ambassador André Corrêa do Lago, President of COP30, states that the world must act "out of conviction or catastrophe." The call is for governments, civil society, the private sector, and individuals to step forward and assume concrete responsibilities. "The spirit of the "mutirão" is to join forces and assume responsibility for positive change, rather than just demanding or waiting." We firmly believe in this path.
