Why is stopping deforestation so difficult? with Markus Kröger

00:00:12: Hi, and welcome to another episode of Inconvenient Chats.

00:00:33: To me, this raises the question if we know were getting so close to the danger zone why it's reversing deforestation proven so difficult or at least seem-so and be so slow.

00:00:54: This is what I ask Marcus together with his cussed defundings he has made when traveling on the ground What interests in mindsets keep us stuck in those deforestation patterns?

00:01:04: And also what more positive alternatives he sees?

00:01:08: His research was, by the way, published last year in a book called ClearCut and it's available now for free.

00:01:13: You can find the link in the show notes And as always if you have comments or topic recommendations So you can write to me at carsatinconvenientchats.com.

00:01:22: Please give it a listen subscribe and leave a rating wherever you listen to your podcasts.

00:01:27: I hope you enjoy the episode.

00:01:33: Marcus Kroger thankyou so much For joining today.

00:01:38: Welcome.

00:01:39: Thank you, thank you for the invitation.

00:01:43: We have lovely birds singing in the background from your side.

00:01:46: can you tell us...tell me a little bit where you are?

00:01:50: Well I'm in southern Karelia east of Finland and on the countryside.

00:01:55: That's amazing.

00:01:56: is that were you're based full-time?

00:01:59: No no i used to.

00:02:01: You know when the Covid nineteen started meet we moved here And lived most time here at the countryside.

00:02:10: Nowadays we spend like the summers here, so some relatives living close by.

00:02:17: That sounds wonderful though.

00:02:20: Markus you're a professor in global development studies at The University of Helsinki and for over twenty years you've been studying and researching land-tooth politics especially forestry and deforestation both in Latin America and Finland.

00:02:40: That's probably, I guess like a too short of description for all the things that you've been doing.

00:02:44: But would you maybe want to give a few sentences on how do describe the central themes in your research career?

00:02:54: Yeah!

00:02:55: So first i started studying business and then thought it was not broad enough.

00:02:59: so then I brought into Latin American Studies with studies on many issues culture society history environment geography And then finished my PhD in World Politics.

00:03:14: I studied Sociology and Political Science at UC Berkeley, ...and then finished on the conflicts between the pulp investments... ...the last Finnish paper Corporations Expansion Globally,... ..and especially their conflicts with the local Indigenous people.... ...and local communities social movements.

00:03:35: so.. I've been studying this kind of like impact of social movement on this investment politics and then for the postdoc I studied also these issues in India, comparing Brazil & India.

00:03:51: Mining, forestry natural resource politics And after that studying a little bit of Finnish mining boom as well and arctic issues.

00:04:02: Then the Finnish Forestry issues.

00:04:06: Now recently i finished new book different driving forces of deforestation that explain deforestation in the Amazon and Finland, globally.

00:04:19: Yeah so you came out last year with a book called Clear Cut The Political Economies Of Deforestation published by Cambridge University Press.

00:04:27: And there you studied and compared to different patterns of de-forestation.

00:04:31: was it Brazil, Peru or Finland?

00:04:35: yeah!

00:04:39: deeper processes and economic sectors driving deforestation in their own ways, so I studied the kind of ranching and soybean business on Amazon.

00:04:53: And also this illegal land grabbing, landspeculation how that is like a key explanation for the deforestations in the Brazilian Amazon.

00:05:03: Then gold mining open pit cold mining which destructive socially and environmentally.

00:05:11: I mean in Peru, for example you can see from the satellites that large open pit areas.

00:05:16: And then i studied also the Finnish industrial forestry.

00:05:21: It's focused on clear cutting which is kind of like a forest removal because You remove natural old growth forests.

00:05:28: Then you have single species plantations instead.

00:05:36: Wasn't it also with this latest book?

00:05:38: You've also spent a lot of time back in Latin America on the ground.

00:05:43: Yeah, yeah I've been there every few years for longer periods of times.

00:05:50: so In the Santarén region For example in Eastern Amazon In Brazil.

00:05:56: i have been in total about one year or more and i've been to many different places in the amazon For example with journalist Mika McElhaine on the Finnish broadcasting company Yle, we traveled over two thousand kilometers from Kujabaa in Matokros to Santaren by the freshly paved highway Span six three.

00:06:19: So so I was doing field research and he was doing reports there on the way.

00:06:24: And uh that was in twenty nineteen when there was the post another time.

