Overlooking vegetation loss outside forests imperils the Brazilian Cerrado and other non-forest biomes

Abstract

The global emphasis on halting forest loss has failed to recognize the biodiversity and ecosystem services provision of non-forest biomes such as the Brazilian Cerrado. Here, we stress the urgent need to address their destruction, including at the upcoming UN Conference of the Parties (COP28), and for coordinated efforts to protect these non-forest ecosystems amid the climate crisis.

The relentless destruction of non-forest biomes not only refers to the widespread conversion of native vegetation but also to historically neglected biodiversity-rich ecosystems. The Cerrado biome (Brazilian savannah) — a global biodiversity hotspot, with over 4,800 plant and vertebrate endemic species1 — is the most active frontier of agricultural expansion in Brazil2. More than half of the original native Cerrado vegetation has already been lost and, in 2022, the Cerrado experienced the highest conversion rate in 7 years: 1.07 million hectares of natural area was converted3. Although DETER (a near-real-time deforestation-alert system for the Cerrado and Amazon, developed by the Brazilian National Institute for Space Research (INPE)) reported a 33.6% reduction in deforestation alerts in the Brazilian Amazon during the first half of 2023 (compared to 2022), the Cerrado experienced a 21% increase in deforestation and conversion alerts during the same period3. In 2022, PRODES (Brazil’s Satellite Native Vegetation Monitoring System, which is another monitoring programme run by INPE) recorded 10,681 km2 of Cerrado deforestation, which is close in size to the vegetation lost across the Amazon (despite the Cerrado being less than half the area of the Amazon); this marks a third consecutive yearly increase3. The deforestation rates in the Cerrado are higher in its northern part (a region known as ‘MATOPIBA’, for Maranhão, Tocantins, Piauí and Bahia), where 71% of the loss of native Cerrado vegetation in 2022 took place3 — including in lands that are exposed to climate change4 and susceptible to desertification5.

Citation

da Conceição Bispo, P., Picoli, M. C., Marimon, B. S., Marimon Junior, B. H., Peres, C. A., Menor, I. O., ... & Silva-Junior, C. H. (2024). Overlooking vegetation loss outside forests imperils the Brazilian Cerrado and other non-forest biomes. Nature Ecology & Evolution, 8(1), 12-13.