Carlos Roberto Simonetti already harvests corn, soy, and cotton three times each year from his sprawling 17,000-hectare farm in Brazil's Mato Grosso state. Now, he's preparing for what he calls a "fourth harvest" — one that comes not from the soil, but from the forest itself.
This unusual crop is part of CONSERV, a groundbreaking payment for ecosystem services program run by the Amazon Environmental Research Institute (IPAM) that pays landowners like Simonetti to keep native forests standing on their property, even in areas where Brazilian law permits them to be cleared. The initiative addresses one of conservation's toughest problems: how to compete financially with the short-term profits of deforestation, and how to protect forests that sit on private land where legal protections are weakest.
The numbers behind this problem are staggering. IPAM's research found that 1.5 million hectares of Mato Grosso's Amazon forest are at risk of being legally cleared. Across the country, private landowners control nearly 70 percent of deforested areas in Brazil, and between 2008 and 2024, an area larger than Belgium—3.6 million hectares—was legally cleared across the Cerrado and Amazon using permits. The risk is particularly acute in the Cerrado savanna, where private properties account for nearly 90 percent of the biome and between 28 and 38 million hectares of native vegetation could legally be converted to cropland or pasture under Brazil's Forest Code.
CONSERV's pilot phase, which ran from 2020 to 2024 and was funded by the governments of Norway and The Netherlands, protected 20,707 hectares across 23 properties in the Amazon and Cerrado. Additional ongoing contracts, backed by agribusiness companies in the Soft Commodities Forum committed to preserving the Cerrado, are protecting a further 7,000 hectares in Mato Grosso and Maranhão. Altogether, the program has safeguarded 27,700 hectares—an area roughly the size of Hamburg—from legal deforestation.
What makes CONSERV innovative is its focus on what Brazil's Forest Code calls "legal reserve surplus"—forests that landowners are permitted by law to clear. Rather than wait for regulations to tighten or hope that landowners choose conservation voluntarily, CONSERV pays them directly. Landowners like Simonetti receive regular payments for protecting forests beyond their legal obligations, creating a financial incentive that can compete with the profits of agriculture.
The pilot program worked with medium and large properties ranging from 5,000 to 15,000 hectares, with protected forest areas typically between 500 and 1,000 hectares per property. IPAM conducted thorough due diligence on each partner, verified by third parties, to ensure compliance with forestry laws.
Now IPAM is working to scale the program dramatically without relying solely on government donations or philanthropic funding. The institute is evaluating hybrid financial mechanisms: combining the sale of carbon credits with price premiums for sustainably produced commodities and access to cheaper credit for landowners. These tools, working together, could create the kind of long-term economic incentives needed to keep millions more hectares of private forest standing—and to demonstrate that conservation and profitable agriculture can coexist in Brazil.