Pará will grant threatened area to private sector – 12/18/2023 – Market

By the end of the first quarter of next year, the Pará government will launch a concession notice for reforestation of one of the environmental protection areas most under pressure from deforestation in the Amazon, Triunfo do Xingu, in the southeast of the state.

In return, the company that reforests the area will be able to exploit the site commercially, and the main source of estimated revenue is the exploration of the carbon market. The Pará government estimates that the region could generate US$81 million (R$400 million) over the 40-year concession period.

It is an area of ​​10 thousand hectares, and reforestation has the potential to sequester 2.7 million tons of CO2. The Pará government is betting on the reforestation carbon market, considered more environmentally effective and attractive for companies than in preservation areas.

It is called ARR (Forestation, Reforestation and Revegetation), which would have more liquidity due to the effectiveness of removing carbon from the atmosphere.

In reforestation areas, the Helder Barbalho (MDB) management calculates that carbon sequestration can be sold for US$30 per ton. In preservation regions, that is, where the proposal is not to reforest, but to keep the forest standing, the value can reach a third of that.

The government hopes to have the area granted by the end of the first half of next year. The company that takes it will have to make an initial investment of US$44 million (R$217 million), and the expected return on investment is 10 years.

“It is necessary to put an end to deforestation and restore the anthropized area. More and more restoration areas will gain prominence in this carbon agenda”, he tells Sheet the governor, Heler Barbalho.

The company will also be able to explore other activities such as ecological tourism and the region’s biodiversity, such as seed collection, but the expectation of greater income is even with the carbon credit market, estimates the government.

With the notice, the government of Pará legally creates the figure of the “recovery unit”, which must be expanded beyond the Triunfo do Xingu region, which timidly begins the government’s ambitious project to recover 5.6 million hectares of state forests by 2030.

The project had been presented at the beginning of the month by the governor during COP28, the UN conference on climate change, in Dubai.

“This area of ​​Triunfo do Xingu is very symbolic, as it represents restoring the main APA [área de proteção ambiental] of the state that has suffered pressure from agriculture, land grabbing and deforestation over the last few years”, says the governor.

Data from Imazon (Amazon Institute of Man and Environment), which monitors deforestation in the region, showed that this was the most deforested protected area in the entire Amazon in the first quarter of last year.

Last Monday (11), the Civil Police of Pará arrested a man accused of being the biggest deforester in the region, Franklin Weslei Lauriano da Costa.

According to the investigation, Costa is suspected of crimes such as cattle laundering (when animals from an irregular breeding area are sold to regular farms) and illegal timber trading.

He had occupied the region of the Triunfo do Xingu Environmental Protection Area since 2017, when he established a farm on the protected land, according to the government.

Between 2018 and 2022, it received fines totaling more than R$3.5 million for deforesting 2,541.49 hectares, the equivalent of more than two thousand football fields. According to the Police, between April and September of this year alone he allegedly promoted fires that deforested 3,514.67 hectares in the region.

This year, the federal government launched a similar concession initiative for the private sector, but in Atlantic forest regions, with a tender for the recovery of three national forests (Flonas) in the South region — Irati (PR), Chapecó (SC) and Três Barras (SC).

Until then, only areas for sustainable management in the Amazon had been granted, according to the Ministry of the Environment.

Five companies participated in the competition, and in November the BNDES (National Bank for Economic and Social Development) announced the winners of the contracts that will last for 35 years to explore the regions totaling 6,843.43 hectares. The idea is for companies to replace exotic plants with the planting of forests of native species.

In Flona de Irati (PR), the winner was Ibema Participações, which presented a proposal for a fixed grant of R$ 15 million (estimated premium of 35%) and a variable grant of 21.27% on gross operating revenue.

In Chapecó (SC), Transportes EAE Ltda. won the competition with the proposal for a fixed grant of R$3.26 million (total premium estimated at 69%) and a variable grant of 20.46% on gross revenue.

In Três Barras, Agrícola Tangará took the notice offering a fixed grant of R$ 36.5 million (17% premium) and a variable grant of 22.34%.