Dec 22, 2025 · 47 min · 18 segments
Marcelo Medeiros, co-founder and CEO of re.green, joins Climate Rising to discuss how his company is restoring millions of hectares of degraded land in Brazil’s Atlantic Forest and Amazon biomes by…
Marcelo MedeirosGuest
Mike ToffelHostVikram GandhiHostSo w- you know, the whole debate about the Global South and how the Global South, countries like Brazil and other parts of the Global South kind of balance this whole agenda of development versus decarbonization and deforestation, you know, how is that playing out in Brazil and how, well, how is, you know, how is that decision made as to whether something, you know, the Amazon should be deforested in the name of development or not? How, how is that playing out in Brazil right now?
I think Brazil has what I would say is the, uh, one of the best, if not the best forestry code in the world.
It defines, uh, in a thoughtful way where should we preserve, what can we, uh, clear down.
And not only there are-- Brazil has, uh, more than fifty percent of its, uh, total, uh, land area preserved in the form of, uh, parks, indigenous reserves, and reserves that each landowner is, uh, f- forced to keep.
ButAlso, there is a general culture of preserving some, some biomes, so this is good.
We have a compliance problem, so the forestry code, it's excellent, society is behind it, but the compliance is weak.
So deforestation that we see, currently seeing in Brazil, it's mainly due to illegal activities, land grabbing, illegal mining, uh, and not due to, uh, forests being cleared for good economic reason that's supported by laws and, and regulations.
So if, if, um, you know, one of my students is te- uh, yesterday in class, you know, it was not in Brazil, but a Ghanaian student asked me that there's an opportunity to do extensive gold mining in Brazil given where the markets in gold are, but that would involve a significant amount of deforestation, but the pr- you know, the revenues from the gold would help the infrastructure and the local communities there.
She asked me that question as how should I think about it, so how would you think about that?
in the grand scheme of things, I don't think that what's, um, pushing for deforestation are activities like legal, well-organized mining.
If you look at how much we have deforested, we deforested pretty much 50% of habitable land in the planet.
So I think the, uh, legal organized mining is perfectly compatible with preservation.
So, so how does organizations like yours or any organizations in terms of nature-based solutions address this problem at scale? 'Cause you said-
... that the deforestation's happening at scale, so how do we kind of reverse that at scale?
Let's, uh, take a step back and talk about again about the article that Bernardo Strassburg wrote in 2020, and it's the origin of Regreen and says a lot about our purpose and, and how our vision for productivity.
We-- as i, as I said, we, we have, uh, cleared down roughly 50% of the regional biomes on the habitable part of the land.
The, uh, United Nations called the decade from 20 to 2021 to 2030 the decade of restoration, and it has, uh, talked about a plan of restoring f- as much as 30% of the, uh, converted land.
So w- you know, the whole debate about the Global South and how the Global South, countries like Brazil and other parts of the Global South kind of balance this whole agenda of development versus decarbonization and deforestation, you know, how is that playing out in Brazil and how, well, how is, you know, how is that decision made as to whether something, you know, the Amazon should be deforested in the name of development or not? How, how is that playing out in Brazil right now?
I think Brazil has what I would say is the, uh, one of the best, if not the best forestry code in the world.
It defines, uh, in a thoughtful way where should we preserve, what can we, uh, clear down.
And not only there are-- Brazil has, uh, more than fifty percent of its, uh, total, uh, land area preserved in the form of, uh, parks, indigenous reserves, and reserves that each landowner is, uh, f- forced to keep.
ButAlso, there is a general culture of preserving some, some biomes, so this is good.
We have a compliance problem, so the forestry code, it's excellent, society is behind it, but the compliance is weak.
So deforestation that we see, currently seeing in Brazil, it's mainly due to illegal activities, land grabbing, illegal mining, uh, and not due to, uh, forests being cleared for good economic reason that's supported by laws and, and regulations.
So if, if, um, you know, one of my students is te- uh, yesterday in class, you know, it was not in Brazil, but a Ghanaian student asked me that there's an opportunity to do extensive gold mining in Brazil given where the markets in gold are, but that would involve a significant amount of deforestation, but the pr- you know, the revenues from the gold would help the infrastructure and the local communities there.
She asked me that question as how should I think about it, so how would you think about that?
in the grand scheme of things, I don't think that what's, um, pushing for deforestation are activities like legal, well-organized mining.
If you look at how much we have deforested, we deforested pretty much 50% of habitable land in the planet.
So I think the, uh, legal organized mining is perfectly compatible with preservation.
So, so how does organizations like yours or any organizations in terms of nature-based solutions address this problem at scale? 'Cause you said-
... that the deforestation's happening at scale, so how do we kind of reverse that at scale?
Let's, uh, take a step back and talk about again about the article that Bernardo Strassburg wrote in 2020, and it's the origin of Regreen and says a lot about our purpose and, and how our vision for productivity.
We-- as i, as I said, we, we have, uh, cleared down roughly 50% of the regional biomes on the habitable part of the land.
The, uh, United Nations called the decade from 20 to 2021 to 2030 the decade of restoration, and it has, uh, talked about a plan of restoring f- as much as 30% of the, uh, converted land.
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