Vale & BNDES to Invest in Forest Recovery
Strategic Research Institute
Published on :
17 Nov, 2021, 5:30 am
By means of Fundo Vale, Vale joined the Living Forest Initiative, a project by the National Bank for Economic and Social Development BNDES in Glasgow. The purpose is to provide financial support to forest restoration projects with native species and agroforestry systems in the different biomes of the Brazilian territory. The funding will be providing by means of matchfunding, a financing model which combines non-refundable resources of BNDES with those of other supporting institutions. In its first phase, there will be at least R$ 140 million available for the Living Forest Initiative — 50% of which from the Bank, and this may reach R$ 500 million at the end of the second phase.The project will be developed along seven years and the expectation is to reforest between 16 thousand and 33 thousand hectares with native species and biodiversity, considering that around 9 million tons of CO2 equivalent can be captured.
The Living Forest Initiative was released by the president of BNDES Gustavo Montezano during an event organized by the Ministry of the Environment Espaço Brasil in the convention center where COP-26 is held in Glasgow, Scotland. “We believe in initiatives like that, because it has clear potential to leverage resources for the forestry agenda, driving solutions of positive social-environmental impact, which strengthen sustainable, fair and inclusive economy”, Vale´s executive vice Institutional Relations and Communication president Luiz Eduardo Osorio, who attended the event, confirmed.
Fundo Vale will join with R$ 5 million and there will be a counterpart of the same amount made by the bank. “The Living Forest Initiative matches the forest agenda of Fundo Vale, which has been operating in the Brazilian biomes for more than 10 years, especially in the Amazon, by means of innovative agreements with partners, with special attention to the entrepreneurs in businesses with social-environmental impact”, the director of Fundo Vale Patrícia Daros explains. Among other responsibilities, the Fund is responsible for the implementation of Vale's forestry target, which provides recovery and protection of 500,000 hectares of forests by 2030. Today, the company is already helping to protect 1 million hectares around the world, 800,000 of which are in the Amazon – an area equivalent to five times the city of São Paulo.
To make the initiative feasible, BNDES spoke with more than 40 companies. Among these organizations, in addition to Vale, Petrobras, Coopercitrus, Heineken Group, Itaipu Binacional — in partnership with the Government of the State of Mato Grosso do Sul — and Philip Morris Brazil have already confirmed their participation.