Beyond the Amazon – Brazil’s six biomes shape a global climate story

No ecosystem on Earth is more central to climate change and biosphere stability than the Amazon. The largest tropical forest on the planet, it harbors around 10 percent of global biodiversity, discharges 20 percent of all the freshwater flowing from continents into the oceans, and stores vast quantities of carbon, while actively regulating rainfall patterns and atmospheric circulation across South America and beyond.

Deforestation in the Amazon is the single largest source of emissions in Brazil, and, at the same time, has measurable effects on precipitation levels in the south and southwest of the country and in neighboring nations. Nearly a fifth of its vegetation cover has already been removed, largely to make way for cattle ranching and soy production. Scientists warn the forest may be approaching a tipping point beyond which degradation becomes self-reinforcing – a cascade of drying cycles that could irreversibly alter atmospheric circulation with consequences for the planet that no model can fully predict. What happens to the Amazon is a matter of global survival.

Yet, framing the Amazon as a stand-alone problem obscures the larger picture. Brazil is home to six biomes and 213 million people, creating extraordinarily complex socio-economic challenges and opportunities. A meaningful and consequential discussion of each biome demands an understanding of all six.

That is the premise behind the Lemann Dialogue at the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies next month, an interdisciplinary debate. This year’s theme – Six Biomes, Multiple Realities, One Country – takes on the full breadth of Brazil’s ecological and human geography.

The Atlantic Forest was the first Brazilian biome to be systematically exploited and destroyed. Exploitation began with the arrival of Europeans on the coast of Brazil and, over the following five centuries, led to the reckless destruction of the forest for wood harvesting and energy production, together with unsustainable, wasteful practices to produce sugar, coffee, and cattle. Today, the biome – spanning 17 states and home to 70 percent of Brazil’s population – has lost more than 85 percent of its original area. But there is hope as the Atlantic Forest is no longer just a story of loss. Deforestation has been contained, and restoration is underway. The Atlantic Forest is becoming Brazil’s first proof that a generation can leave an ecosystem in better condition than it found it.

A different logic drove the conversion of the Cerrado biome, Brazil’s vast tropical savanna – and, in many ways, the forgotten dimension of the climate and biodiversity crisis. Often described as “the cradle of waters,” the Cerrado is the source of eight of Brazil’s 12 major river basins, including headwaters that feed into the Amazon and the Pantanal. It is also one of the world’s most biodiverse savannas and one of the most threatened: Roughly half of its original vegetation is already gone. But unlike the Atlantic Forest, the original biome was not lost to a long, disorganized destruction, but rather to a technological shift in agricultural practices that made the production of several products – including beef and soybeans – profitable and scalable in the Cerrado. The conversion of the Cerrado is directly linked to Brazil’s rise as an agricultural superpower.

The Pantanal is the world’s largest floodplain, occupying a basin in Brazil’s center-west and spilling into Bolivia and Paraguay. Its extraordinary diversity depends on the pulse of flooding – defined by seasonal inundation cycles – and on the interaction and connectivity with the adjacent plateaus. That interconnection means the Pantanal cannot be understood, or saved, in isolation. In recent years, the Pantanal has seen an intense dry period, to which the interplay between climate change and land use on the plateaus – much of which lies in the Cerrado – may be contributing. The catastrophic fires of 2020, which burned nearly a third of the biome, made visible what scientists had long documented: The Pantanal is changing rapidly, and the drivers of that change extend well beyond its borders.

The Caatinga is a uniquely Brazilian biome covering most of the semi-arid northeast. It is the third-most deforested and degraded biome, behind the Atlantic Forest and the Cerrado, and is poorly known or valued both inside and outside Brazil. Despite its reputation for aridity, it harbors high biodiversity: almost 5,000 plant species and over 1,100 animal species. It covers 862,000 square kilometers – the only biome entirely exclusive to Brazil – and is home to 27 million people. The region has historically suffered severe famines because of droughts, which persist and appear to be worsening with the changing climate.

The Pampa is Brazil’s smallest and least visible biome – a temperate grassland occupying the southern half of Rio Grande do Sul state and extending into Uruguay and Argentina – and perhaps its most misunderstood. Unlike the other five biomes, it contains no tropical forest and generates few international headlines. But according to MapBiomas data, the Pampa has lost a greater share of its native vegetation over the past four decades than any other Brazilian biome – nearly 30 percent since 1985, an area of approximately 3.8 million hectares. Surprisingly, the biome where the relationship between people and nature is least confrontational is the one where destruction is fastest.

Six Biomes, Multiple Realities, One Country. Brazil is the largest exporter of agricultural products in the world: it leads exports of soy, orange juice, coffee, cellulose pulp for paper, beef, and poultry. At the same time, it protects approximately 55 percent of its territory through indigenous reserves, parks, and private reserves, although compliance is poor. A better understanding of each of the six biomes is a fundamental step towards the dream of a single country that is both the world’s farm and the planet’s great ecological reserve – while benefiting the people connected to the landscape.

To learn more, join us on April 2-3 for the 10th Lemann Dialogue.

Marcelo Medeiros is a Salata Climate Action Fellow and chairperson of re.green, a company committed to restoring one million hectares of tropical forest.

Marcia C.de Castro is Andelot Professor of Demography, Global Health and Population at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

With contributions from Marcelo Leite, journalist, Folha de São Paulo; Sandro Dutra e Silva, professor, Evangelical University of Goiás; Renato Roscoe, executive director, Instituto Taquari Vivo.