March 13, 2024
Update
Apple's Restore Fund will grow new roots in the Atlantic Forest
Restore Fund projects in South America are restoring the land one seedling at a time.
In the Atlantic forest of South America, many suggest that life is based on the mother—the supreme matriarch who provides all. This affects the plants and animals and even the trees that grow above them reaching up to the sky to provide shade for the life in the brush.
It is estimated that there are currently 5,000 species of trees in the Atlantic Forest. Two-thirds of these species are threatened with extinction after centuries of exploitation and exploitation. Restoring the rainforest — 100 million hectares of restoration space in Brazil alone — is one of Apple's supported projects in the region, including a company from the coastal city of Trancoso in Bahia, Brazil. Seedlings from Mother treesThe most resilient trees from the many species that survived the destruction of the rainforest.
“We started with the best genetic material collected in a large local reserve in the Atlantic rainforest,” said Bruno Mariani, founder and CEO of forest management and investment company Symbiosis. “This attracts many animals and insects.”
In the year Founded in 2008, Symbiosis has been collecting, planting and planting mother trees from various Brazilian native species since 2010. All of them,” says Symbiosis Plant Nursery Manager Michael Mello.
Symbiosis is one of three investments that are part of Apple's Restore Fund, announced in 2021, to expand nature-based solutions to combat climate change. In partnership with Goldman Sachs and Conservation International, Restore Fund has invested in three decarbonisation projects across Brazil and Paraguay to deliver benefits beyond carbon – from strengthening local livelihoods to boosting biodiversity.
It consists of 160 different species that were planted for the first time, which were distributed in the area where the collection of wood is permanently prohibited, the symbiosis has expanded the restoration of endangered native trees. In an effort to reduce biodiversity loss, Symbiosis has committed to preserving 40 percent of its land as natural and diversified forests, with the rest providing valuable hardwoods from responsibly managed sources. By 2024 alone, it aims to plant 800 hectares of biodiversity forest land and plant more than 1 million saplings on 1,000 hectares.
“Trees work in groups like a network,” says Mariani. “They're social creatures and they want to help each other. Different species have roots that go to different depths of the soil so they don't compete – they're cooperating.”
The Atlantic Forest is found along the eastern coast of South America, starting in northeastern Brazil and moving farther inland down to southeastern Paraguay and northern Argentina. It is about 40 miles wide at its northern end and about 200 miles inland from the southern Atlantic coast. After more than 500 years of deforestation, the rainforest has been depleted by 80 percent, and the land has been turned into farmland for coffee, cacao, sugar cane and other crops. And it is used as pasture for cattle. Much of the rainforest's valuable hardwoods have been depleted – including Brazilian and Brazilian rosewood, which is used for furniture, construction and even musical instruments like guitars. A similar movement is taking place at Amazon today.
Estimates show that about 40 million hectares, or 100 million acres, of the Atlantic Forest have potential for regeneration. The Symbiosis forestry approach aims to create high-quality sustainable working forests, one of the most important tools for carbon sequestration, while continuing the fight against climate change. “We're balancing wood production and carbon stocks,” explained Alan Battista, Symbiosis' chief financial officer, who studies forestry and whose work spans plant distribution in the pulp and paper industry, business strategy, economics and finance.
“Wood biomass stores a lot of carbon here, and we know that a lot of carbon is stored in the soil,” says Battista. “So when it comes to harvesting, we have to think from the beginning to the end of the cycle. The management we're looking at here is continuous cover forest management, which means we manage it permanently. It's always covered by forest.
To calculate carbon stored on land, Symbiosis combines Space Intelligence's satellite data, ecosystem intelligence and machine learning to map land cover, land cover change and forest carbon. Satellite data is combined with readings from the Forescanner app, which takes field measurements with a LiDAR scanner on an iPhone, to determine age and growth rate. “They're helping us determine assets and land use—how much grazing land, forest areas, and deforestation,” Battista explained.
Part of the screening process involved indigenous communities identifying areas designated as land where Symbiosis hopes to soon identify and collect seeds from the mother trees on their land. After visiting the Amazon in 2007, she was inspired to see how an indigenous community had reforested an area ravaged by logging along the Peruvian border.
