How a seed mix can help save native forests

Muvuca, in Brazilian Portuguese, means a “chaotic mix.” In agriculture, it’s a method to restore the forest around headwaters of rivers and streams by planting a mix of seeds from dozens of native species, to copy the variety of nature.

It promotes the growth of native vegetation – expanding an area’s ability to capture carbon – and also prepares these new forests for climate change, because the mix includes seeds from areas that are already adapted to a hotter world.

“The thing is, nature was already doing it on its own,” says Eduardo Malta, a forest restoration expert who helped spread the practice beyond a few communities in the center of Brazil. “We saw that the family farmers in that region were also already using direct seeding in their settlements, on their farms, and we saw the results.”

As part of hosting this year’s COP30 climate talks, Brazil spearheaded an ambitious project to create a reforestation fund called the Tropical Forest Forever Facility. Its goal was to raise an initial investment of $25 billion, which it then lowered to $10 billion. As the conference wraps up, the country has secured about $5.5 billion from Norway, France and Indonesia, with Germany pledging to contribute another $1.15 billion over the next decade.

As COP negotiators wrangle over funding to curb emissions and protect the world from climate change, muvuca is a grassroots effort that’s already restoring Brazil’s native vegetation. The Instituto Socioambiental (ISA), the non-profit where Malta works, is helping thousands of people collect seeds from the forest and farmlands and sell them to companies and farmers who need them to comply with reforestation laws.

While overall deforestation has declined in Brazil in the past few years, the problem persists. In addition to releasing emissions from burning forests to clear land and destroying carbon-trapping trees, deforestation results in erosion and silts up rivers.

Many of these riparian forests are located on soybean and cattle farms. Their owners are supposed to maintain a share of their land as forests, but in practice, they don’t always follow those rules and need to replant it. Muvuca, its proponents say, is a way for communities to benefit from this requirement.

“We saw that water could replenish the water table again through the recovery of the plateau areas that we call the Cerrado region,” said Fabrícia Santarém, a seed collector with the Cooperative of Farmers and Agro-extractive Restorers of Alto Rio Prado, one of the networks that works with ISA. “We strongly believe in our work, how much it can contribute to restoration and also help combat climate change.”

The first muvuca project started in 2006 in the basin of the Xingu River, one of the Amazon’s largest tributaries, after contaminated water from deforested areas and cities started flowing into the Xingu Indigenous Territory, an area roughly the size of Massachusetts that is home to about 15 Indigenous ethnic groups. Locals were already planting seeds directly in the ground to reverse the issue.

Since then, more than 100 organizations have adopted muvuca. ISA and its partners have restored around 11,000 hectares of degraded farmland, the equivalent of approximately 27,183 American football fields, including a few dozen hectares of farmland run by Amaggi, one of the world’s top soybean producers. The group’s goal is to restore 40,000 hectares of native vegetation by 2030.

The muvuca method has been replicated in different states and biomes across Brazil, from São Paulo’s Atlantic rainforest to Minas Gerais’ savannah. There are more than 2,500 collectors, about 1,500 of them in Indigenous territories and quilombolas, communities started by people fleeing enslavement during colonial times. Donors have included USAID, the Rainforest Foundation Norway, the European Union, the Bezos Foundation, Good Energies Foundation and Instituto Clima e Sociedade. The process is eligible for carbon accreditation under UNDCC standards.

But loose oversight, red tape and land ownership questions make it relatively easy to delay reforestation obligations under Brazilian law, which means the market for muvuca seeds is limited. There are about 300,000 hectares of degraded riparian areas in the Xingu watershed alone in need of reparation, according to data from non-profit ISA.

“If we could implement this law we’re talking about, the sheer volume of seeds needed to reach that number would stimulate commercialization and implementation,” said Thiago Belote, forestry department director at the National Secretariat for Biodiversity, Forests and Animal Rights, of the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change.

Sâmia Nunes, a researcher at the Vale Technological Institute (ITV), which is funded by mining giant Vale, said that to solve deforestation, landowners must realize that keeping the forest standing is good business.

“We realize that when we plant that little seed there, that suggests it’s possible to generate income from vegetation; they understand that it’s important to maintain those areas,” she said.