The technical report stated it was a “low environmental impact” activity: large-scale deforestation in the heart of the Cerrado, near springs and traditional communities in the rural area of Balsas, southern Maranhão. No public hearings, no consultation with the families. When local leaders sought out the environmental agency to understand the process, they were told that “everything was within the law.” But in the Cerrado, this legality often masks irreversible damage. In the name of an idea of “progress,” the land is licensed to disappear.
This is how Brazil's most strategic biome – and one of the oldest and most biodiverse on the planet – continues to be erased: not only by chainsaws, fire, and other means of clearing land, but also by administrative licenses, authorizations for the suppression of native vegetation, permissive legal provisions, and discourses of progress. The Cerrado doesn't disappear by accident. It is systematically erased by a logic of exclusion: it's not a forest, it's not a priority, it doesn't have "enough carbon," it doesn't yield international prestige. And now, about to host COP30 in Amazonian territory, Brazil risks repeating this same mistake: erasing the Cerrado from the climate agenda.
Deforestation on the rise and invisibility expanding.
According to data from INPE (National Institute for Space Research), deforestation in the Cerrado reached 7.882 km² between August 2022 and July 2023 — the highest rate in a decade and higher than the rate in the Amazon during the same period. In 2024, the rates remain alarming, particularly in the MATOPIBA region, where the agricultural frontier continues to advance forcefully into territories traditionally occupied by indigenous, quilombola (Afro-Brazilian), geraizeiras (traditional Afro-Brazilian communities), babaçu nut gatherers, and peasant communities. The devastation is intensified by large monoculture, livestock, and mining projects — sectors frequently benefited by weak environmental licensing and increasingly permissive legislation.
An example of this is Bill No. 2.159/2021, approved in the National Congress, which aims to establish self-declaration as the rule in the environmental licensing process. In a biome like the Cerrado, with less dense vegetation, precarious mapping of public lands, and extensive action by state agencies—historically vulnerable to the political and economic power of agribusiness—such a proposal is equivalent, in practice, to a generalized authorization to deforest.
The COP of the Amazon… and the silence surrounding the Cerrado.
While COP30 is being touted as the “COP of the Amazon” — and yes, the Amazon rainforest deserves all the attention — the Cerrado, which feeds that same forest with its springs, rivers, aquifers, and hydrological cycles, remains practically absent from official agendas. The conference program, centered on themes such as climate finance, just transition, transformative adaptation, common but differentiated responsibilities, with strong indigenous protagonism, still does not even recognize the Cerrado as a cross-cutting issue.
To date, the Cerrado biome only appears in parallel events organized by civil society networks and decentralized technical efforts, such as the Climate Dialogues and regional meetings. These initiatives are fundamental, but still insufficient given the scale of the crisis. This omission has profound consequences. Experts have been warning: if the Cerrado is not included in the official climate strategy of COP30, Brazil will waste a historic opportunity to lead an environmental agenda oriented towards multiple ecosystems and to foster a fair, representative, and effective synergy between the three UN conventions – on climate, biodiversity, and desertification.
Non-forest ecosystems and the "carbon tunnel vision"
The global climate debate still operates with a reductionist view focused exclusively on carbon, the so-called carbon tunnel vision. In this logic, ecosystems with higher biomass density are prioritized, to the detriment of savannas, grasslands, and other open ecosystems that perform equally important functions.
The Cerrado is home to approximately 5% of the planet's biodiversity, is the cradle of the main hydrographic basins of South America, and sustains the rainfall regime of the Amazon, the Pantanal, and parts of southeastern and central-western Brazil. It is an invisible pillar of continental climate stability. It is the continent's water heart. Ignoring it in climate negotiations is a technical, political, and ecological mistake.
Despite this, it remains outside the scope of climate finance mechanisms. Even the most celebrated voluntary multilateral commitments, such as the Glasgow pledges at COP26—which pledged over US$19 billion for forest protection actions—remain restricted to ecosystems defined as “forests” and exclude tropical savannas. This is repeated in other initiatives, such as the New York Declaration on Forests, the new Tropical Forests Forever Facility (TFFF), and the eligibility principles of various public and private funds.
These exclusionary definitions perpetuate the invisibility of the Cerrado. If the biome doesn't fit into the language of global commitments, it consequently doesn't fit into funding. If we want real nature-based solutions, we need to recognize the value of the Cerrado beyond carbon.
Global supply chains and shared responsibility
In 2023, the European Union approved the Deforestation-Free Products Regulation (EUDR), which requires geographical traceability for products such as soy, meat, and timber. While it advances accountability in supply chains, the EUDR adopts the FAO's definition of forest and focuses exclusively on "deforestation," leaving out the conversion of other native non-forest ecosystems, such as the Cerrado.
This methodological limitation contributes to shifting pressure from legally protected areas in the Amazon to regions with less institutional protection, such as the Cerrado. The lack of EUDR coverage for savannas opens regulatory loopholes and creates zones of legalized sacrifice, where devastation occurs with greater intensity but without proportional international attention.
The result is that tons of these products are exported from this biome to European, Chinese, and North American markets, often originating from areas illegally deforested or irregularly occupied. Data from MapBiomas Alerta shows that more than 93% of deforestation in the Cerrado in 2024 showed signs of illegality.
Ignoring the Cerrado in the COP30 discussions means perpetuating a globally subsidized chain of destruction, where food produced on devastated territories continues to cross borders without markets assuming their share of responsibility. It is necessary to align climate commitments with trade commitments, with socio-environmental justice and respect for the rights of the peoples who conserve biodiversity, including specific targets and explicit references for the protection and zero conversion of ecosystems, not just deforestation — “deforestation and conversion-free supply chains”.
A territory for life, not for sacrifice.
The devastation of the Cerrado is not just an ecological problem. It is a climate, territorial, racial, water, and legal injustice. The communities that live in this biome are systematically excluded from decision-making processes and frequently criminalized for defending their territories, as in the recent case of the arrest of Solange Moreira and Vanderlei Silva, peasant leaders from Bahia.
These communities are the ones that keep the Cerrado alive, even without public incentives, institutional protection, or policies that value their ways of life. And yet, they remain absent from formal climate and environmental governance structures—both national and international.
The time has come to break the silence.
COP30 represents a historic chance to correct this erasure. It's not about competing for attention, but about recognizing the interdependence between biomes. It's impossible to protect the Amazon while ignoring the Cerrado. Climate justice cannot be achieved by excluding the peoples of the Cerrado. There will be no ecological, hydrological, and climatic balance on the continent if the biome that sustains all of this is licensed to disappear.
The Cerrado needs to be at the center of national climate goals. It needs to be included in international funding programs. It needs to be recognized as a priority in conservation policies. And, above all, it needs to enter the political narrative of COP30 as an essential ecosystem and as a territory of struggle, life, and resistance.
When the traditional community in southern Maranhão learned of the deforestation near the water sources, it wasn't the noise of the machines that frightened them most. It was the silence: the silence of the reports signed without consultation, of the meetings that never took place, of the documents that erased living people from the map.
It is clear that without territorial justice, there is no legitimate climate solution. Courage, historical reparations, and a real commitment to climate justice are needed. The world can no longer ignore the most biodiverse savanna on the planet.