00:06:28: and they were these five years lit by By those land crappers as well also quite intense.

00:06:35: Yeah.

00:06:36: And I guess that was indeed the time when deforestation of The Amazon was very much back in the headlines again, during the Bolsonaro mandate.

00:06:45: Then we had Lula back into office and people were kind-of hopeful things would go better again.

00:06:53: Let's just take a step back to set this starting point first here.

00:06:59: I think we all know that deforestation is not a good thing and how trendy it is on the list of trends, which goes up-and down.

00:07:09: But you had really good point about why study of deforestation is actually particularly important right now in The Introduction to Football.

00:07:20: You write that the focus of deforestations studies are no longer deforested but the potentially imminent breach of global and regional climate tipping points.

00:07:31: Can you explain that a bit more?

00:07:35: Yeah, so the earth system scientists... The planetary scientists who are modeling the global climate have found there like kind of nine global climate-tipping points.

00:07:45: And these are like dipping elements like large forests Like Amazon.

00:07:49: rainforest is one of them.

00:07:51: For example Carlos Nobre Who's kind of like one of the founders this theory.

00:07:57: He has said that if you cut like twenty to twenty-five percent of the forest, then there will be an irreversible process.

00:08:04: Of a forest was for us die back.

00:08:06: so we'll have in the Amazon's in the Amazons but that would affect the whole global climate and ecology.

00:08:14: So You know Like it's It's Global is not just regional impact.

00:08:19: And Then you have others like the Greenland I seeds or the permafrost all the Antarctic I seeds and also the boreal forests.

00:08:27: So, you know if you reach a critical threshold after that there will be no return.

00:08:33: it's like a point of no return.

00:08:35: so its completely different dynamic.

00:08:37: we are not anymore talking about deforestation.

00:08:39: so you cannot compare current deforestation figures to what was in the seventies or eighties because now at twenty-twenty five percent limit.

00:08:48: so in the COP thirty meeting in Belem end of last year there is no presaid that we are almost there.

00:08:57: So, be very careful not to cross that because then the dynamics will no longer be linear but they'll be chaotic.

00:09:07: What would happen if you go past this tipping point is... The added deforestation wouldn't only be a clear land but it'd actually trigger a snowball effect of the forest starting to dry out on its own?

00:09:24: Yes!

00:09:25: So the thing is that these are like cascading impacts, accumulating

00:09:28: impacts.

00:09:30: After that it will be much harder for the forest to regrow and there would have been more droughts.

00:09:35: There'll all kind of extreme events And a process where not human actions alone but the processing itself, element in itself The tipping point.

00:09:47: we start eating out the forests.

00:09:50: So, you know it can happen quite fast even like and then is very hard to reverse after that point.

00:09:57: You know so I'm studying now in the current project this reforestation possibilities... ...and it's quite difficult for many reasons already now.

00:10:11: And yeah!

00:10:12: The dynamic is such that its kind of like then feeding into also other tipping points And it will have effects.

00:10:20: For example, especially the precipitation and creation of clouds for the whole southern cone in South America... ...and Amazon.

00:10:29: The more you deforest them all, the hotter they get, the less wet it gets there.

00:10:36: In other places as well?

00:10:38: And those are regional or international?

00:10:41: consequences that you were referring

00:10:42: to?

00:10:43: Yeah, I mean it affects like the directly effects for example.

00:10:46: The decrease in Indian monsoon rains when you have Amazon tipping point.

00:10:51: so there's these impacts that go into upper atmospheric currents that affect whole globe.

00:11:00: So thats why this global climate tipping points.

00:11:02: they are not just regional and so on.

00:11:05: And of course there are differences between the regions, so some parts in South-East have already passed a tipping point.

00:11:12: So they've had large scale endless soybean plantations where they used to be forested or they'd become grasslands and it's no longer beyond that.

00:11:24: This is not only something that will happen but for other regions this has happened as well.

00:11:29: But if you look at the whole element then the larger part into kind of grasslands or even deserts where there are sandy soils.

00:11:39: And I can imagine that would also have massive impacts on the livelihoods of people over there?

00:11:47: Yeah, like for example Tim Lenton who is a key scholar in these tipping points he has said most likely Sahara was forest.

00:11:58: they found trees underneath Sand there still one hundred years ago that we're used for leading up fires and probably there has been this kind of tipping point There off the forest turning into a desert Like six thousand six thousand years ago not so long ago like you can still see from satellites.

