“It is our civilizational duty to protect the Amazon,” says João Moreira Salles
The documentary filmmaker launches a book about the forest, founds an ecological restoration company, and produces a documentary about native activist Txai Suruí.
re.green was born out of a meeting I had with researcher Bernardo Strassburg, who received a grant from the Serrapilheira Institute—founded by me and my wife, Branca Vianna, to support basic science in Brazil. He published a remarkable paper in [the scientific journal] Nature, identifying priority areas in the Atlantic Forest for restoration. He then developed a global model to identify priority areas for restoration based on parameters such as carbon and biodiversity.
And Brazil is a restoration hotspot: the country has the largest number of priority areas for forest restoration. That’s 58,000 square kilometers—more than the size of Switzerland. These are lands that have been cut down and, in their current state, serve no purpose. So it makes sense to have an ecological restoration company in the country. I introduced Bernardo to friends of mine in the private sector who know how to get a company off the ground. Things took off from there, and re.green was born.
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