An important carbon sink with an enormous capacity to infiltrate water into the soil and ensure the replenishment of aquifers in Brazil’s semi-arid region, the caatinga is the country’s biome most threatened by desertification. The recovery of 10 million hectares of degraded land in the biome is one of the main goals of the Brazilian Action Plan to Combat Desertification and Mitigate the Effects of Drought, known as PAB-Brasil, launched Tuesday (Dec. 16) in Brasília.

Unveiled by the Brazilian Ministry of the Environment and Climate Change, the plan includes 175 initiatives focused on combating desertification and recovering degraded land in all Brazilian biomes by 2045.

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“By doing so, we want to leverage the entire socio-productive restoration process, ensuring the recovery of degraded soil and vegetation, water availability, healthy food production, job creation, and other ecosystem services,” said Alexandre Pires, director of the ministry’s Department for Combating Desertification.

According to the United Nations, environmental degradation caused by poor land use and drought intensified by climate change are the main causes of desertification – which is the loss of the land’s productive capacity. Arid, semi-arid, and dry sub-humid regions are the most threatened, but worldwide, 75 percent of the population could be affected in the coming decades.

In Brazil, according to a study released in June by the Superintendence for the Development of the Northeast (Sudene), desertification threatens the productive capacity of the soil in 18 percent of the Brazilian territory. Thirty-nine million people live in the caatinga region, which is mainly concentrated in the Northeast.

Brazilian biomes

In addition to the caatinga, the cerrado and Atlantic forest are already under threat and, according to a report presented at the launch of PAB-Brasil, areas susceptible to desertification have been identified in the pantanal for the first time.

In view of this, all indigenous peoples, traditional communities, and family farmers have been included in the registry for payment for environmental services – a public policy to promote sustainable development that compensates those who promote conservation and environmental improvement.

“Only together will we make progress in combating desertification and mitigating the effects of drought,” said Edel Moraes, the ministry’s national secretary for traditional peoples and communities and sustainable rural development.

Among the initiatives are the construction of an early warning system for desertification and drought, financial support for the development of state plans to combat desertification and mitigate the effects of drought, the creation of conservation units, and landscape connectivity through the restoration of native vegetation.

Brazil has been recognized by the World Health Organization (WHO) as the largest country in the world to eliminate mother-to-child transmission of HIV – known as vertical transmission – as a public health problem. The nation’s Health Minister Alexandre Padilha made the announcement on CanalGov Friday (Dec. 15).

According to Minister Padilha, the board of the Joint United Nations Program on HIV and AIDS (UNAIDS), together with representatives from the WHO, will visit Brazil this week to officially present the certification to the Brazilian government.

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“This means that Brazil has managed to eliminate it thanks to [Brazil’s national health care network], the SUS, rapid testing at basic health care units, prenatal testing, and HIV-positive pregnant women taking medication through the SUS,” Minister Padilha stated.

He recalled that, a few decades ago, Brazil had philanthropic initiatives to maintain shelters for orphans with HIV who had lost their parents to AIDS.

“They took in babies who were born with HIV and whose parents had died. Fortunately, we no longer have that in our country, nor do we have HIV transmission from pregnant women to their babies,” he pointed out.

Brazil submitted a dossier to the world organization in July with data from the SUS in Brazil, he went on to note.

Natural resource production chains in the Amazon - such as cupuaçu and açaí fruits and pirarucu fish - will receive investments of BRL 96.6 million through the Forests and Communities: Living Amazon program, announced on Tuesday (Dec. 9) in Brasília.

The initiative by the National Supply Company (Conab) will be carried out with resources from the Amazon Fund and with support from the Ministries of the Environment and Climate Change and Agrarian Development and Family Farming.

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The program will be implemented over two years with the aim of expanding the supply of forest products to the consumer market, diversifying the regional menu through the National School Feeding Program (PNAE), and increasing the supply of foods originating from socio-biodiversity and family farming to the Food Acquisition Program (PAA).

“It is a legacy that we in the Brazilian government need to leave to the forest peoples. Socio-biodiversity products need to be promoted and deserve the visibility that other products important to Brazil’s economy have,” said Conab President João Edegar Pretto.

