Brazilian procedures regarding environmental licensing are consistent with international best practices, but there are problems with validation, implementation, enforcement, compliance, and corruption (Andalaft, 2019; Oliveira et al., 2019). The environmental impact assessment (EIA) – one of the most widespread tools for project licensing globally – has several problems in Brazil, including a lack of detailed technical guidance for implementers and an absence of public transparency of both the process and the resulting data (Dias et al., 2019). Moreover, there are also queries regarding the quality of many of the EIAs produced. The socioecological mining tragedies are evidence of the flaws of EIAs and the licensing process as a whole (Pena et al., 2017). We argue that a more substantial presence of academia in biodiversity monitoring and reporting during the EIA process and its involvement in the construction of public information systems can make licensing more cost-effective for corporations (e.g., Andalaft, 2019; Dias et al., 2019; Oliveira et al., 2019). Souza and Sánchez (2018) provide a specific example demonstrating for Brazilian vegetation in a limestone quarry that the quality of the EIA is positively related to the quality of the offset, which we examine next.

Biodiversity offset is a policy tool to compensate for unavoidable adverse impacts of projects and interventions (BBOP, 2012). Licensing legislation demands compensation or “no net loss” (NNL), which is achieved when impacts on biodiversity are balanced out by actions such as conservation, rehabilitation, and restoration (Rainey et al., 2015). When the gains exceed the losses, the project achieves a “net positive impact” (NPI). Therefore, biodiversity offsetting must bring additionality, i.e., a positive balance between the compensatory action results and the moment before the action (Gonçalves et al., 2015). Commitments towards NPI can be advantageous for companies to avoid conflicts with local communities, to secure supply chains related to natural resources, and even to offer access to financial institutions that adopted the Equator Principles (Table 2), with loans conditioned to NNL of natural habitat and NPI in critical habitat (BBOP, 2018). There are technical issues when discerning between NNL and NPI (Bull and Brownlie, 2017) regarding ecological uncertainties related to criteria or measurements that challenge the definition of the threshold between one and the other (Moreno-Mateos et al., 2015) and the definition of the time needed for offsets to provide expected gains (Curran et al., 2014). The proposed offset quality as compared to the pre-impact conditions is also a concern (Weissgerber et al., 2019). Crowe and ten Kate (2010) and Curran et al. (2014) argue that translating such complexity into offset calculations is often limited to targeting just one or few (e.g., species composition, habitat structure, and cultural values) of the multiple dimensions of biodiversity (structural, functional, evolutionary, cultural, economic). Some such difficulties are possibly behind the fact that less than one-third of the 66 global companies that had committed to biodiversity-specific NNL/NPI in 2001 kept such commitments active by 2016, and less than half specified mitigation hierarchy application or reference scenarios (de Silva et al., 2019).

This picture emphasizes the need for deeper academic engagement to apply science-based metrics to evaluate corporate performance concerning biodiversity, particularly in Brazil. South America, primarily due to Brazil’s contribution, is more dominant in terms of global offsetting area than other continents (Bull and Strange, 2018). Nevertheless, this is not reflected in academic engagement. A survey of 477 papers on biodiversity offsets showed that less than 1% was produced in Brazil (Coralie et al., 2015), and by 2018 Brazil and other Latin American countries, such as Colombia and Mexico, still received less research attention on biodiversity offsets than countries on other continents (Bull and Strange, 2018). This is surprising since Brazil has policies that allow and require offsetting practices, such as EIA, for an environmental license to operate (Villarroya et al., 2014; Gelcich et al., 2017). These patterns suggest that companies committed to offsetting their impacts on biodiversity in Brazil are seldomly interested in going beyond compliance (Souza et al., 2021).

