This post is also available in: Portuguese (Brazil)
With six biomes, there is much more to Brazil’s landscapes than just the Amazon.
One of these biomes is a semi-arid region in northeastern Brazil known as the Caatinga – the largest tropical dry forest in South America and one of the most important dryland ecosystems in the world.
Home to about 27 million people, or roughly 12 percent of Brazil’s population, the Caatinga is the most densely populated semi-arid region in the world. It also hosts a remarkable diversity of plant life, with around 123 known botanical families.
But more than 40 percent of the Caatinga has already been cut down – amounting to 34 million of its original 82.6 million hectares.
The biome is also at serious risk of desertification: 62 percent of the areas susceptible to desertification in Brazil are in zones originally occupied by the Caatinga.
This process is being accelerated by factors such as unsustainable land use, the overexploitation of water resources, deforestation and the climate crisis.
The Amazon often overshadows Brazil’s other biomes in the public imagination – especially as it gears up to host COP30 in Belém.
Within Brazil, the Caatinga is often stereotyped as a barren wasteland lacking in biodiversity. This perception has hindered conservation efforts.
The reality, however, could not be more different: the Caatinga harbors thousands of plant and animal species, many of them endemic.
“The Caatinga is the only exclusively Brazilian biome,” says Marília Nascimento, manager of socio-environmental programs at Associação Caatinga. “It has biodiversity that exists nowhere else, so the responsibility for protecting it falls upon Brazil.”
Some studies even suggest that the Caatinga has the potential to sequester more carbon than other Brazilian biomes.
“The lack of knowledge and this history of neglect, which has created a stereotyped vision of the biome, is one of the first factors we need to tackle,” says Nascimento.
“As people were historically taught that the Caatinga is dry ground, dead cows and women carrying water buckets on their heads, what motivation is there to protect such an environment?” she poses.
Nascimento reminds us that drought is the norm in the Caatinga. Today, there is growing discussion about ways to coexist with its aridity, which requires innovation and technology.
“Water scarcity has been worsening due to climate change, so strategies are needed to increase water availability,” she says.
Rafael Giovanelli, a researcher at Instituto Escolhas, believes it’s important to put a spotlight on the environmental, economic, social and cultural importance of the Caatinga.
“It is a very resilient biome that can teach us a lot in the era of climate emergency,” he says.
For Giovanelli, preserving the Caatinga is also a crucial way to address biodiversity loss – an issue he believes receives less attention globally than the climate crisis.
Records show that the Caatinga has suffered from severe droughts since the 19th century. The so-called Great Drought of 1877–79 caused a famine that killed hundreds of thousands of people in the state of Ceará. This devastated the region’s flora and fauna and led to an exodus of Northeasterners to other states.
The Caatinga now suffers from desertification, which has been intensifying and accelerating due to the climate crisis, leading to a 40-percent decrease in surface water.
The municipality of Chorrochó, in Bahia, for example, has already shifted from semi-arid to arid and now experiences a desert-like climate.
“If we talk about climate exodus and climate migrants today, this is something that has already happened in the Caatinga since the 19th century,” Giovanelli points out.
“Now, we could see a new wave, perhaps even more severe.”
Three of Brazil’s six biomes are recognized in the country’s constitution as part of its national patrimony.
The Caatinga is notably absent, as is the Cerrado.
Associação Caatinga has been working to add these two biomes to the constitution since 2010.
Nascimento explains that the campaign has encountered many obstacles due to its inclusion of the Cerrado, which is heavily targeted by agribusiness.
“Turning them into national patrimony in the Constitution would be a way to legitimize them and attract more investment and policy [attention],” he explains. “It would have a symbolic effect but also efficiently guide resources.”
Beyond that, Giovanelli points to the importance of achieving zero deforestation and restoring areas that have already been deforested.
“We have a study showing that 1 million of the 12 million hectares that Brazil has committed to restoring through its NDCs [nationally determined contributions under the Paris Agreement] is in the northeast of Brazil, especially in the Caatinga,” he says.
“But so far, practically nothing has been done.”
Instituto Escolhas suggests that restoration should begin in settlements founded through agrarian reform, where land tenure has already been defined. The Brazilian Forest Code also allows restoration work to be carried out through agroforestry.
“It is essential to invest in [restoration] – it should be a priority in state policy, because only then will we be able to tackle desertification and the problem of unemployment and lack of income for the population,” Giovanelli explains.
According to a 2024 study by Instituto Escolhas, this could generate 465,000 jobs and remove 702 million tons of CO2 from the atmosphere.
Banco do Nordeste, a regional development bank, recently launched a BRL 15 million (USD 2.8 million) fund to support restoration projects in the Caatinga.
However, this amount is just a tiny fraction of the BRL 15.1 billion needed according to Instituto Escolhas.
“If there is no large-scale public investment, we will not be able to restore the Caatinga,” Giovanelli warns.
“These initiatives are very recent,” he adds. “Satellite monitoring of deforestation in the Amazon has been happening for many years. Monitoring in the Caatinga [only] began in 2024. It has taken too long to look properly at the biome.”
