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More than regenerating ecosystems, we are regenerating our relationship with the systems that sustain life in the region. And we are doing it together with communities so they too thrive whilst protecting our greatest wealth.
Aware that we need to increase development of alternatives to mitigate our environmental impacts and generate positive impacts, in 2021 we created the Regenera América Program. The Program helps protect important biomes in Latin America, a region that is home to a quarter of the planet's biodiversity. Discover the biomes where we operate.
Our commitment is to help protect Latin America's biodiversity, contributing to the fight against climate change and maintaining important ecosystem services for the region. To this end, we support the development and undertaking of projects with a long history of restoration of areas and potential to generate carbon credits.
We finance projects that protect biodiversity and capture carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, thus contributing to tackling climate change. Between 2021 and 2022, up to US$18 million will be invested in the development and undertaking of initiatives for the conservation and restoration of native ecosystems in Latin America.
The partners selected for the implementation of the initiatives adopt a community-based strategy, which provides for actions related to income generation such as payment for environmental services for small rural properties, the production and purchase of seedlings in community nurseries or the sale of products. In this way, we are supporting the production chain linked to restoration, generating jobs and income for the communities and ensuring the economic sustainability of the projects in the long term.
To ensure the continuity of this virtuous cycle, we purchase the carbon credits in advance that will be generated in the future by the projects. Together with our partners:
We determine the implementation costs of the project.
We map the potential for generating carbon credits.
When the credits are actually issued, a part goes to the Mercado Livre, to offset part of their emissions, while another goes to the landowners, generating additional income for forest protection and recovery.
Project monitoring is carried out in partnership with Pachama, a pioneering startup developing technologies that aim to restore nature and fight climate change. The company combines satellite imagery with artificial intelligence to remotely monitor and measure the carbon captured in forests. Its technology is used to provide a standard of guarantee to carbon markets, connecting buyers and sellers of credits around the world.
With scalable tools, Pachama has enabled more and more projects that restore or conserve native forests to participate in carbon markets, accelerating the development of a regenerative economy based on the restoration and conservation of ecosystems. Founded by two Argentinian entrepreneurs, the company is currently based in Silicon Valley (CA), in the United States, and has important venture capital funds among its investors.
Global climate change is an emergency that forces us to act fast. The past five years have been the warmest in history, with average global temperatures reaching 1.1°C above pre-industrial levels.
The consequences are already being felt around the world: record temperatures, sea level rise, droughts, forest fires, floods and other extreme weather events that generate human, economic, social and environmental losses. Science shows us that if greenhouse gas emissions continue at the current rate, the impacts could be irreversible. We need to act now and on several fronts.
Our planet is full of natural carbon sinks: these are natural ecosystems that absorb carbon through their vegetation (trees and plants absorb carbon as they develop), soil or sea. Therefore, when we regenerate native forests, we increase the capacity of these ecosystems to capture carbon from the atmosphere and thus mitigate the effects of climate change. In addition, protecting and regenerating native biomes contributes to the conservation of biodiversity, helping to ensure vital ecosystem services such as clean water, clean air, a balanced climate, healthy soils, food and raw materials, among others.
These services are especially important for us to face climate change, which is already underway, with more resiliency, as well as for business and the economy to thrive. Protecting our natural ecosystems is fundamental and urgent. And, with 40% of the world's biodiversity and more than a quarter of its forests, Latin America plays a central role in this collective effort.