Conservation of natural ecosystems can serve business purposes such as offsetting, Access and Benefit Sharing (ABS) and Environmental and Social Governance (ESG). Worldwide, the establishment of private reserves is becoming widespread in diverse forms (Bateman et al., 2015) to the extent that it now even seems to demand a taxonomy at the IUCN based on the private protected land’s tenure and security (Kamal et al., 2015). In Brazil, protected area legislation includes a category of private reserves called RPPNs (Private Natural Heritage Reserves). It consists of stretches of land within private properties voluntarily set aside by the landowners for conservation purposes. Such designation to the ground is permanent and perennial: irrespective of the land sale, the law enforces future owners to protect it. The only incentive landowners receive to register part of their land as RPPNs is an abatement in property taxes. More than 1200 RPPNs cover 8004 km2 (Silva et al., 2021), c. 1.5% of the total covered by public terrestrial protected areas in Brazil (1,530,000 km2; Vieira et al., 2019). Among those, there is discreet participation of large corporations.

Additionally, other private land types are protected and are not accounted for within the national system of protected areas. For instance, Vale and Votorantim are large companies that hold private reserves where research and conservation occur at different levels. Vale’s reserve in Linhares (230 km2), Votorantim’s Legado das Águas (310 km2), and Votorantim’s Legado Verdes do Cerrado in Niquelândia (230 km2) together cover nearly the equivalent of 10% of the area collectively protected by RPPNs in the country. However, these areas are not considered in national protected area calculations because they do not fit the federal legislation stipulations. Since nearly 53% of the remaining native vegetation in the country lies within private properties (Soares-Filho et al., 2014), including a fraction of that private land in the national panorama for biodiversity and ecosystem services conservation is essential for Brazil and could improve public-private dialogue for conservation.

While RPPNs are an option, there are mandatory areas to be protected within farms, according to the Brazilian Native Vegetation Protection Law (NVPL; a.k.a. the “New Forest Code”; Brancalion et al., 2016). Legal Reserves and Permanent Preservation Areas, as they are called, currently do not account for the conservation budget either (but see Silva et al., 2021). NVPL has created a market for trading native vegetation certificates (CRAs) that allows landowners to compensate for restoration obligations by conserving native vegetation elsewhere (Brancalion et al., 2016). When at full implementation, this scheme could become the largest market for trading native vegetation in the world that generates co-benefits by fostering payment for ecosystem services (PES) programs focused on biodiversity conservation, water security, and climate regulation (Soares-Filho et al., 2016; but see Vieira et al., 2018). We postulate that it is the appropriate time to revisit Brazil’s protected area system to promote its expansion and collect and bring private conservation data into its reporting routine to the CBD. This endeavor, again, requires significant involvement of scientists for various tasks: defining priority areas for private conservation or restoration; cataloging and monitoring species and ecosystems within such regions; estimating ecosystem service flows; developing new techniques for valuing ecosystem services to help determine standards for compensation and offset; and devising new incentive mechanisms (see Meiβner, 2013).

According to NVPL (Soares-Filho et al., 2014; Rezende et al., 2018), the large vegetation debts call for two additional policy instruments that are key to conserving natural areas and demanding engagement between HEI and the private sector: economic incentives for conservation and ecological restoration. The most well-known type of incentive is PES, which can be financial or non-financial, according to several sub-national legislation in Brazil (Young and Castro, 2021). PES existed in a rudimentary form for decades until the 1990s, when it expanded as an integrative conservation mechanism (Wunder et al., 2008). Despite the criticism related to the ethical implications of the economic pricing of nature (Peterson et al., 2010), PES programs have now been implemented in most continents and on different scales: recent accounting registered more than 500 PES schemes (Salzman et al., 2018). Grima et al. (2016) analyzed 40 implemented PES cases in Latin America and showed that projects are started by private sellers (95%, companies, associations, and NGOs). In the case of buyers, there were almost the same number of public (38%) and private buyers (45%) and, less frequently, a mix of public and private buyers (17%). The study concludes that most PES schemes can be considered successful. Among other aspects, positive results were related to compensation, where in-kind contributions (e.g., roads, electricity, and training) seem more effective than cash payments (Grima et al., 2016). Successful PES schemes also flourish in Brazil, especially at the sub-national level (see list of experiences in Scarano et al., 2018b).

