Forest restoration can increase the Rio Doce watershed resilience

Abstract

Rio Doce watershed has centuries of land degradation and it was the main victim of the worst environmental disaster in Brazil’s history. This process of deforestation and soil erosion could be significantlymitigated if compliance to the new Brazilian Native Vegetation Protection Law (NVPL) would be ensured.Here, we show how the percentage of forest kept in areas of permanent preservation (APP) required by theNVPL drives the overall resilience and resistance of the entire Rio Doce watershed and how it contributesto the national restoration commitments. We used water quality as a proxy for watershed resilienceand resistance and we found that compliance to NVPL would require restoration of about 716 thousandhectares of riverine forest across the watershed. We found that increased forested areas improved water-shed resistance and resilience during the rainy and dry seasons, respectively. Our estimates suggest thatthe implementation of the NVPL could improve water quality, in addition to removing 14 Gt CO2yr−1ha−1from the atmosphere. At this scale, the forest restoration effort would represent 6% of Brazil’s restora-tion commitment. Financial feasibility of such a restoration enterprise is also achievable; at the highestpossible estimate, it would compromise about 59% of the total fund proposed by the mining companiesresponsible for the accident. Given the low socioeconomic indicators of this basin, intervention should bedesigned so as to improve local livelihoods and, therefore, contribute to local adaptation and sustainabledevelopment.