Brazil: Conserving Forests to Stop Climate Change

EDF and local partners are finding innovative ways to protect their most precious resource

In 2005, the governor of a major Brazilian state received the “golden chainsaw award” for his aggressive promotion of tropical forest clearing. Much has changed since then.

This year, all nine state governors from Brazil’s Amazon region sent a signed declaration to President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva calling for zero deforestation and access to carbon markets to fund forest conservation. Today Brazil has done more than any other nation to ensure its tropical forest is protected and to try to make old-growth forest worth more alive than cut and cleared.