Ecological restoration is another sizeable, urgent, and primarily untapped opportunity for corporations in Brazil (Brancalion et al., 2019), although some historic initiatives are often developed as compensation (e.g., Rodrigues, 2009; Scarano et al., 2018a). Reale et al. (2018) showed that of the 11 companies with the best sustainability indices (ISE) in the Brazilian Stock Exchange, only one from the forestry sector demonstrated concern for this component. Auspicious global targets for restoration (such as those set by the biodiversity and the climate conventions) are echoed by Brazil’s commitment to the Paris Climate Agreement by restoring 12 million hectares (Scarano, 2017). Recent prioritization efforts for effective restoration to maximize biodiversity, climate gains, and cost-efficiency, both for the planet (Strassburg et al., 2020) and specific Brazilian biomes (Zwiener et al., 2017; Strassburg et al., 2019), provide reliable scientific background for future interventions.

Bioeconomy in Brazil has more often been associated with biofuels, mainly derived from the country’s breakthrough with sugarcane ethanol use and production (Karp et al., 2021) and with biotechnology applied to agribusiness monocultures (Backhouse, 2021). However, biofuel ethanol has historical issues related to land use, labour, and deforestation (Benites-Lazaro et al., 2020). Biotechnology, in the shape of genetically modified organisms, is associated with socioecological inequalities (Backhouse, 2021). Although biofuel ethanol is not entirely ruled out as an option (e.g., Hernandes et al., 2022), Brazil’s contribution to the global bioeconomy comes at a high cost in terms of socioecological issues locally. The shift toward a socioecological fair and just bioeconomy requires a change in the mindset of corporations (Bastos Lima, 2021).

More recently, however, new bioeconomy opportunities have emerged from the potential for sustainable use of agroecological, pharmaceutical, and cosmetic products derived from the sociobiodiversity (Skirycz et al., 2016; Valli et al., 2018) in the Amazon (Shanley et al., 2012; Nobre et al., 2016; Nobre and Nobre, 2020) and elsewhere (Valli and Bolzani, 2019). Several emerging examples follow at least some of those principles in the country. “Symbiosis Investments” (https://symbiosis.com.br/) focuses on sustainable wood products based on 30 native tree species of the Brazilian Atlantic Forest planted in the consortium, and its operations are science-based (e.g., Garuzzo et al., 2021; Santos et al., 2022). In the Amazon, “Belterra Agroforests” (www.belterra.com.br) invests in large-scale agroforests in degraded areas (Abramovay et al., 2021) and is now building a research institute. “Conexsus” (www.conexsus.org), in the Amazon, Cerrado, and Caatinga, makes the links between private socioecological investments with environmental-impact community businesses (Conexsus, 2019; Abramovay et al., 2021; Scarano et al., 2021).

“Re.Green” (www.re.green) is a newly founded company that aims to restore one million hectares of forests, capture carbon, and return the forests to society as protected areas. It partners with research institutes and universities to achieve its goals. The Brazilian Development Bank (BNDES) launched the Living Forest initiative, a public-private partnership that uses ecological restoration to form ecological corridors and to recover river basins throughout the country (https://www.bndes.gov.br/wps/portal/site/home/desenvolvimento-sustentavel/parcerias/floresta-viva). Another exciting example is farmers’ cooperatives partnering with businesses, non-governmental organizations, international aid, and academia in agroforestry and oil palm production in what used to be degraded or unproductive areas in the Amazon (Futemma et al., 2020).

