Brazil to share deforestation monitoring expertise at COP31

Brazil's agricultural attache to Türkiye Diego Leonardo Rodrigues said Brasilia will bring its experience in combating deforestation and restoring degraded land to the UN climate summit COP31, scheduled to take place in Antalya from November 9-20, as both nations confront rising temperatures threatening agricultural sectors that account for significant portions of their economies.

Satellite monitoring and transparency

Rodrigues told Anadolu that Brazil has developed a robust satellite-based system over the past five years to track changes in its forests, with particular emphasis on controlling illegal deforestation. "You can't simply claim you are controlling deforestation, you have to monitor it, and Brazil does this as open data," he said. "They were there before Brazil even existed, they are still there, and they are in a sense its guardians," Rodrigues added, referring to indigenous peoples who have received record restoration funding this year.

Degraded land restoration

The attache identified restoring degraded land as the area with greatest potential for bilateral cooperation between Brazil and Türkiye in environmental protection and agriculture. "Brazil has extensive areas of degraded land, and all or part of it can be recovered," Rodrigues said, adding that Türkiye's sinkholes visible in international media represent symptoms of similar degradation affecting both nations. He noted that Brazil has developed financing mechanisms including low-interest loans for farmers adopting sustainable practices, alongside policies encouraging the reuse of agricultural organic waste and biofertilizers to fix carbon back into the soil.

Implementation focus at COP31

Rodrigues highlighted Brazil's Caminho Verde program, which aims to recover up to 40 million hectares of degraded land over the next decade. He underlined the importance of building consensus across differing national circumstances, stating that COP31 in Antalya will prioritize implementation over negotiations. "Brazil started the movement, and Türkiye will continue it," he said, stressing that making effective use of environmental funding and demonstrating results with data and credibility matters more than further talks.