Nor is there any guarantee that these policies will continue in the long run, the Brazilian government has admitted – hence the importance of strengthening initiatives through participatory planning and support for local institutions.
“We have a strategy that projects be planned during their implementation with a commitment to training people and strengthening institutions and policies,” says Carlos Eduardo Marinelli, chief of staff and project supervisor at the Secretariat of Biodiversity of the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change.
“We focus on integrating, enhancing synergies and providing support, which reduces the risk of discontinuity,” he explains.
This year, the Brazilian government has launched several new initiatives to contain desertification, including the creation of new protected areas and an investment of BRL 90 million (USD 16.6 million).
One of these initiatives, Conecta Caatinga, aims to promote conservation, support climate mitigation and adaptation and combat desertification by improving connectivity between vegetation, people and water across the biome’s protected areas.
The project is expected to begin in the second half of this year and will run for five years, funded in part by a USD 6 million contribution from the Global Environment Facility (GEF).
The other initiative, called Arca, will be implemented in nine conservation units at both federal and state levels, with USD 9.8 million (BRL 53.2 million) in funding from the Global Biodiversity Framework Fund.
“There is no precedent in history for such a large volume of financial resources focused on biodiversity conservation in the Caatinga biome by the Brazilian government,” says Marinelli.
Together, these projects are expected to impact an area of 8 million hectares, mitigate 4 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions and directly benefit 20,000 people.
Still, international partnerships will be needed to secure further investments in the biome. To this end, Marinelli believes the sheer size of the Caatinga can be a major selling point: “You could fit three Germanys in the Caatinga.”
Marinelli has noticed that world leaders are becoming aware of the importance of other biomes beyond major global forests like the Amazon, the Congo Basin and the rainforests of Southeast Asia.
“If we only focus on them, we will be underutilizing the potential for climate change mitigation that other projects present,” he explains.
On the ground, several projects are already changing the lives of thousands of farmers who live in and with the biome – from agroforestry systems to meliponiculture.
Maria Geane Magalhães is a 31-year-old farmer who served as a GLF Restoration Steward in 2024.
She lives with her family in São Lourenço do Piauí, located in the state of Piauí, where rainfed crops had been intensively cultivated for many years. This left the land eroded, degraded and no longer productive.
In 2015–16, they began planting the first seedlings of an agroforestry system and restoring the degraded area, starting with half a hectare.
“During the process, we dreamed that it would be possible to restore more areas within our property,” she says.
Today, the property covers four hectares, with 2.5 under restoration, and includes a new and improved plant nursery, made possible by grants provided as part of the Restoration Stewards program.
Associação Caatinga has been implementing the No Clima da Caatinga (In the Caatinga’s Climate) project since 2011, which aims to provide water to farmers and help them generate extra income through meliponiculture (stingless beekeeping).
Nascimento explains that beekeeping is a vital part of forest preservation: “Where there is a forest, there are bees, and where there are bees, the forest stands.”
Stingless bees are responsible for pollinating 30 percent of Caatinga species. The jandaíra is so important to local culture that it’s nicknamed the Queen of the Sertão – but it’s also coming under threat from the climate crisis.
The project has now distributed 311 colonies of jandaíra [Melipona interrupta] bees and trained 357 people.
One of the farmers involved is Francisco Ferreira Sousa, known as Nacélio. A resident of the community of Santana, a district of Crateús in the Ceará hinterlands, he now manages 17 jandaíra beehives.
Sousa says he began producing honey in 2014 after a visit from Associação Caatinga to his community, which is home to around 400 families.
He recognizes the importance of working with jandaíra bees: “There used to be a lot of bees here, and now their numbers are decreasing. If it weren’t for these hives, it would be hard to find them,” he says.
“When my daughters have children, maybe the jandaíra bee won’t even exist anymore.”
Sousa had never worked as a beekeeper before. He has spent most of his career gardening and farming cattle – activities he still maintains with his wife, Margarete Vieira Sousa.
Now, honey provides extra income to cover the family’s expenses, along with his side job as a mail carrier, collecting and delivering mail throughout the community twice a week.
In recent years, he has noticed that the rains, which were already irregular to begin with, have grown even scarcer.
“In our area, it didn’t rain last winter [the rainy season],” he recalls. “In some parts of our community, over 80 percent of crops were lost.”
Magalhães has had similar experiences: in 2024, her family’s property recorded just 249 mm of rainfall, compared to an average of 600 mm. This wiped out many seedlings and forced them to replant an area.
“Irregular rains make planning difficult,” she concedes, “but we want to show people that it is possible to restore land in the semiarid region with agroforestry systems.
“It is possible to produce food – and preserve the environment.”
Finally…
…thank you for reading this story. Our mission is to make them freely accessible to everyone, no matter where they are.
We believe that lasting and impactful change starts with changing the way people think. That’s why we amplify the diverse voices the world needs to hear – from local restoration leaders to Indigenous communities and women who lead the way.
By supporting us, not only are you supporting the world’s largest knowledge-led platform devoted to sustainable and inclusive landscapes, but you’re also becoming a vital part of a global community that’s working tirelessly to create a healthier world for us all.
Every donation counts – no matter the amount. Thank you for being a part of our mission.