Suppose only a fraction of the public investment in science and technology in the agribusiness-oriented bioeconomy (Bastos Lima, 2022) were to be applied in the sociobiodiversity-based economy. In that case, Brazil could leapfrog to become a global power in sustainable bioeconomy (see Table 2 for Brazil’s climate emergence bill that awaits congressional review). Despite the apparent potential for this in a megadiversity country (Scarano et al., 2021), Bergamo et al. (2022) argue that four principles should guide the typical extraction approach of forest-based products: zero deforestation, no monocultural practices (with or without native species), equitable benefit sharing with local communities, and strengthening local culture and traditions. When applied to the bioeconomy, all these principles require a scientific background. In this same logic, Scarano et al. (2021), based on an extensive literature review, have listed potential gains and constraints of bioeconomy in megadiversity countries such as Brazil. Improvements include more sustainable use of environmental resources (e.g., in the agricultural and forest-based sectors, in the handling of waste streams and the production of value-added products and bioenergy), renewal of industries, modernization of primary production systems, protection of the environment and enhanced biodiversity by having sustainability and circularity as principles. Potential constraints include the risk of competition between food and bioenergy or biomaterial production causing indirect land use change or deforestation, biodiversity loss, eutrophication, invasive species, high water demand, and risks of subsumption of nature to capital. Scientific engagement with entrepreneurs will be a prerequisite to maximize gains and reduce risks.

Directly related to the sociobiodiversity-based bioeconomy challenge is the issue of ABS. The Nagoya Protocol of the CBD has governed this theme internationally since it was announced in 2010. It has been set to safeguard fair and equitable sharing of benefits from using genetic resources with traditional knowledge holders (Heinrich et al., 2020). Although having played a key diplomatic role in approving the protocol (Mittermeier et al., 2010), Brazil was the 130th party to ratify it, which only took place in 2021. Although ABS is a reasonably new policy and practice in Brazil, there are already some reported cases of success, especially in the cosmetics sector (e.g., Cassol and Sellitto, 2020; Nobre and Nobre, 2018).

However, several challenges remain. Muzaka and Serrano (2019) see it as a challenge for Brazil to play a global role in ABS while having to overcome its governmental bureaucratic hurdles and attending expectations of local knowledge holders. For instance, Brazil’s legislation and policy that addresses ABS defines that governance as participatory and coordinated by the Genetic Heritage Management Council (CGen) at the Ministry of Environment. Since the publication of the so-called “Biodiversity Law” in 2015, participation has been unbalanced, with a predominance of the private sector and federal government actors over local knowledge holders, civil society, and academics (Castro and Santos, 2022). The presence of academics in policy implementation such as this is also strategic. Muzaka and Serrano (2019) trust that academic engagement with businesses can help provide safeguards and metrics for benefits while devising participatory processes that define agreements between companies and knowledge holders for ABS. Moreover, developing information systems that might increase transparency and monitoring of arrangements will also be essential, as already seen in the case of environmental licensing. Finally, Carvalho Ribeiro and Soares Filho (2022) call for investments in research, market niches, infrastructure, and capacity building and propose the creation of a National Benefit Sharing Fund to advance biodiversity knowledge.

The United Nations Global Compact (2004)’s report on financial markets to a changing world launched the ESG concept. However, only over the last decade has it become a hot topic among businesses since companies are pressured to implement such practices by investors, consumers, and the market (Martins, 2022). Thus, there are now available metrics for ESG, some of which apply to stock exchange ratings, as in the case of Brazilian B3 and its “S&P/B3 Brazil ESG Index” (Amato Neto et al., 2022). Several recent studies on the relationships between ESG investment by companies and their financial performance show that while in developed countries there is a direct positive relationship, this is not the case for developing countries, specifically in Brazil (Garcia and Orsato, 2020; Duque-Grisales and Aguilera-Caracuel, 2021), although others indicate otherwise (Miralles-Quirós et al., 2018). Regardless of this controversy, among ESG metrics and ratings, biodiversity is one of the environmental parameters (Doni and Johannsdottir, 2020). A PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC, 2019) report indicated that among 1141 companies from 31 countries and across seven industry sectors, biodiversity Sustainable Development Goals 14 and 15 were those of the least concern. Although Brazil was not part of the survey (Chile, Colombia, and Mexico were the Latin American countries assessed), this has been interpreted as an indication of low priority for biodiversity assessment among ESG indicators (Schleich, 2021). Indeed, biodiversity scientists could make an essential contribution to ESG metrics is refining biodiversity incorporation. Sustainable bioeconomy practices, ABS, biodiversity offsets practices, and others we reviewed here could all be accounted for in the ESG metrics.