00:12:16: The rivers And so on.

00:12:18: So the Amazon could turn in to Sahara essentially

00:12:23: well, no exactly Not exactly.

00:12:25: I mean they say that in some parts the forest would still remain.

00:12:28: but anyways it's like huge huge catastrophe if the Amazon tipping point is preached because that means then, that the global average temperature will rise so much.

00:12:38: That also other tipping points are preached which they'll feed into another one.

00:12:42: So worst scenario it's kind of like a Hothouse Earth Scenario where we go back to dinosaur type climate when Greenland had dinosaurs you know?

00:12:52: It's plus-eighteen degrees and its not like the plus three or four.

00:13:00: So there's like a lot of uncertainties, and these are the worst case things.

00:13:05: But so that is why it should be taken with utmost urgency and

00:13:09: care.

00:13:11: And you're saying we were very close to a tipping point in some regions already pasted?

00:13:18: I guess then reasonable deduction one can make from this... There shouldn't have been any more deforestation taking place on Amazon.

00:13:28: It all should stop right now.

00:13:31: Where are we on that?

00:13:34: Yeah, it should stop now and they would like to stop these destructive investments.

00:13:37: but for example the current Lula government is still building paving highways there through Amazon which has highly destructive infrastructural projects although they have increased voluntary fire pre-gates presence here the large forest south and southeast of the Amazon.

00:14:04: That's where they focus on deforestation.

00:14:06: is, that also problematic.

00:14:08: but yeah we should urgently focus on reforestation and agroforestry ecological restoration kind in economic sense because if you continue deforeesting like this it will be very harmful for the current economic sectors that rely on rainfall.

00:14:30: On the research that you've done, what did you learn about and reveal about why the deforestation keeps on continuing?

00:14:40: Well these kind of sectors have become like regionally dominant.

00:14:45: And in some places hegemonic but it's very hard to resist them or say anything against.

00:14:53: then because when you drive highways there from Matokorozu to Santarendu to Pará State crossing the Amazon frontier, the deforestation frontier.

00:15:03: You see a lot of like soybean silos there very expensive machinery.

00:15:08: now they are introducing drones which do their spreading off these ecrotoxics this poisons and you know then so many sunk costs that the investments have to be paid back.

00:15:20: There's alot of depths.

00:15:23: It's international.

00:15:24: The system is international.

00:15:25: like the German buyer company, they are selling a lot of other companies from the US and Europe and China.

00:15:33: They're selling these genetically modified seeds in a package with fertilizers and acryptoxics And that kind of mandate.

00:15:44: you have to overuse the acrytopics because it gets more profits.

00:15:50: So it's the profit logic that mandates there, where you have to make more profits while... It is not like wise for environment or even local producers who pay more and whom I've been talking with.

00:16:03: They are kind of also strangled in this current global system setting.

00:16:09: Who are benefiting from it most?

00:16:13: And who are holding onto power the most strongly?

00:16:18: Of course we all know accrues mostly on the top, so they're financialized global elites shareholders and big decision makers in big financial capitals.

00:16:29: And those big corporations making decisions.

00:16:34: but then of course you know like there are these big four like Kajil The American Company which is having an export port of soybeans in the middle of Amazon.

00:16:46: But Then You Have Also These Slotter Houses world's biggest meat company, Brazilian company.

00:16:53: And they have like these refrigerators in the Amazon.

00:16:56: and then they can like fatten the calves in the freshly cut you know forest areas where they could grass them to transport cows into southern parts and sell it as a Brazilian beef.

00:17:09: And then there are, you know all the illegal land crambers who speculate on the land.

00:17:14: So they go into some place and they cut the forest and put fences their but grass with some cows.

00:17:20: Then they falsify ownership documents and sell that land to make huge profits.

00:17:25: so bigger profits actually come from that landspeculation.

00:17:30: The cow business itself is not so big for those speculators particular sub-sector of the whole thing.

00:17:38: These land mafias, they're kind of like land mafia's.

00:17:44: and then you have other sectors... The Amazon is currently being very much taken over by organized crime which is merging with gold mining, laundering drug trade money and other activities' money from there and transporting drugs and mercury like guns.

00:18:09: So there are a lot of entities that benefit from this, they're looking at their short-term gains.

00:18:18: it's hard to stop when you have those sectors in place where they become dominant.

