The minute
- Cerrado wetlands (veredas) store six times more carbon per unit area than Amazon lowlands, with an estimated total of up to 20 billion tonnes of CO2, according to the first study to quantify the biome’s peat carbon stocks at depths of up to 4 metres.
- Satellite mapping indicates these wetlands may cover 16.7 million hectares (2% of Brazilian territory), far more than previously assumed, and prior estimates may have underestimated carbon stocks by 55% to 90%.
- The peatlands release 70% of their annual emissions during the dry season, peaking in September, and researchers warn that longer, hotter dry spells threaten to destabilise what has been a stable carbon reservoir.
Why it matters: Brazil’s Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) under the Paris Agreement and its national greenhouse gas inventory rely on mapped carbon stocks to set reduction targets. If 20 billion tonnes of CO2 sitting beneath the Cerrado have never entered those calculations, both the baseline and the ambition of Brazilian climate policy rest on incomplete data. For companies sourcing soy, beef or cotton from the biome, the finding also raises the likelihood that carbon-related due diligence requirements will tighten.
What the Código Florestal misses
Under Brazil’s Forest Code (Lei 12.651/2012), landowners in the Cerrado must preserve 20% of native vegetation on their properties as a legal reserve. In the Amazon, that figure is 80%. The disparity was set decades ago on the assumption that the Cerrado held less ecological and climatic value. The study published by researchers at Unicamp directly challenges that premise: on a per-hectare basis, Cerrado wetlands rival the peat stocks of Indonesia and the Congo Basin, two ecosystems that receive far more international protection funding.
The PPCerrado (Action Plan for Prevention and Control of Deforestation and Fires in the Cerrado), relaunched in 2023, focuses on deforestation rates and fire prevention but does not include specific provisions for peatland conservation or carbon stock mapping. By contrast, Indonesia adopted a national peatland moratorium in 2011 and a dedicated Peat Restoration Agency in 2016, precisely because mapped carbon data forced policy action. Brazil lacks an equivalent institutional mechanism for Cerrado peat soils.
Consequences for agribusiness and carbon markets
Roughly 55% of the Cerrado’s native vegetation has been cleared over the past five decades, and three quarters of the biome sits on private land. For agribusiness operators, the immediate question is whether newly quantified carbon stocks will trigger stricter land-use conditions. The EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR), which covers soy and beef, requires proof that commodities were not produced on land deforested or degraded after December 2020. If Brazilian regulators or international buyers begin classifying drained veredas as degraded land, supply chains that today pass compliance checks could face new exposure.
On the opportunity side, verified peat carbon data could unlock conservation finance. Voluntary carbon market methodologies already exist for avoided peatland drainage (notably Verra’s VM0007), but they require baseline carbon stock measurements that, until now, did not exist for the Cerrado. The study offers a starting point, though the authors themselves note that more field validation is needed before the satellite-derived extent estimates can support project-level crediting.
What remains unresolved
Several pieces are still missing before the data can reshape policy or markets. First, the 16.7-million-hectare estimate of wetland extent is derived from satellite-based vegetation proxies, validated against roughly 150 known peat points. The researchers acknowledge that additional ground-truthing is required. Second, the one-year emissions measurement (showing the dry-season spike) is too short to model long-term trajectories under climate change scenarios. Third, Brazil’s national GHG inventory, compiled by the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation, would need to incorporate the new peat data to adjust the country’s emissions baseline, a process that involves methodological review and inter-agency coordination with no public timeline.
For the Cerrado’s carbon to move from research finding to policy lever, at least three things need to happen: systematic field mapping funded at national scale, formal inclusion of peat stocks in the national inventory, and a legal or regulatory instrument that recognises the climate function of veredas beyond existing wetland protections under the Forest Code. Without those steps, the data risks remaining an academic contribution while the biome continues to lose ground.
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