While the Brazilian Amazon is perhaps the most iconic forest ecosystem on earth, Brazil’s other rainforest ecoregion, the Atlantic Forest, or Mata Atlântica is less well known globally. The ancient rainforest, which, before colonization, stretched from the state of Rio Grande do Sul in the south to Rio Grande Del Norte in the north, has been cleared to less than 100,000 square kilometers, not even 10% of the 1.2 million square kilometers it used to span. The remaining old growth forest is fragmented, with the most intact patches being in hard-to-reach elevated areas, with limited connectivity between them. Even with this fragmentation, the forest still supports immense biodiversity, with more than 7% of the world’s plant species, and 5% of its vertebrates, living in the forest’s former extent.
The forest also lies next to some of the most densely populated regions in South America, with Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo falling within the ecoregion. In total, 148 million people, representing over 70% of the Brazilian population, live in and around the former Atlantic Forest (Sos Mata Atlantica). This continuing expansion of Brazil’s urban sprawl and agriculture has forced the Mata Atlantica back over the 20th and 21st centuries. However, despite this, it still contains immense biodiversity, with more than 23,000 species of plants 40% of which are endemic, and thousands of animals, including the critically endangered black faced golden lion tamarin. (Source, Mongabay) Unfortunately, the fragmentation of the forest has meant that thousands of tree species are endangered, alongside hundreds of animal species.
Original forest types of the Atlantic forest and extent of loss by 2008 (Source: New Phytologist)
This dire state of affairs has prompted major initiatives to restore the forest, including the Atlantic Forest Restoration Pact, agreed in 2009, which aims to restore 37 million acres of forests by 2050 (World Wildlife Fund). The Atlantic Forest has also been recognized as a U.N Decade of Restoration flagship biome, and restoration efforts have crossed borders as well, with Paraguay and Argentina pledging to restore forest fragments in their territory. But implementing these large initiatives has been difficult, and forest loss continues in the Mata Atlantica, with up almost 1% cleared every year, and remaining areas continuing to suffer fragmentation and loss of biomass and tree density (Nature).
Stewarding the restoration of the forest will take decades of investment on both small and grand scales, and projects that mobilize and empower local communities to protect and restore their local ecosystems play a key role in providing lasting ecosystem restoration. Since 2011, Ecosystem Restoration Communities member Sinal do Vale has been engaged in this vital work, stewarding land at the heart of both the Atlantic Forest, and Brazil’s main population center.
Creating a bio-hub for the Serra Do Estrela
Sinal do Vale emerged from Thais Corral’s desire to steward the degraded landscape around her home. The Serra De Estrela bio-region, a patch of Atlantic Forest that lies just outside the megalopolis of Rio de Janeiro, retains major species and ecosystems of the forest, despite decades of deforestation. Thais had already been involved in international environmental organizing for decades, including co-founding the Women’s Environment and Development Organization and helping organize the 1992 Earth Summit. Sinal do Vale represented a shift of her focus to more local issues at territorial level, and in 2011, she and partners started buying land in the Atlantic Forest on the metropolitan area Rio, where they began establishing a “bio-hub” that would serve as a regenerative laboratory that could guide other restoration efforts.
Katie Weintraub, one of Sinal do Vale’s chief stewards, has been involved with the site for almost 10 years, coming on as a steward soon after graduating college and moving to Brazil from the United states. She spoke to us for this interview about how Sinal do Vale looked at its current challenges as it approached the 15 year anniversary of its founding.
The Serra De Estrela region within the greater Rio De Janeiro region (Source: Sinal do Vale)
Weintraub observed that Sinal do Vale tends to work with 4 slightly different types of landscapes, each requiring their own forms of restoration. “In totally degraded and inclined areas, we focus on conducting widespread planting with native tree species. Where natural regeneration is already occurring, we’ve allowed it to lead the way, while also practicing various guided regeneration and assisted natural regeneration techniques.” This strategy has been effective in creating islands of regenerated forest that serve as seeds for regeneration in adjacent degraded areas.
While the land around Sinal do Vale is not the most suitable for agroforestry, the Sinal team has used it to build nursery capacity for reforestation and agroforestry, having already built a nursery with the capacity for 10,000 seedlings, which they are constantly working to enrich with new native plant species. The restoration efforts enabled by these projects can help to bring native endangered species back to the area, like the Jussara Acai tree palm, an endangered native food crop, and the golden lion tamarin, an iconic local monkey that has been endangered for decades due to habitat loss.