00:18:26: It sounds as if there is a lot system dynamics going on And I think this was also something you studied.

00:18:33: You named it, what's its regional political dominant political economies or so?

00:18:41: You also contrasted the deforestation in Brazil Brazilian part of the Amazon and then in the Peruvian part of The Amazon.

00:18:50: can tell me a little bit about that comparison?

00:18:52: because What I understood is that you found that dynamics are actually not the same although the forest is technically the same.

00:19:03: Yes, yes.

00:19:03: so that's like one of the insights I got when traveling in two thousand seventeen from Cusco by bus In Perú By bus From Andes to Amazon in Brazil.

00:19:16: So there's a new highway built There.

00:19:19: You know it's like a trans Pacific Highway That crosses from Brazil To the Pacific Coast.

00:19:26: And you know, on the Peruvian side there's still much more forest.

00:19:29: You don't see these large ranches that are on the Brazilian side and you can also see this from the satellites.

00:19:37: So I was wondering how is it possible when we have the same road with the same forest?

00:19:42: There's such a great difference in land use In geography.

00:19:48: Then i figured out... It's like these political economic sectors.

00:19:52: they're regional They stop in the political system boundary.

00:19:59: It depends on context, so in Peru what has become dominant are these gold mining mafias and they kind of control the land and steer their economy And have most profit making.

00:20:11: The whole system is like a mining country while in Brazil the biggest power holders Is this big agribusiness and rancher large landholder group that holds most power in the Congress and they can also control most of the land, what's done with it.

00:20:31: Also on Amazon.

00:20:33: so... That is key difference.

00:20:38: It sounds like there are a lot of economic actors who have kind of economic activities and dynamics which shape pictures a lot.

00:20:47: How big role do governments play?

00:20:50: I'm thinking back to Bolsonaro Lula comparison, which I think is something that's often raised in the headlines and media.

00:20:58: You know what we're talking about?

00:20:59: The deforestation on Amazon... How big of a role do governments have as part of this whole

00:21:05: system?".

00:21:08: Well they also had huge roles but their role was more complex because some parts are trying to resist it.

00:21:16: so you've got progressive state actors who host Mondays like Ombudsman stop these illegalities like in Brazil, you have this federal prosecution service.

00:21:26: Federal prosecutors who had been able to stop with the help of the local community social movements many large projects investment project which would be harmful.

00:21:38: but that said The problem with workers party on these so called progressive leftist governments has being they've been able build those huge infrastructural projects Which private sector was unable do on its own.

00:21:54: So when Lula started his government in two thousand three, two thousand four he started this project of economic growth and huge amounts of money was poured through the Brazilian Development Bank into building new highways ports dams and so on... Into the Amazon!

00:22:14: And that was highly destructive.

00:22:16: The building of the Bellamonte Dam had a huge impact all around then the paving off these highways and creating these export corridors, this export ports.

00:22:26: So without that kind of support given to the sector it would not have grown.

00:22:32: now its power is much stronger than before.

00:22:34: Lula came into power first time And you know Now It's in Congress also In two thousand sixteen when Dilma Rusev from the workers body was in power.

00:22:43: then This Acre Business part had grown so big.

00:22:47: they then impede her.

00:22:51: They did like a coup, like parliamentary coup d'etat.

00:22:57: Inventing some frauds that was not really there or others were not punished for and you know so it had grown so strong.

00:23:08: then they placed Temer and Bolsonaro into the power who even more beneficial to these groups.

00:23:15: So you know both kind of governments, both this far right and then these progressive ones.

00:23:20: They have not really been environmentally minded.

00:23:24: You know they had different in different ways destructive for the For creating this deforestation extractivist sectors Powerful them.

00:23:34: so what I try to do is look at these ultimate causes Look at the political economic power And how that explains How these things play out?

00:23:45: And then if we go back to what were discussing about the global tipping points and kind of, the global urgency... ...of the consequences of deforestation.

00:23:55: How much is there an information-and knowledge gap?

00:23:58: I think that's something often speculated whether these things happen against people's best knowledge or whether they happened deliberately.

00:24:09: Well yeah it not very much yet.

00:24:13: People refer to it in Brazil if they even know about it as the theory of Carlos Nopre.

00:24:20: You know, there's still a lot of uncertainty Even among climate scientists.

00:24:23: so for example in that cop meetings There is specific pavilion Earth like planetary science pavilion for this earth system science people.

