To curb deforestation in the Amazon and stimulate the role of family farmers in conserving local vegetation, Natura developed the first carbon compensation payment project within its production chain, called Circular Carbon (or carbon insetting). The project compensates small farming families not only for the purchase of inputs and sharing of benefits but also for environmental conservation services.
The initiative is part of the Carbon Neutral Program, which for over ten years has sought to inventory, reduce, and offset greenhouse gas emissions throughout its entire production chain.
The project was initially carried out in partnership with the Consortium for Economic Reforestation and Densification Cooperative (RECA), which brings together rural producers from Porto Velho (RO) and surrounding areas in Acre and Amazonas. Through payment for environmental services within its own chain, a practice known as carbon insetting, Natura aims to work with communities by integrating three fronts: purchase of inputs, sharing of benefits for access to traditional knowledge/genetic heritage, and forest conservation. This way, the company seeks to strengthen its relationship with the communities providing sociobiodiversity assets in the region and reinforce that it is economically viable to reconcile productive activities with maintaining standing forests - the lower the deforestation recorded in the area, the greater the financial return for rural producers for environmental services.
Circular Carbon
The Circular Carbon project began at the RECA Cooperative, a supplier of assets for the Ekos line since 2001 and located in one of the Brazilian regions with the highest pressure for deforestation from both livestock and timber exploitation. For this reason, in 2013, the area was chosen for the pilot project, developed in partnership with the Institute for Conservation and Sustainable Development of the Amazon (Idesam).
Between 2013 and 2016, the deforestation rate in the surrounding area averaged 1.9% per year, while the 126 properties participating in the project recorded a rate of 0.93% - less than half of the deforestation rate observed in the surroundings. This means that there was conservation equivalent to approximately 190 football fields during this period, thus avoiding the emission of 104 thousand tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
“The lots and rural properties that are part of the RECA Project have made a significant contribution to forest conservation, helping to consolidate the local economy and preventing the opening of areas of native forest for the expansion of pastures and livestock production,” explains Keyvan Macedo, sustainability manager at Natura. The initiative creates a virtuous circle because it brings extra income to the suppliers of the ingredients and increases the resilience of the chain. “We aim to replicate the model in other communities in the Amazon region,” adds Keyvan.
The payment for this environmental service, referring to the accumulated period between 2013 and 2016, was equivalent to what Natura paid for the purchase of inputs supplied by RECA during that period (around R$ 2 million). In 2017, RECA received the first payment for committing to preserve an area of 5,000 hectares of forest. The transfer of resources – which is made both individually to farming families and to a fund of the cooperative – is conditioned on the annual delivery of emissions audited by an independent third party.
Starting this year, and for the next 20 years, monitoring of the areas and payment will be done annually. The goal is that, over this period, the deforestation rate in RECA will drop to zero and that other areas can follow the same model, demonstrating that it is possible to create a replicable model for other regions of the Amazon focused on forest conservation and sustainable production.
The methodology developed for the work with RECA is systematized and public. Thus, the initiative can be reproduced and applied by other companies, organizations, and cooperatives that wish to contribute to the conservation of forest areas.
