Juliana Ennes from Glasgow

“Being good defenders of nature is always good for business and society.” This sentence by Cristina Gil, Suzano’s executive director of sustainability, summarizes the encouragement of most private companies to act in so-called solutions based on nature.

Cristina participated in the panel “Nature-based solutions as a lever to solve the climate crisis” at COP26, alongside Alessandra Fajardo, Bayer director, Valerie Kapos, head of the Climate Change and Biodiversity program at the UN’s monitoring and conservation center ( UNEP WCMC). Virtually, were also present Teresa Vernaglia, CEO of BRK Ambiental, and Henrique Luz, technical coordinator of CEBDS.

Nature-based solutions have increasingly served as leverage for greater private sector participation in solving the climate crisis.

According to Suzano, the company does more than what is required by law, in terms of forest conservation and, consequently, of animal species. “Of the 2.3 million hectares of land that Suzano owns, nearly 1 million are under conservation. They are habitats in the Amazon, in the cerrado, in the Atlantic Forest. We continually restore degraded areas. (…) We are protecting critical habitats. It’s really important and, as a business, it makes you more resilient,” explains the director.

Cristina also highlighted the social benefit of many of the environmental measures. “If we encourage certain activities that are in harmony with nature, local communities will have a better quality of life, they will be able to lift themselves out of poverty and protect the environment,” she added.