00:24:32: But then there's different for ITCC or other climate scientist.

00:24:35: So even climate scientists amongst themselves They focus on different things.

00:24:41: others focus on the tipping points.

00:24:43: And then, you know there's been some studies by other scientists saying that as a frame... The Tipping Point Frame is not very good for policy changes because many people get afraid.

00:24:58: they say it's like doomsday talk and its kind of deterministic That there wouldn't be space for human agency.

00:25:07: They said okay if this case so what's your purpose?

00:25:13: So there are all these kind of politics around this concept.

00:25:17: And I think many people have these climate skepticism, climate change denialism on the rise again with Trump and Bolsonaro in Brazil.

00:25:27: but then also like even the common people they... The people who live in Amazon and farmers know about it yeah But openly don't admit it.

00:25:37: They even know that its harmful for their rainfall.

00:25:40: But you know, it's so strong this power of the regionally dominant political economic sector that they just go on with.

00:25:48: And uh... It is a bit of same in Finland like clear-cutting has continued although science clearly shows there shouldn't be much clear cutting.

00:25:56: its bad for environment and climate then its bad to local farmers' incomes.

00:26:04: So continuous growth.

00:26:06: forestry would be better in all senses, but still it's continued.

00:26:12: because you know the pulp industry benefits from that.

00:26:14: and local people who These consultants and companies.

00:26:19: Who are like forest stewardship?

00:26:21: You know advisors.

00:26:23: they advise local people to do that.

00:26:25: And it's a bit of same in Brazil Like if you want together get those GM soybean seeds and the acro toxic fertilizer package you have to buy into That whole production model which is destructive, and it's very hard to devise alternatives for these people in those regions.

00:26:45: And I guess that where also difficult to break out from as an individual?

00:26:52: There we go back too... You said you've been studying social movements before.

00:26:59: how do you get a critical mass that can challenge the system?

00:27:04: then maybe create some alternative models but this could be extremely difficult.

00:27:10: Yeah, so there is a lot of resistance especially the indigenous people who have their own territories.

00:27:15: They are living in these kind of alternative spaces in terms of alternatives social you know economic cultural spaces symbolic spaces physical spaces.

00:27:28: So they're resisting that process And they are not afraid, like a lot of them are murdered because their leaders are murdered and threatened with resistance to those economic interests.

00:27:42: But then in Finland for example the difference is that there's such huge hegemony.

00:27:46: people aren't really afraid.

00:27:48: many people in rural areas who speak out about it.

00:27:52: They're feeling bad about clear-cutting next to other areas.

00:27:57: but don't talk too much Because some neighbors are afraid of losing jobs.

00:28:01: or you know community ties.

00:28:04: So the hegemon is very strong due to the nineteen fifties continued clear-cutting model where it's become like a habit of country.

00:28:13: It all starts from this kind of moral economic background, so moral economy means that there are ways for products accepted and normalized.

00:28:24: And how you should organize your life?

00:28:28: In the book we also mentioned some dilemmas which were observed.

00:28:33: I found there was one quite interesting with regards to Finland, how some forest owners who for example would be choosing clear cutting or choosing an option for their forests that will actually give them less compensation than the more protectionist approach.

00:28:53: How do you then make sense out of it?

00:28:55: Because we were just saying before when your living in a system where profit is deleting logic and thats what people allude alert to, what explains this type of behavior?

00:29:08: Well yeah there's these kind of feelings that you know if you conserve the forest like the state is paying for conserving old growth forests so you could protect and get the same money.

00:29:17: And retain the forest which is nearby your house.

00:29:21: So it makes no sense to clear cut if you got the same from protecting it then still continue picking mushrooms or walking in there.

00:29:31: But then some people have been thinking that they would lose their ownership of the forest and want to retain it for future generations.

00:29:41: You know, children as a heritage so on... It's about control but there is also misinformation being spread by professional forest returnals like you'd be forced to give out that or even those who think that you know forests don't grow older than one hundred years old.

00:30:03: And when it's a hundred-years-old spruce forest, You have to cut it and then it would be like beneficial for the climate but then you plant new trees.

00:30:11: so there is all this kind of misinformation and these kinds of post root discourses which actually benefit turning off these old growth forests into such forests where they mostly benefit from this practice in which you thin the forest and not these sturdy logs that you create in a more thick forest for different kind of forestry method.

00:30:38: But yeah, so there's like different kinds of explanations to this change.