“They took me there when the leaders were talking about climate change,” says Mariani. They took me back to the forest. And this looks like a forest. “It was inspiring to see the restorative power of nature and how traditional knowledge can be combined with science.”
More than 1,600 miles southwest of Trancoso, another restoration fund project is underway at Forestal Apepu in Paraguay's San Pedro province.
In this southwestern Atlantic forest region, Forester Apepu is cultivating fast-growing eucalyptus forests on lands deforested decades ago, preserving the remaining natural forest and planting native species in trials. Forestal Apepu focuses on high-quality timber with a focus on additional carbon sequestration and long-term storage space on its forest land. They hope that the hardwood products produced from their high-quality timber will ease the pressure on natural forests; As a result, even after a tree is cut down, carbon is stored in long-lived wood products.
A core part of Forestal Apepu's work extends beyond the forest's borders: the project is supporting local communities in neighboring San Estanislao, Paraguay through a series of social impact initiatives.
The landlocked region depends on the forest for its timber, wood and agricultural needs. As part of the Apple Restoration Fund, Forestal Apepu is working with local communities to identify additional sources of income that will alleviate the pressure on local timber forests. These sources include eucalypt plantations certified by the company's Forestry Coordinating Council, land leasing under the exporter model (where smallholders are provided with seedlings and technical support to grow and manage timber), local women's association chicken production, and yirba accompaniment. Cultivation.
Graciela Jimenez has lived in Curruo, a town of approximately 1,200 people, for 40 years. Every morning she wakes up at 5 o'clock and begins her daily routine: feeding and changing the water for her chickens, cleaning the house, cooking for the family and taking care of any needs that arise for the women's association that she helps and is the president of. of
“I'm always in the community,” Gimenez said. “They like that I have the power to make things happen.”
After several meetings with Forestal Apepu social relations officer Gladys Nunez, Jimenez and the women of the community came together to develop a source of income from poultry farming. In the past, households had irregular incomes mainly from day labor on nearby lands. In the year
“We must take care of our neighbors, they must be our allies,” Nunez said. “People from communities working in Apepu, including myself, learn every day about forest management, health and safety, pesticides, or better use of natural resources. This education helps the environment as a community.
Ramon Mariotti, the leader of the Palomita 1 community who settled in the area after the drought and devastation of the Chaco region in 1962, has been growing yerba mate, the only substance that quenches their thirst for many Paraguayans in the area. . Mariotti's father taught him the ins and outs of farming, including knowing when the leaves are ready, how carefully they are hand-picked, how they are dried and ground, and how to decide which ones are best to sell.
“Ever since we got here, we realized how rich this land is,” says Mariotti. It's like we have a natural supermarket around us: we can plant anything.
To help expand the harvest, Mariotti has been working with Forestal Apepu's Alberto Florentin to improve their planting process, including knowing when to plant and how close together they should be.
Florentin spent 40 years as a forest engineer throughout Paraguay, first with the Forest Service, then at the Center for National Parks at Musee Moise Bertoni, a nature reserve that helped recruit park rangers from local indigenous communities. . Florentin attests to the knowledge he gained from his many visits to different regions of Paraguay to survive anywhere in the country and help others thrive on the land alone.
“I want people here to see things grow and make sure we don't leave it a desert for future generations,” Florentin said. “With climate change, things are getting more and more difficult – water sources are shrinking, and it's harder to find things to grow. So I want to make sure they have all the resources to continue growing.”
Beyond its community projects, Forestal Apepu is looking for ways to manage land security in the forested area.
A bioacoustic monitoring experiment is recording the sounds of the forest, which a partner team of biologists will use to determine the level of biodiversity in the forest using artificial intelligence and machine learning.
At the Forestal Apepu project sites in Paraguay and Brazil's Symbiosis, efforts to document, protect and restore the flora and fauna of each region may seem disconnected, but they dig beneath the surface and share common goals. They have been taken for granted on earth for a long time.
As Symbiosis' Mariani realized when he first started thinking about the company and solidifying its name, “It's a mutually beneficial collaboration between different species — the opposite of dependency.” What I want to do is symbiosis. It's a win-win for everybody,” he said.
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Sean Redding
Apple
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