BRAZIL

Pantanal: Tackling Climate Change Depends On Five Other Biomes


Pantanal, Mato Grosso, Brasil. Photo Credit: Filipefrazao, Wikimedia Common

ABr
By Fabiola Sinimbu

Key Takeaways:

The Pantanal is drying because it lives off its neighbors. Fed by the Cerrado, Amazon, Atlantic Forest, Chaco, and Bosque Chiquitano, it is the world’s largest floodplain—and highly exposed when those biomes change. MapBiomas: by 2025 the flooded savanna had lost more than 1 million hectares since 1985 (84% of what was recorded), much of it turning to drier savanna or grassland; channels (vazantes) and rivers are silting and shrinking.

Local restoration is treated as climate work, not only conservation. Claudinei Terena (Limão Verde, Aquidauana) restored 3.3 hectares of Cerrado headwaters with agroforestry and traditional plant knowledge. In the Santa Tereza quilombo, Adauto Cândido Pereira and the Flores do Cerrado Network (31 collectors) sell seed under a 30% leave-on-the-tree rule to restore riverbanks statewide.

WWF-Brazil’s line: fix the Cerrado springs that feed the wetland, limit reckless land use and small hydropower that fragment rivers and hurt fish and tourism, prefer solar, fight fires, and keep jaguar corridors. Traditional knowledge is framed as part of the strategy, not a footnote.

Small in size but vast in its capacity to sustain life, the Pantanal is the biome most influenced by neighboring ecosystems and borders the Cerrado, the Amazon, and the Atlantic Forest in Brazil, as well as the Chaco and Bosque Chiquitano in Bolivia and Paraguay.

This characteristic makes the Pantanal a vast reservoir of water and life, with water flowing long distances to reach the world’s largest floodplain. The diversity created by the convergence of these waters gives the region its natural beauty, but also makes it more vulnerable to the impacts of climate change.


“It is a plain that depends on what happens in other biomes and is affected by the changes taking place across the region, especially as climate change also impacts the surrounding areas,” says Cyntia Santos, a conservation analyst at WWF-Brazil.

According to data from the latest land use and land cover map released by MapBiomas, the Pantanal’s flooded savanna had lost more than 1 million hectares by 2025 compared with the beginning of the historical record in 1985.

The area lost represents 84 percent of the wetland savanna that once existed in the biome,with the majority – 833,000 hectares – having been converted to other types of vegetation, such as savanna or grassland. In practice, this means that the Pantanal is drying out.

“Parts of rivers have already disappeared, silted up… Some channels we call ‘vazantes’ – areas that fill and drain with the river – no longer exist, and the rivers are now very shallow,” says forest engineer and botanist Claudinei Terena.


Born in the Limão Verde indigenous territory, in the municipality of Aquidauana, Mato Grosso do Sul state, Terena recalls a time when abundant water enriched the soil and made the region ideal for growing everything they needed.

“These are things I learned as a child: ‘Let’s build a house here. This wood, this species, is good for that.’ Let’s look for some medicinal plants. This tree here is used for that – the bark, the fruit, the leaves, and the roots. Each serves a specific purpose,” he explains.

Drawing on traditional knowledge, Terena worked on a project to restore 3.3 hectares of headwater areas within the indigenous territory. The goal was to ensure that the water flowing into the Pantanal would also help keep that part of the Cerrado productive.

“One of the examples we highlight here within the community is our farming system. We’ve always practiced agroforestry without even realizing it. We’ve always planted different crops together,” he explains.
Network

A little farther from the Pantanal, seed collector Adauto Cândido Pereira lives in the Santa Tereza quilombo community in Figueirão, Mato Grosso do Sul. As a member of the Flores do Cerrado Network, he also sees restoring springs as a way to revitalize rivers.

Through the responsible collection and sale of seeds, efforts to restore riverbanks extend far beyond the community’s own territory. “We collect seeds to support other projects across the state. There are 31 of us collectors – 16 women and 15 men – and we follow basic collection rules, such as leaving 30 percent of the seeds on the tree. You don’t just go in and take everything. We take care of the tree and the environment,” explains Pereira.

Restoration

According to Cyntia Santos, the two projects are part of WWF-Brazil’s efforts to restore river headwaters in the Cerrado and curb land-use changes that cause springs to silt up and impede the flow of tributaries that drain into the Pantanal.

“It’s a consequence of economic activities that are often carried out haphazardly, without the necessary expertise. There’s a lack of technical support and incentives,” says Cyntia Santos.

According to WWF-Brazil Executive Director Maurício Voivodic, the organization has worked in Brazil for 30 years, 22 of which have involved more intensive efforts in the Pantanal.

“We work in these areas, in collaboration with partners, always seeking to create local impact while also generating learning, collecting data, and building knowledge that will enable us to influence public policy,” Voivodic explains.
Energy

To restore river flows to the Pantanal, projects are also being developed to raise awareness about other uses of water resources, such as the installation of small hydroelectric plants.

According to Cyntia Santos, in addition to fragmenting rivers, this type of investment affects aquatic biodiversity and the regional economy, which relies heavily on tourism.

“Electricity must come from other sources, such as solar energy, which is one of the most suitable options for the region, since small hydroelectric plants in this area do not generate economic benefits for either the government or local communities,” she says.

Within the Pantanal, efforts to combat forest fires and promote connectivity between areas of native vegetation – through corridors linking existing conservation areas – help strengthen populations of species such as the jaguar, an indicator of the health and integrity of local biodiversity.

According to Santos, the traditional knowledge of the people who inhabit the biome is a fundamental part of efforts to address these challenges. “This allows us to leverage information, work together, optimize strategies, and move forward as a team,” she concludes.


About ABr
Agência Brasil (ABr) is the national public news agency, run by the Brazilian government. It is a part of the public media corporation Empresa Brasil de Comunicação (EBC), created in 2007 to unite two government media enterprises Radiobrás and TVE (Televisão Educativa).
View all posts by ABr →