00:30:47: As you were saying yourself it went pretty deep into what are the root causes driving deforestation in different regions.

00:30:54: based on everything we found now?

00:30:57: What are the things that would need to change in these systems for us, to be able to avoid those tipping points?

00:31:06: Yeah well there were many changes.

00:31:07: I think this moral economy is very important.

00:31:09: like people who're still living from forest and by the forests they should continue their way of life.

00:31:18: so now for example in Brazil a lot of these multiple use conservation areas and indigenous areas on Amazon.

00:31:26: but what progressive governments have been doing, they've been expanding this poverty alleviation and especially the education programs there.

00:31:37: And expanding these western-style schooling there.

00:31:41: so then people were complaining to me for example in The Western State of Agre that kids don't have any more time to learn how to be rubber tappers?

00:31:48: How do you know extracting populations who collect them?

00:31:52: They didn't know anymore about trees because they had to travel two hours per day And then they learned the ways of the city.

00:32:00: So, there have been trained to be kind-of like wait laborers in urban markets and They don't have time to learn it.

00:32:07: We said we had to study about polar bears But people didn't even know what are local animals here at Amazon.

00:32:16: That's a cultural violence of discontinuing these Millennial practices that people have on forests.

00:32:24: There is lot consideration.

00:32:26: if you do not how read or write then you are like stupid and don't have any knowledge around the world.

00:32:33: Of course it's good to know how to read or write, but that doesn't mean we couldn't do this because there has been a balance.

00:32:38: So they've been developing curricula now including forest-based knowledge so that should be expanded.

00:32:45: There would more support given to creation of markets also for products which aren't based on logging in the forests.

00:32:54: What are those?

00:32:57: You have all kinds of possibilities for berries, nuts.

00:33:00: All kind of cosmetics oils.

00:33:03: I mean there's so much potential for medicine and so on.

00:33:07: Of course those cannot be patented by outsiders but the locals need to really benefit from that.

00:33:14: But it is very hard to create these markets when you don't have finance support.

00:33:20: So the finances currently practically goes into this deforestation activity.

00:33:25: To get a loan You basically have to deforest and put cows there for the banks in Damasen, give you a loan.

00:33:32: It's very hard if we can't get loans from these non-deforestation activities so on.

00:33:38: So it...you know..You have to change the rules of finance also And then off course the regulation.

00:33:44: You'll need much more police A lot of...and especially local people will be given more resources to patrol and guard the forest because Amazon is so huge that only if local populations are there, they can inform where deforestation is happening.

00:34:01: And then the local authorities need to go quickly there and enforce those rules and keep

00:34:07: more

00:34:07: territorial autonomy for people.

00:34:10: So a lot of things could be done.

00:34:11: We already know what these methods are but it's political issue Because governments or parliaments are controlled by deforesting extractive sectors taking place.

00:34:25: But so if we're thinking in terms of, okay now I know what needs to change who has the power to change it?

00:34:30: I guess state would could play a big role.

00:34:33: but then I guess and you need to have the interest represented In this date.

00:34:40: Yeah So you had kind of like co-produced estate.

00:34:43: or embed the State as social movement and social actors.

00:34:47: try To create new institutions that regulate these issues.

00:34:51: changed the laws get more representatives there.

00:34:56: So state cannot be abandoned in the modern system, we are still living like in an interstate system and so on And you have to also have a lot of civil society capacities and autonomy.

00:35:11: at the same time so that's even more important you cannot rely on the state support and students, because the regime can change quickly.

00:35:29: And are some of these things already in motion?

00:35:31: You mentioned this one social movement that you encountered when you were studying Brazil.

00:35:39: I would imagine there's a lot of things going on already.

00:35:41: Can we give positive examples how people are organizing

00:35:51: So, for example this Brazilian landless movement?

00:35:53: they have also some presence in the Amazon.

00:35:57: They occupied an old oil pond plantation that had been there for sometime and it was failing because these monoculture plantations typically have some kind of problems.

00:36:09: so that had like a disease that was ravaging the plantation.

00:36:12: It was owned by foreigners And it is large area like six thousand hectares one-and-a-half hours east from the city of Belém.

00:36:21: And then they occupied that area and managed to get the land through this Brazilian constitution mandates.

00:36:26: That you have to give the unproductive land, do the landless movement to settle families there.

00:36:31: so hundreds of families moved in.

