Conservation International (CI) is participating in a massive reforestation effort in the Brazilian Amazon region.
A multimillion-dollar, 6-year project will restore 73 million trees in the Brazilian Amazon by 2023. Covering 30,000 hectares of land, equivalent to the size of 30,000 football fields and nearly 70,000 acres, the project is the largest tropical forest restoration in the world. The initiative will also help Brazil move towards the Paris Agreement goal of reforesting 12 million hectares of land by 2030.
“This is an incredibly bold project,” said Dr. M. Sanjayan, CEO of Conservation International, one of the organizations behind the initiative. “Together with a coalition of partners, we are undertaking the largest tropical forest restoration project in the world, reducing the cost of restoration in the process. The fate of the Amazon depends on 
getting this right — as do the 25 million residents of the region, its countless species, and the climate of our planet.”
The Amazon rainforest is home to the greatest biodiversity of any ecosystem on the planet, but it is rapidly disappearing with the increasing global demand for resources. Priority areas for the restoration effort include southern Amazonas, Rondônia, Acre, Pará, and the Xingu basin. Restoration activities will include enriching areas of existing secondary forest, sowing selected native species, and, when necessary, direct planting of native species.
The project is the result of a partnership between CI, the Brazilian Ministry of the Environment, the Global Environment Facility (GEF), the World Bank, the Brazilian Biodiversity Fund (Funbio), and the environmental arm of Rock in Rio, “Amazonia Live”.
Research: Deforestation Drops 21% in One Year
Deforestation in the Legal Amazon region fell by 21% between August 2016 and July 2017, compared to the previous period. A survey by the research institute Imazon indicates that devastation dropped from 3,579 km² to 2,834 km².
All states in the Legal Amazon region showed reductions, with Tocantins (56%) standing out with the highest rate. It is followed by the state of Roraima (37%), Acre (32%), and Pará (31%). Additionally, the survey indicates that in July of this year, 61% of deforestation occurred in private areas or in various other categories of ownership.
Source: Conservation International and BrazilGovNews