Covington Helps The Nature Conservancy Partner with Amazon on Carbon Reduction in Brazil

NEW YORK—Covington advised The Nature Conservancy in a partnership with Amazon to launch the Agroforestry and Restoration Accelerator. The initiative will create a more sustainable source of income for thousands of local farmers in the Brazilian Amazonian state of Pará, while also restoring native rainforests and fighting climate change by naturally trapping and storing carbon.

The Nature Conservancy will work with the World Agroforestry Centre and several local civil society organizations to implement the Accelerator by helping small farmers restore degraded cattle pastures to native forest and agroforestry. The agroforestry systems will provide farmers with a sustainable source of income through the sale of cocoa and other crops. The Accelerator will also experiment with innovative ways to support farmers and nurture markets for sustainable forest-based commodities, including with digital technologies, and will advance new methodologies and satellite-based technologies for quantifying and monitoring carbon removal.

The Accelerator is part of Amazon’s efforts to support global solutions to the climate crisis and its commitment to meeting The Climate Pledge. Signatories to the Pledge commit to reaching net-zero carbon by 2040—10 years ahead of the Paris Agreement.

The Covington team advising The Nature Conservancy was led by Rubén Kraiem and Susan Leahy.