The Brazilian Pulp and Paper Sector Continues to Grow

A friend asked me recently why I liked Brazil so much, well I said Brazil has a lot going for it and not just its sun kissed beaches and pina coladas.

Over the next seven years Brazil will have hosted two of the most important World events, the World Cup in 2014 and the Olympic Games in 2016. This means that in the lead up to these events Brazil will need to make large infrastructure investments to stimulate growth in the civil construction works, services, logistics and transportation sectors.

At the moment it is predicted that Brazilian company investments in the coming seven years will meet the optimistic economic outlook in Brazil. Currently foreign exchange reserves exceed US$260 billion, Brazil’s credit rating has risen to investment grade and the GDP is expected to increase to 6.5% by the end of this year.

Riding on the back of this economic wave the pulp and paper industry supplies products for all other sectors. The challenge then will be to show the international community that the Brazilian pulp and paper industry is ready to expand its operations but not at the expense of the land it occupies.

In addition according to a survey conducted by the National Agriculture Confederation (CNA), the Brazilian Association of Forest Plantation (ABRAF) and the Brazilian Sugarcane Industry Association (UNICA) Brazil has 72 million top soil hectares available for cultivation.

So the land is there then, ready to meet demand for food production, biofuels and the forest based sector. Currently Brazil has 6.3 million hectares of planted forest, which supply raw material for the wood, furniture, steel and pulp and paper industries. This is equivalent to 0.7% of the Brazilian territory.

According to the Brazilian pulp and paper sector an important part of their thesis in climate negotiations is that with the expansion of planted forest areas there will be a rapid growth of planted forests and the resulting high CO2 capture rate will directly aid the fight in global warming.

Their goal then is to validate forest carbon credits as a mechanism to offset emissions. They are so confident in the auspicious progress of these negotiations that they are submitting this proposal via the Brazilian government to the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP16) in Mexico this November.

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