June 26, 2025
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Presidents and Indigenous leaders, fishers and financiers were all on the Mediterranean coast for the UN’s big ocean meeting. These items were the talk of the town.
The French port of Nice was overrun last week with politicians and diplomats sweltering in suits, cooler representatives from NGOs and local communities, and a staggering number of police.
More heads of state, governments and members of civil society attended the third UN Ocean Conference (UNOC) last week than ever before, hence the tight security. Presidents Macron of France, Lula of Brazil and other leaders discussed the urgent need to protect the ocean from seabed mining, bottom trawling, climate change and other threats.
But some attendees criticised what they saw as a lack of concrete commitments. While campaigners praised the progress championed at the conference by Pacific Islands States, they have slammed heads of bigger economies, especially France, for dragging their feet on halting destructive practices.
Dialogue Earth tallies the victories and letdowns of UNOC.
1. The High Seas Treaty is nearly here
Protecting the huge swathe of ocean that lies beyond the jurisdiction of any one country was a major focus in Nice. Key to this is the High Seas Treaty, also known as the Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction agreement. For this to come into force, 60 countries must ratify it.
In the end, only 50 had done so by the end of the meeting. Several national governments, including China, promised to soon. Supporters say it will not be long until the treaty becomes a reality.
“We urge all remaining nations to ratify without delay,” said Rebecca Hubbard, director of the High Seas Alliance group of conservation NGOs. As well as talk of ratifications, delegates at the conference scrutinised how the treaty will work in practice, building on preparatory talks that kicked off in April.
2. It’s two steps forward, one (big) step back on ocean protection
Many countries used UNOC to announce new marine protected areas – sections of the ocean where certain activities are restricted to protect marine life. The slew of announcements in Nice included French Polynesia promising to make a sizeable part of the ocean into such an area, to safeguard species from the smallest corals to the largest sharks.
Nations have pledged to protect 30% of the ocean by 2030, but progress towards this has been patchy, with just 8.6% protected in 2024, according to a report released just before the conference. Some progress was made at the conference. But even after all the announcements at UNOC, the 30% goal seems a long way away.
Researchers looking at reserves deemed “effectively protected”, as opposed to protection in name only, said the true figure was 2.8% last year. But it fell to 2.7% before the conference, due to US President Donald Trump opening up a huge marine reserve in the Pacific to commercial fishing.
How effectively, if at all, protected areas really protect was a big issue, nowhere more so than regarding bottom trawling.
3. Bottom trawling bans are in fashion, but doubts linger
In recent years, conservationists have complained increasingly bitterly about marine protected areas (MPAs) that allow bottom trawling. This activity, they say, does huge damage to seabeds and momentum to restrict it has gathered pace.
Even before the conference officially began, campaigners had notched a win with the UK’s environment secretary. Steve Reed announced proposals to ban bottom trawling in 41 of England’s 181 MPAs. France and Ghana followed suit, announcing restrictions on bottom trawling in their waters.
But Steve Widdicombe, director of science at the Plymouth Marine Laboratory in the UK, thinks his country’s announcement is not ambitious enough. Minimising all bottom trawling is crucial, he says. He adds that if the ban ends up displacing trawling activities to other valuable habitats, which happen to be unprotected, destruction would still continue.
Even more ocean campaigners were cynical about how much the French announcement will change things. NGO Oceana’s campaign director Nicolas Fournier said the French moves “are more symbolic than impactful. Bottom trawling isn’t even occurring in most of the new areas proposed for protection.”
4. Indigenous communities are more in evidence than ever, but still struggling to be heard
Several panels at the conference were focused on Indigenous voices and whether they have seats at the decision-making table. Indigenous groups’ representatives joined national and civil society delegations. But some of them felt sidelined.
Some delegates from the Global South spoke about their struggles to obtain the accreditation, visas and funding needed to attend. Others found translation limited when they finally reached the conference’s “blue zone” for high-level discussions.
Luene Karipuna, an Indigenous woman of the Karipuna people in Amapá, attended in part to raise awareness of plans to begin drilling for oil at the mouth of the Amazon. In his opening speech, Brazil’s President Lula talked of the importance of Indigenous Peoples. But Karipuna just shook her head when asked if she feels he is listening to concerns about the plans.
“The project threatens not just the environment but how the Indigenous People live,” she told Dialogue Earth. “Here [at the conference], Lula is saying he supports Indigenous rights. But Lula has pushed for this project.”
Karipuna was far from alone in feeling that the question of fossil fuels was often avoided in high-level talks.
5. Fossil fuels are the whale in the room
Talk of climate change was much in evidence among speakers representing national governments, but fossil fuels were barely mentioned by those from leading economies.
In side events and discussions on the streets of Nice, many civil society activists stressed how essential they felt curbing oil and gas exploration is, both to limit climate change and protect ocean environments from its impacts, such as coral bleaching and ocean acidification. Representatives of island states were particularly incensed.
“Of course, it has not been discussed enough here. It is the single greatest cause of damage to the ocean that we’re seeing now, and we’re not talking about it enough,” said Ralph Regenvanu, Vanuatu’s minister of climate change, at a press conference. The lack of focus on fossil fuels shows the power of the fossil fuel lobby, he added.
