One of Brazil's main carbon projects, Florestal Santa Maria had the new baseline and successfully audited monitoring and resumed FSC certification
Florestal Santa Maria is today one of Systemica’s main projects. Located in an area of intense deforestation pressure, in the north of the state of Mato Grosso (an area included in the Legal Amazon), the REDD+ project is one of the oldest in Brazil, bringing together more than 70 thousand hectares of preserved native forests. The project is essential for the region, playing a fundamental role in the conservation of Amazonian fauna and flora. Systemica took over the technical execution of the project in 2020, and since then has been dedicated to improving the project and its activities, valuing socio-environmental integrity based on scientific basis and transparency.
“This is an unplanned deforestation project, AUD, initially developed by another company and which, subsequently, was assigned to Systemica, simultaneously with the purchase of the property by the company Caraguá. Systemica reevaluated the project's baseline, bringing improvements in relation to calculations and robust analysis. We also made a major reformulation of the social issue, something essential for the success of this type of project”, explains environmental engineer Ricardo Zwarg, project coordinator within Systemica.
Based on Systemica’s long history and great effort, “the project already has a huge amount of work and knowledge, in addition to important engagement from all the actors involved. Stakeholders are very interested in the project, especially now after its technical and social updates. It is a very resilient project and was audited recently. It is currently a VCS project, which is acquiring CCB qualification. Systemica is working to obtain a gold standard in biodiversity and climate”, analyzes Bibiana Duarte, Technical Director of Carbon Projects at Systemica.
At the end of 2022, the project was audited by a third party, the company Earthood, as part of the process of verifying the project results in the years 2019 to 2022.
Another novelty following the entry of Systemica was the resumption of FSC certification. The previous project management had lost this certification, which certifies that all management activities take place in the most responsible way possible. Recertification was possible through the training of employees and the entire workforce, maintaining low-impact management.
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Social counterparts
An important factor within the voluntary carbon market is the real commitment of developers to local communities and social counterparts. When the Systemica team arrived in the territory to analyze the situation in 2020, the first step was to establish a relationship of trust with the communities and understand the real needs in topics such as education, health, access to information and governance issues.
“As soon as we entered, we immediately began diagnosing the surrounding community. We wanted to understand the social dynamics of the region. In parallel, we have instituted several social activities, including one in partnership with the Health Department of the municipality of Colniza, which aims to improve the local domestic health situation: in partnership with the SUS, we go to the settlement so that they can participate in rapid tests, have access to a general practitioner, vaccination and awareness talks. All of this is already happening. We are having a lot of support and dialogue with the community, especially on topics such as community health”, explains Ricardo.
In the project region is the Perseverança Pacutinga Settlement, with 165 families, and Systemica's activities include promoting improvement activities developed based on the following SDGs: health and well-being; quality education; gender equality; decent employment and economic growth; industry, innovation and infrastructure; reduction of inequalities; responsible consumption and production; combating climate change; life on earth and partnerships and means of implementation.
In addition to health-related actions, following Systemica's entry, members of local communities received first aid training and an anti-fire brigade was created, essential for mitigating the impacts of fires in the project region.
“We trained and trained the local community to combat and identify possible fire outbreaks in the territories. In addition to the monitoring and brigade generating direct jobs, our training is always open to the general public, anyone in the region who shows interest can participate. In April 2023, we carried out new training for the fire brigade. In addition to training, the project has a structure of machinery and equipment, such as water trucks, chainsaws, etc., to prevent and combat large fires in the region, not just in the project area”, explains Ricardo.
Biodiversity protection
One of the main objectives of the Florestal Santa Maria project is to protect local biodiversity, given its great wealth of fauna and flora. To achieve this, 20 camera traps were installed in ten strategic points, which capture images 24 hours a day. Once the territory is recovered, it is possible for jaguars, ocelots, tapirs and deer to appear.
“We recently carried out an inventory of fauna and flora, surveying all the species present in the project area. This first inventory mapped vulnerable species, and now we are in a second phase, monitoring species at risk of extinction. Over time, we hope that the region's fauna will recover, and to accelerate this process we are carrying out social awareness activities about the importance of preserving not only animals but also local vegetation. We are also looking for partners to help us bring this educational aspect to schools in the region”, adds Ricardo.
Keeping the forest standing and taking care of biodiversity also requires the installation of a monitoring project. At the moment, Systemica has organized patrolling and remote monitoring of the project areas via satellite, covering the edges of the territory. Patrolling is carried out in seven strategically placed bases, accessed by employees responsible for protecting the territory.
Low carbon vertical livestock farming
When carrying out the social diagnosis in FSM, Systemica also identified the opportunity to implement consultative activities related to low-carbon livestock farming, since this is one of the major vectors of deforestation in the region and a source of income for a large part of the residents of the Perseverança Pacutinga Settlement. With this, a technical training activity for vertical livestock farming was implemented, a partnership with the company Campo SA. According to Ricardo, training livestock activity reduces the risk of deforestation in the project and its surroundings.
“The settlement is practically focused on livestock farming. There is a lot of pasture in the vicinity of the project, and in this sense we support producers with technical training activities, so that they can increase their productivity in the field, thus avoiding the opening of new areas for pastures. This can take place in activities such as identifying degraded pastures, understanding when to manage your pasture, putting cattle out to pasture, etc. The vertical livestock farming activity itself also aims to bring training in financial management, looking not only at the associated technical issues essential for increasing income for the region's residents”, he explains.
Today there are 12 beneficiaries of the vertical livestock farming program, and the intention is that in the long term all livestock farmers have their income maximized. The project also aims to prevent deforestation, so that these landowners do not take possibly exploratory activities to other territories. “The main driver of deforestation is livestock farming, and this happens a lot in the project region, as is easily seen when viewing the history of satellite images. In a project like this, we looked at what would happen without it, that a large part of the area would become pasture”, says Ricardo.
Sustainable Forest Management
In addition to the REDD+ project, the property has sustainable forest management, certified by the FSC and responsible for generating jobs, income and training in the area.
“Sustainable forest management generates income and prevents leakage. This concept is associated with the type of project: in other words, within this location you would have predicted that the area would be deforested, and now it is protected. This does not mean that deforestation has disappeared, it may have migrated. So, we want to prevent deforestation from migrating elsewhere, bringing alternative revenue sources so that deforestation agents do not need to work in a higher impact activity”, adds Ricardo.
