We need a Marshall Plan for the Amazon
Reforestation on a vast scale is required to avoid environmental catastrophe
The Amazon rainforest is the greatest repository of biodiversity in the world. It also plays a critical role in global water cycles and stores nearly 100bn metric tons of carbon — about a decade’s worth of global emissions.
But it is now under mortal threat. The Amazon Basin has already experienced three mega-droughts and three mega-floods in the past 12 years. We may be close to an irreversible shift: up to 60 per cent of the Amazon rainforest could be transformed into degraded savannah, with catastrophic consequences for South America and the rest of the world.
To compound this, the largest pool of yet-to-be discovered zoonotic viruses may reside in bats, primates and rodents in the Amazon. “Disease X”, an unknown pathogen that could cause the next global pandemic, could emerge from the region if we do not start mapping the risks immediately.
So far, well-intentioned public and private sector and civil society organisations have focused on tried-and-tested policies aimed at eliminating illegal deforestation and promoting economic and social development. But these are not enough by themselves.
Instead we need a revolution combining a “Marshall Plan” — aimed at reconstructing the region’s highly degraded social, economic and environmental fabric — and the equivalent of an Apollo programme to engineer an inclusive bio-economy that is in harmony with nature, and benefits the peoples of the Amazon and the world at large.
Just as the US Marshall Plan granted billions of dollars in aid to European countries devastated by the second world war, a well-resourced undertaking is required if we are to have a fighting chance of avoiding large swaths of the Amazon being turned into grassland.
This would involve reforesting more than 200,000 sq km with native tree species. Reforestation on this scale has never been attempted before. But a public-private partnership with wide-ranging social participation would be a significant source of employment for the peoples of the Amazon.
This is where the Apollo programme — the reinvention of the region’s economic system — comes in. Building a new computational bio-economy has the potential to reverse rapid deindustrialisation in countries that are rich in bio-assets. It would also provide an example to the rest of the world of an alternative model of economic development.
One new species is discovered every three days in the Amazon, using existing analogue methods. But the Amazonian library of biological knowledge is being destroyed to make space for low-productivity cattle ranching, imposing a gigantic cost on the global economy for generations to come.
A combination of autonomous robotic systems and computational and synthetic biology would give us a new basis for biological discovery and innovation. For example, the use of the fungal and microbial genetic diversity of Amazonian soils to bioengineer “precision plant microbiomes”, which optimise resistance to pests, disease and drought resistance and enhance soil fertility.
Where will the resources for this multibillion-dollar effort come from? I and my colleagues in risk transfer have argued for the creation of an Amazon Savannisation Recovery Bond. This would be a kind of reverse catastrophe bond that will pay its public and private bondholders — pension funds, institutional investors and the like — based on an index that measures and verifies vast reforestation of native species in the Amazon to reduce the overall risk.
Time is not on our side. We need more than the easy net-zero commitments from governments and businesses alike that are likely to emerge from the COP26 summit in Glasgow. We need nothing less than a revolution.
Article published in FT.com
Written by Juan Carlos Castilla-Rubio, chairman of Moray Biosciences and a co-leader of the KAA Initiative
