Proposal to decouple deforestation and food system in Brazil
exist 2023 Global Public Policy Network Conference (GPPN) In March, five students from Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs Chosen as a finalist for his policy proposal to address deforestation in Brazil.
This year’s conference asked participants to address global political polarization and the challenge of building social cohesion.
MPA Environmental Science and Policy students João Adrien Francisco Fernandes, Ezekiel Maben, Sarah Bryan, Matteo Chiadò Piat, and Olivia Parker won the “Best Concept” award for their proposal at the 2023 Global Public Policy Network conference.
What started as a simple conversation about the challenges of ensuring food security and environmental protection turned into an idea that won over a group of students MPA Environmental Science and Policy program. After hearing about the GPPN competition, the team brought together their international expertise in existing regulations around the world, as well as their respective strengths, to develop a robust and broad plan to bring about change.
Sarah Bryan, João Francisco Adrien Fernandes, Olivia Parker, Matteo Chiadò Piat, and Ezekiel Maben traveled to São Paulo, Brazil, to present their ideas to the deans of eight of the world’s most prestigious public affairs schools. Their strategy, the Brazilian National Green Label, aims to track, tag and reduce illegal deforestation in the Brazilian cattle supply chain. Although they did not win the overall competition, the students made it to the final round and won the “Best Concept” award.
Their proposed national green labeling system would allow the Brazilian government to track and monitor deforestation along the cattle supply chain at the property level. It proposes consolidating multiple existing state and national databases that currently do not work together into a cohesive and publicly accessible federally managed data center to improve transparency and highlight inconsistencies in supply chains. The ultimate measure of the proposal’s success will be how much cattle production can be tracked and therefore has nothing to do with illegal deforestation.
The proposal also comes against an international backdrop where governments such as the UK and the EU are putting in place trade barriers for agricultural products linked to deforestation. Brazil and other countries must prove through a due diligence system that their agricultural products do not come from deforested areas. The green label proposal avoids the use of private certification, which would segregate the market and have significant negative social impacts, as only larger, established farmers can afford private certification schemes. Implementing a public green label means all farmers can get the same treatment.
In the future, the green label system will offer the possibility to expand to cover more agricultural products. In doing so, Brazil will be able to decouple illegal deforestation from its food supply chain, ensuring access to foreign markets. The program could also be adopted by other developing countries, transforming Brazil from a rule-follower to a rule-maker and establishing the country’s role as a global leader in food security while protecting its natural resources.
As population growth accelerates demand for food production, agriculture could continue to burden Brazil’s biodiversity loss if strategies such as green labeling are not on the agenda.Home to nearly 60% of people amazon rainforest, Brazil has the opportunity to play a key role in protecting this critical ecosystem by combating illegal deforestation and regulating land-use change for food production.
Five students from MPA’s Environmental Science and Policy program traveled to Brazil to present their policy proposals.
The technology to implement the policy already exists, and the students are continuing to engage in dialogue with stakeholders to support the initiative and build political support to implement the policy. Most recently, the group presented their research to a public hearing by the Brazilian Ministry of the Environment on the Action Plan to Prevent and Control Legal Deforestation in the Amazon.
According to the students, their experience at the GPPN conference was very rewarding. In particular, they were pleased to be able to integrate such a vast amount of information into a 5-minute presentation, and the number of international perspectives they heard in peer interactions. But the team’s dreams are not limited to Brazil. “One of the things that excites us all is the scalability of this proposal,” Parker said. Other agricultural exporters will face the same trade restrictions in the coming years, so there are many opportunities to learn and replicate this project.