00:36:33: They've been now for twenty years since two thousand four... ...they're restoring their lands.

00:36:38: So the land was very degraded.

00:36:40: There were a lot of heros with lots of ants because of palm oil or use of acrotoxics A lot of poisons on the ground.

00:36:50: So they have been reforesting that, planting first banana to get some like natural fertilizer on the ground and seed.

00:36:58: And then planting all kind of fruit trees, agroforestry, agricultural acroforesty in this socio-territorially just systems where you know people communally by family pace They've got ten hectares for each family plot.

00:37:14: Now there are a lot produced their jobs the public plantations into like lush forest areas and the forest has regrown in twenty years.

00:37:25: It's incredible how quickly, in the tropics... And sub-tropics the forest grows.

00:37:30: so if you go to one place uh..and see trees being planted there after two years it's already impressive!

00:37:37: After four years its quite tall trees.

00:37:39: So it is completely different from Finland.

00:37:42: If we look at nature a little bit There can be this assisted natural regeneration Quite fastly Yeah.

00:37:52: What do you personally believe in the most and what gives you hope?

00:37:58: Well, I don't think that hope is the right category... You just have to work and understand how these things work And then see the benefits of seeing different trajectories with different choices than people make.

00:38:14: Of course it's never too late.

00:38:15: Although if they are crossed there doesn't matter because we still can live and then you just have to double down on the effort.

00:38:24: You know, you had to plant more and devise new ways to capture the carbon and avoid these ecological losses... Yeah!

00:38:39: And yeah it gives me hope that there are still these territories who have this kind of capacity and understanding.

00:38:50: There is still hope also to change in these broader systems because it cannot continue like this forever.

00:38:56: I mean, It can be already quite quickly that These tipping points themselves.

00:39:01: This major changes Catastrophic events will start show the producers that their extractivist destructive forms of extraction cannot continue.

00:39:14: That's not profitable for them.

00:39:17: So then they...I guess the profit logic could turn against the behavior itself?

00:39:25: Yeah, it's not even profit logic.

00:39:27: It just like misguided productive patterns.

00:39:32: so for example in Finland they have mostly mostly planted spruce seedlings and these saplings I think what they have planted here in Southern Karelia will mostly die prematurely.

00:39:47: They have cost a lot to plant and because you had these beetle bark infestations already now, which are going to increase.

00:39:54: I think like before forty years many of them will die.

00:39:58: so the forest owners who paid for that planting would never get back their money.

00:40:04: So you know... Already now i see they've become more tree varieties.

00:40:10: So pine, spruce also leaves some leafy trees there So it becomes not so monocultural.

00:40:20: And in the Amazon, yeah well... Yeah I mean like the producers will start to feel that problems at this end of year and the end of twenty-six beginning of two thousand twenty seven is going to be very tough according to current modeling .So there would be a superl name you know stronger than ever ,so It means that the drought will even worse then in two thousand thirty three twenty four or extreme like rain in the southern part of Brazil, so a lot of crop losses.

00:40:54: And I think then food prices and oil prices will rise at end this year beginning next year with loss of harvests and lots.

00:41:02: trees planted now without irrigation systems would die because of the drought.

00:41:08: So you know, their impacts will be so hard that societies they just... They have such a huge pressure That there'll be much more pressure for politicians to make some major changes.

00:41:18: and I hope this would carry on to actually changing patterns.

00:41:25: Yeah If we had power change one thing One thing only if it's an idea or belief Or structural dynamic what would that mean?

00:41:39: I think i would curb the access and power of social media, this post-truth networks because that's a key part of problem.

00:41:49: Because for example now all these post truth statements like living in alternative realities they are really harming issue about message from science and knowledge form.

00:42:02: From environment.

00:42:03: even it doesn't pass through but people believe you know alternative facts, you know.

00:42:10: And that's very harmful for in many ways also I think maybe the key issue because before you tackle this issue of post-route used as strategy as a discourse and strategy it is hard to get across these tipping points.

00:42:36: Wow!

00:42:37: That was pretty good wish.

00:42:40: we shall hope that we get at least in that direction.

00:42:47: Markus, thank you so much for joining me today and thanks for sharing your work and doing it.

00:42:54: It's extremely inspirational on a very educational level.

00:43:00: Thank You Kajsa!

00:43:01: And yeah I think this is like the most important part of what you do because its part of this larger struggle to battle against these post-truths that it's very important to have this presence there.