“Brazil discusses sustainability without doing the math”

According to Plínio Ribeiro, co-founder and CEO of Biofílica Ambipar, carbon credits will only be effective with the exploration of environmental services.

By Mia Mamede

Why is there a need to create a high environmental integrity market, and why is there so much distrust among investors when it comes to carbon credits? Plínio Ribeiro, co-founder and CEO of Biofílica Ambipar, explains that carbon credit is a financial mechanism and not an end in itself. It is a way of cooperation within the climate agenda to finance carbon sequestration or emission mitigation activities. “In this context, integrity is essential because if a certificate is issued without evidence of emission reduction or sequestration, you are creating something that doesn’t exist,” says Ribeiro in an interview with MONEY REPORT in New York, where he is participating in a meeting promoted by the United Nations Global Compact. “The goal is to finance activities that are not economically viable and need a capital injection.”

An example of this is forest conservation. “Brazil has millions of hectares of forests that are unmanaged, not conserved, and degraded, with deforestation,” he says. “The carbon market provides an incentive to take care of these regions or even plant native trees.” And what public policies would be important to support this market? “One is the law that allows a concessionaire to explore environmental services in public forests, and the other is under discussion, a project that regulates the carbon market in Brazil,” he explains.

And how can we increase the impact of these actions in the country? “Brazil discusses sustainability without doing the math, but we need to calculate costs and benefits, opportunities we have or miss,” he warns. “With numbers, we can bring this discussion to the business environment and find concrete solutions.”

• Click here to read the full article (in Portuguese).