By Lucas Guaraldo*
The United Nations Climate Conference, COP30, which will take place in November in Belém, is bringing the Amazon to the center of the global discussion on climate, but it cannot leave out debates and proposals on the Cerrado, warns a policy brief developed by scientists from IPAM (Amazon Environmental Research Institute). With the advance of deforestation, the biome increasingly needs solutions adapted to the reality of the savannah, say the researchers.
Despite being the most biodiverse savannah on the planet and concentrating 60% of Brazil’s agricultural production, the Cerrado is still under-represented in national policies and on the international climate agenda. Currently, of the more than 30,000 Bills, Constitutional Amendments and Provisional Measures currently before the Chamber of Deputies, only eight deal with the protection or creation of specific conservation areas for the biome.
According to the Brazilian Forest Code, the percentage of Legal Reserve is 20% for properties in the Cerrado; and 35% for Cerrado areas located in the Legal Amazon. In practice, this means that although around 45% of the total area of private properties is still covered by native vegetation, up to 31 million hectares, equivalent to the area of Poland or seven times the area of the state of Rio de Janeiro, remain open to legal deforestation.
“Savannah and grassland vegetation have historically been neglected and their strengthening and inclusion in the scope of national and international anti-deforestation legislation is fundamental to regulating the climate and maintaining the hydrological cycles in the Cerrado. Without this, the very competitiveness of Brazilian agribusiness could be jeopardized in the long term, threatening key sectors of the economy and increasing the risk of water and food insecurity,” recalls Dhemerson Conciani, a researcher at IPAM and one of the authors of the policy brief.
Since 1985, according to data from the MapBiomas Network, of which IPAM is a member, the Cerrado has lost 40 million hectares of native vegetation, becoming one of the main vectors of Brazilian greenhouse gas emissions. Private rural areas accounted for 72% of all deforestation in the biome in the period, which has already accumulated more than 14 million hectares of degraded pastures, an indication of the inefficient use of the land.
In the same period, almost half of the biome has been burned at least once, surpassing the mark of 89 million hectares affected by fire. In 2024 alone, more than 9.7 million hectares were affected by fires, an area larger than the state of Santa Catarina. In 2025, even at the beginning of the most intense period of fires, fire had already affected 1.2 million hectares. MapBiomas data also shows that the recurrent use of fire is responsible for 58% of the area burned on private properties.
“Together, the Amazon and Cerrado accounted for 83% of deforestation in 2024, with the Cerrado accounting for more than half of all deforestation in the country. They are interdependent ecosystems that need to be considered together in mitigation and adaptation policies. We hope that the COP will be an instrument that amplifies this interdependence and helps to build solutions for the most biodiverse savannah on the planet,” adds Conciani.
Paying for conservation
As an important measure for protecting the remnants of native vegetation in the biome, the policy brief suggests implementing payment policies for environmental services, with a focus on encouraging the conservation of areas and combating legal deforestation. Specific credit lines for intensifying production, which discourage the opening up of new areas, as well as strengthening the National PES Policy(Law 14.119/2021), could create an environment conducive to public and private investment in conservation, accelerating the transition to a more sustainable rural economy, the researchers argue.
Programs such as Conserv, a financial mechanism created by IPAM which pays rural producers in the Legal Amazon for maintaining areas of native vegetation beyond what is required by the Forest Code and which could be legally deforested, have shown promising results in reducing legal deforestation. Even after the end of payments for the first stage of the program, producers continue to preserve areas beyond what is required by law.
Since 2020, the project has signed 32 contracts with landowners and companies in the states of Mato Grosso, Pará and Maranhão. In total, more than 27,000 hectares of vegetation beyond the Legal Reserve have been protected, preventing the emission of more than 2 million tons of CO₂ and contributing to ecosystem services essential to agricultural production, such as rainfall and climate predictability.
IPAM journalist, lucas.itaborahy@ipam.org.br*