Fostering local and international connections
No restoration of the Mata Atlantica will be possible without the buy-in of the communities that live in and around it in the rural areas surrounding Rio and Sao Paulo. Since the inception of the Sinal do Vale project, engaging local landholders has been a key tenet of the team’s success. A key example of this has been the Guanabara Bay trail project. Built with the help of 2 other nearby restoration hubs, the trail connects 11 protected areas and hundreds of smallholder farmers to create a hiking trail that also helps preserve habitat for endangered plants and animals.
Building the trail has required extensive buy-in from farmers who adjoin the trail. In 2024, Sinal Do Vale engaged 115 farmers to understand their needs and vision for the corridor project. This consultation has led to ongoing engagement with 8 local agricultural hubs and an agroforestry implementation pilot with a local farming collective, which they hope will serve as a positive example for other local agriculturalists.
Sinal has also engaged with the restoration community globally, and Ecosystem Restoration Communities has been a key partner in this work. Sinal first connected with Ecosystem Restoration Communities through the SEKEM project in Egypt, who suggested a partnership based on their own experience. The relationship has been fruitful, providing Sinal with support in grant and funding proposal writing, land purchase implementation, and providing volunteers and learning exchanges to support the development of the site. Weintraub felt that “Ecosystem Restoration Communities volunteers have been especially helpful in telling Sinal do Vale’s story, and promoting it to drive more volunteer engagement.”
Sinal do Vale’s main campus and gathering hall (source: Sinal do Vale)
Ecosystem Restoration Communities has not been Sinal do Vale’s only international partnership. In 2024 Sinal served as a hub for global conversations on community-enabled and rights-respecting approaches to restoration, recently holding a series of dialogues to coincide with the G20 in Rio, which were connected with the UN Decade on Ecosystem restoration, along with other local and international organizations.
The Dialogue series brought together bio-regional restoration advocates from across the world to share Sinal’s experience building a bio-regional economic and restoration model. More than 700 stakeholders attended the 8 dialogues, providing insights from organizations as varied as international NGOs, local governments, Indigenous and Quilombo community representatives, and farmers cooperatives.
The dialogues reflected Sinal’s emphasis on creating inclusive models for bi-regional development, covering topics like the inclusion of peripheral communities, like Favelas, in restoration decision making, and centering the experiences and knowledge of women and Indigenous people in making government decisions and charting restoration courses. The dialogues also covered how these inclusive models of governance and restoration could drive the creation of regional bio economies that spur development, drive tourism, and restore ecosystems at scale.
A fruiting Jussara Acai tree palm (Source: Earth Island Institute)
Challenges and promises ahead
After an exciting 2024, Sinal hopes to use 2025 to continue to build its bio-regional restoration model. One major area for improvement that Weintraub hoped to work on was developing the workforce for enabling restoration, and helping to build implementation networks of skilled practitioners who can not just master the technical aspects of restoration, but engage communities in practicing bio-regional governance and building bio-economies. Creating bio-regional funds, one of the recommendations that emerged from Sinal do Vale’s dialogue series, could serve as a major source of potential funding for the training and development of these personnel. Weintraub emphasized that steady funding and new forms of revenue would be crucial for Sinal do Vale and its companion bio hubs if they want to make sure that restoration gains are maintained going into the future.
Weintraub and Sinal do Vale also hope that this year will provide opportunities for expansion for their major initiatives, including the Guanabara Bay Trail, the Madre dos Frutos project, and welcome Ecosystem Restoration Community members to help share their story online and volunteer when opportunities are available.
While the challenges of restoring the Atlantic Forest are immense, Sinal do Vale continues to see success tree by tree and acre by acre, with more and more communities engaged, both locally and internationally every year. Ultimately, restoration will only be sustainable if new economic models are built that provide livelihoods and protect restoration gains. With the support of Ecosystem Restoration Community members, Sinal do Vale can help to serve as a living laboratory for forest restoration, with lessons for Brazil and the whole world.
Read more about Sinal do Vale here or go to their website.
Teaser image credit: Sinal Do Vale.