What Apple is doing with 25,000 acres of former cattle pastures in Brazil
For decades, huge swaths of Brazil’s Cerrado ecosystem have been used to support the global demand for burgers. Forests and grasslands were replaced by pastures along with farms growing soy to feed cattle. But a major restoration project is now underway on an area nearly twice as large as Manhattan.
If you fly over one part of southwestern Brazil, you’ll see a patchwork of dozens of square plots where a local university is studying different methods of helping native plants regrow on former cattle pastures. On more than 25,000 acres, along rivers and the edge of remaining pieces of forest, new vegetation has been growing quickly over the past two years. Wildlife cameras track the native species that are returning, from puma to an endangered species of rabbit.
The environmental group Conservation International is working on the project with an unlikely set of partners: a forestry company and the tech giant Apple.
Why Apple is investing in forests
The project is one piece of Apple’s climate strategy. “When we look at the global climate science, it’s clear that we have to cut emissions as quickly as possible, but we also have to end deforestation and rapidly scale up carbon removal in order to stay within 1.5 degrees [of global temperature rise],” says Chris Busch, director of environmental initiatives at Apple.
The company’s first priority is reducing its own emissions. Through tactics like using recycled rare earth elements in iPhones and helping suppliers shift to renewable energy at factories, it has already cut its emissions by 60% compared to 2015. By 2030, it’s aiming to hit 75%. But for the remaining 25%, Busch says, “We just don’t have a clear line of sight to how to avoid those emissions at scale today within our value chain. So that is where nature comes in to play a role for us.”
There are several ways to take CO2 out of the atmosphere, including nascent technology like direct air capture. But Apple knew that in order to reach its short-term goals for 2030, it would need to lean on nature’s ability to capture carbon because no other approach was ready to scale up quickly enough.
At the same time, the company recognized that there weren’t enough nature-based carbon credits available to buy—and restoration and preservation projects often struggle to prove that they actually have as much benefit as they claim. In 2021, Apple committed $200 million to the Restore Fund, a new fund established with Conservational International and Goldman Sachs, to help carbon removal grow more quickly and to focus on creating quality projects. (In 2023, it pledged an additional $200 million for a second fund within the program.) One of the first investments, in 2022, was Project Alpha in Brazil. Restoration and planting started in 2023. It’s the first step in a larger effort that will eventually restore 741,000 acres of degraded land across Brazil, Uruguay, and Chile.
A biodiversity hot spot
The Cerrado ecosystem, which originally sprawled over more than a million square miles in Brazil with a mix of dense forests, grasslands, and wetlands, is a biodiversity hot spot. Many of its 1,600-plus species of animals, and 10,000 species of plants, can’t be found anywhere else. It’s also quickly disappearing.
“It’s faced a rate of loss that’s fairly extreme,” says Will Turner, senior vice president at Conservation International’s Center for Natural Climate Solutions. “Well over half of the native Cerrado vegetation has been destroyed, predominantly due to agriculture.”
The restoration project is focusing on an area that was converted for grazing in the 1990s, and bought the land from cattle farmers. As grasslands were replaced by pasture, they were planted with invasive grasses to feed cattle. The grass chokes off the growth of native plants. Because it’s spread so much, the non-native grass makes restoration expensive and challenging. That’s why the project took a new approach: Instead of focusing solely on restoration, it’s happening in combination with carefully managed forestry.
Why an environmental group wanted to partner with a forestry company
BTG Pactual Timberland Investment Group (TIG), the forestry partner on the project, is planting tree farms on half of the former grazing land, and managing restoration on the other half.
In some ways, the solution seems counterintuitive: The tree farms will grow eucalyptus, a non-native species from Australia. In other parts of Brazil, environmental groups have derided eucalyptus plantations, arguing that they’re destructive. But the trees can thrive in degraded soil where other species struggle to grow. They also grow quickly, taking up large amounts of CO2. Since deforestation reduces rainfall, planting new trees can also help with the hydrological cycle. And as global demand for wood continues to grow, the new plantations—which are FSC (Forest Stewardship Council) certified—can potentially help avoid deforestation of native trees in places like the Amazon rainforest.
Some critics argue that eucalyptus overuses groundwater, but Conservation International says that’s often caused by poor management. If a eucalyptus plantation is managed well, the nonprofit says, recent research suggests it will use the same amount of water as a native forest. (The forestry company is also screening out locations that have insufficient water availability and monitoring water security for others in the area.)
When TIG bought grazing land from farmers, it carefully tracked where the cattle were moved, making sure that the process didn’t lead to new land being cleared elsewhere. (The company agreed to this, along with other sustainability critera, as part of the project.) Then, with guidance from Conservation International, it began “assisted natural regeneration,” taking steps to help native vegetation regrow. In some areas, it’s also planting seeds or seedlings. Having the forestry company on the site also means that its crew can protect the restored areas from encroachment from other farmers or fight wildfires if needed.
The forestry company will earn carbon credits both as its trees capture CO2 and as native vegetation is being restored. Apple also has a stake in the project. “What we’re aiming to do is generate a financial return as an investor in those projects, but also a carbon return,” says Busch. “Part of the return that we get on that investment is carbon credits.”
Third-party auditors will monitor the project before the carbon credits are issued. Apple is also helping with some of the monitoring technology, including testing ways to use the iPhone’s lidar scanner to measure the diameter of trees.
Without the forestry part of the project in place, Conservation International says it’s unlikely that any restoration would have happened in the area at all. Including forestry makes the restoration financially viable. And it helped it happen at a large scale: The project will increase the restoration across the entire Cerrado region by 50%.
“At the end of the day, what we think is really important is figuring out how to get to scale in terms of restoration and carbon sequestration quickly,” says Apple’s Busch. “That needs to be funded somehow. The conservation side of the operation is truly [financially] sustainable because it can be funded by the business side.”