The initiative will cover 32 projects from cooperatives and associations in the Legal Amazon region, bringing together foresters, aquaculturists, extractivists, artisanal fishers, indigenous peoples, and quilombola communities.

Each proposal may receive investments of up to BRL 2.5 million for the acquisition of equipment and infrastructure aimed at boosting the commercialization of forest products in consumer markets.

The funds will be transferred to the program by the National Bank for Economic and Social Development (BNDES), which manages the Amazon Fund. According to BNDES’ socio-environmental director, Tereza Campello, the investment was made possible by a major effort to reduce deforestation and restructure the fund’s resources, allowing for investments that will total BRL 2.2 billion in 2025.

“This Conab initiative represents almost BRL 100 million for a strategic agenda that will reach our communities and also enable a platform where we will have all the socio-biodiversity data available in the Amazon in a professional and organized manner,” concluded Tereza Campello.

In the assessment of the 30th United Nations Conference on Climate Change (COP30), held in Belém, northern Brazil, the consensus on 29 items of the climate agenda was celebrated among the 195 parties that participated in the negotiations. The final document, expected at the end of each COP, does not include other agreements that fall outside official decisions but are nonetheless reached in the multilateral setting, such as the Action Agenda.

According to Bruna Cerqueira, general coordinator of the COP30 Presidency’s Action Agenda, producing a document at the end of COP30 with 120 plans to accelerate climate initiatives - and with 190 countries acting on at least one of them - was an unprecedented global achievement.

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For the first time, initiatives that support the implementation of COP decisions - developed by actors such as the private sector and subnational governments - were organized into a kind of global repository of good ideas. According to Bruna Cerqueira, the intention was to bring together voluntary actions to speed up the implementation of what has already been agreed.

“We created six axes for the Action Agenda, focused on energy, industry, and transport; on forests, biodiversity, and oceans; on food systems and agriculture; on cities, infrastructure, and water; on human and social development; and a final cross-cutting one on financing, technology, and capacity building,” Cerqueira explained.

Results

In practice, the results could already be seen throughout the activities held in Belém. One example was the global initiative for land protection, a plan to accelerate the Forests and Land Tenure (Pledge) commitment, which had already existed beforehand.

According to the member of the COP30 Presidency, a more results-oriented approach and the effort to connect negotiations to people’s lives led to greater country participation in the plan and renewed funding for the initiative.

“USD 1.7 billion was advanced, and now they have set a further target of USD 1.5 to USD 2 billion in new resources. This new phase was also accompanied by a commitment from some countries to improve their land management. Brazil, in fact, announced the demarcation of some lands during the COP as part of this commitment as well,” Cerqueira stated.

Levers

After being classified under the six axes, the initiatives received assessments based on twelve implementation levers, considering perspectives that range from the regulation of initiatives in the territories to demand, supply, and public acceptance.

“We made a diagnosis of what is going well and what needs to be prioritized, and the plans are actions to address these levers, so that we can remove the obstacles and move forward more quickly,” the general coordinator added.

As a guide for this work, the COP30 presidency used the Global Stocktake (GST), a transparency mechanism of the Paris Agreement that assesses progress on long-term greenhouse gas emission targets. Conducted every five years, the first GST was delivered during COP28, held in 2023 in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

Connection

Based on the classification and diagnosis aligned with the GST results, the Action Agenda achieved an outcome that links formal negotiations to people’s daily lives, the coordinator assesses. “If we want to transform economies and bring everyone into the structure of these six axes, every economic actor and every member of society has to understand. Hardly anyone will know paragraph X of the GST, but if you talk about energy, industry, and transport, everyone understands,” she emphasized.

With 120 plans already developed, many of them underway, Bruna Cerqueira believes that the next steps will be to ensure that the Action Agenda is strengthened at future COPs. “The next presidency has already indicated, in the agreement between Turkey and Australia, that they appreciated the structure and intend to build on it. The challenge now is to consolidate this legacy and work with them to keep everyone at the table and accelerate implementation,” Cerqueira noted.