ABOUT THE CAMPAIGN
This is a campaign by the Institute for Society, Population and Nature (ISPN), in partnership with WWF, Cerrados Institute, Cerrado Network, Amazon Environmental Research Institute (IPAM), WWF-Brazil and Funatura, which aims to speak to the Brazilian population about the importance of the biome for maintaining life in the country.
The campaign’s main message is that the Cerrado is like a heart that pumps water in all directions across Brazil, originating from the country’s center. Protecting this biome is ensuring water for everyone.
To ensure our message resonates widely, we have borrowed the voices of people who inspire and engage with Brazil. People like you can inspire attention, affection, and action in defending a natural heritage that feeds rivers, generates energy, produces food and keeps our biodiversity alive.
MANIFESTO
The Cerrado is dehydrating. Little by little, silently, the biome that supplies Brazil’s major rivers, regulates the rainfall cycle, and sustains life in various regions and biomes of the country, has been losing its strength, its vegetation, and, above all, its water.
This emptying out is not merely symbolic. It is real, measured in percentages that scan a crisis in progress: more than 50% of the native vegetation has been lost, and 80% of each non-Cerrado property can be legally cleared and, in some rivers, the volume of water has fallen to almost 30%.
Each number is an absence, a piece of the Closed that is no longer there. This loss has concrete consequences in the lives of millions of people. The reduction of vegetation cover compromises the cycle of rainwater and the reduction in flow of two rivers, affecting the urban supply and the production of food and energy.
This is directly linked to an agribusiness model that prioritizes profit through the extensive cultivation of commodities – such as soy, corn, and meat – at the expense of sustainability.
We must always remember that the water that feeds all regions of Brazil originates in the Cerrado – when this biome loses its capacity to infiltrate, store and distribute water, we all lose together. It’s the tap that runs dry, the crops that fail, the reservoir that doesn’t fill up: all of this begins with the destruction of a territory central to Brazil’s water balance.
That’s why the “Cerrado, Heart of the Waters” campaign invites you to see this biome for what it truly is: essential. Join this movement: get to know, love, and defend the Cerrado.
Don’t let it stop pulsing.
LEARN MORE ABOUT THE CERRADO