The political declaration adopted at the conference, also known as the Nice Ocean Action Plan, mentioned climate change 21 times and fossil fuels not once.
6. Nations are nautical miles apart on money
Everyone at the meeting said they agreed the ocean needed more protection. But they showed little unity on how to pay and who should pay.
There was much discussion of the fact that UN Sustainable Development Goal 14 – which concerns the ocean – is the least financed of all the 17 goals. One analysis suggests delivering SDG14’s targets requires USD 175 billion per year. Less than USD 10 billion was spent in total between 2015, when the goals were set, and 2019.
Asterio Appi, Nauru’s minister of climate change and national resilience, told a plenary session at the meeting that “ocean financing must be measured in the trillions, not billions”.
As with climate funding, where national commitments continue to lag behind stated goals, it seems the gap between ambition and actual spending in the ocean will not be closed soon.
7. America’s unilateral ocean moves are uniting other countries
The US did not send a senior delegation to Nice, but discussion of the country’s president was hard to avoid.
Macron made some pointed remarks in his speech on the opening day, saying Greenland and the deep sea were “not for sale” (Trump has expressed a desire to take over Greenland.) “For the battle of the ocean to be won, we need to revitalise multilateralism at the UN,” he said. No one in the audience or watching the talks in the overspill rooms and cafes around Nice was in any doubt who he was talking about.
Also at the opening session, UN Secretary-General António Guterres expressed support for the work of the UN’s International Seabed Authority (ISA), which regulates deep-sea mining. “The deep sea cannot become the wild west,” he said. That was widely interpreted as a shot at Trump, as the US has made moves to approve deep-sea mining outside the auspices of the ISA.
China’s vice president, Han Zheng, met with Guterres and Macron on the sidelines of the conference, reiterating China’s support for multilateralism and the UN-centred international system.
What we didn’t learn: How to do a winning manu
Down the coast from the plenary hall, while delegates were about to expatiate on how vital the ocean is, a select group of attendees made their own statement by plunging into the sea.
“Popping a manu” is a jumping technique created by Māori and Pasifika communities with the aim of making the biggest splash. In Nice, a “manu championship” was organised by Angelo Villagomez, a senior fellow focusing on Indigenous-led conservation at US think-tank the Center for American Progress. Dialogue Earth sent a competitor, who sadly missed out on the gold.
“We are in a conference with very serious conversations and very important people. But we are also in one of the most beautiful ocean spots on the planet. This is a reminder of the joy that the ocean brings us,” Villagomez told Dialogue Earth.
“The reason we have these conferences is so that political leaders can make big announcements and big promises. We saw a little of that, but it needs to increase by a factor of 10 to 100.”
As Africa’s EV market booms, homegrown innovators are racing to recycle batteries and stop a toxic legacy before it starts.
There is no night or day in Ghana’s infamous e-waste graveyard Agbogbloshie. Hundreds of unofficial e-waste pickers scour its sprawling terrain to extract components that contain copper, cobalt, lithium and other precious metals. If it has a circuit board or battery, it is fair game. These components fetch a decent price on the black market, where demand is high.
Africa has an e-waste problem. Collection and recycling are mostly controlled by informal actors who often lack knowledge of the health and environmental dangers posed by improper handling.
Hussein Apeh, supervisor and operations officer at Hinckley Recycling, a Nigerian e-waste recycler, said informal pickers are swift and persistent.
“They remove what they think is valuable, then discard the rest in dumpsites, including damaged batteries that can leak or ignite,” he told Dialogue Earth.
The consequences can be grave. Toxic fumes are released when plastics are burned, and heavy metals seep into the surrounding soil and water.
A recent VoxDev study revealed that infant mortality rose by 10% for babies born within 10 kilometres of Ghana’s Agbogbloshie and Nigeria’s Olusosun dumpsites, while respiratory illnesses are widespread.
According to the UN Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR), Africa generates about 3.5 million metric tonnes of e-waste annually. Although small in comparison to Asia’s 30 million metric tonnes, less than 1% of Africa’s e-waste is formally collected and safely recycled. The remainder feeds an informal economy marked by makeshift, often dangerous recycling practices.
The continent’s shift toward a green transition and its embrace of e-mobility risk worsening this crisis. Africa’s electric vehicle (EV) market is growing rapidly, projected to reach USD 17.41 billion this year and expand at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 10.2%, hitting USD 28.3 billion by 2030. Local EV manufacturing and the proliferation of e-bike startups are accelerating battery usage, just as solar and other renewable energy installations gain traction. Africa’s battery market is forecast to reach USD 4.97 billion this year and grow to USD 6.82 billion by 2030.
Without a coordinated approach to battery disposal, the progress of electrification could leave a toxic legacy. But experts argue that with the right policies and investment in battery reuse and recycling, the continent could turn a looming threat into an economic opportunity.
Solomon Onuchukwu, an analytical chemist and enumerator at Nigeria’s E-waste Producer Responsibility Organization (EPRON), said the repurposing of used batteries could significantly reduce energy storage costs for renewable energy installations.
“There’s at least 70 to 80% capacity in second-life batteries, and they can be repurposed for solar storage and backup power systems,” Onuchukwu noted.
Collins Owuor, a renewable-energy specialist at the East African Center of Excellence for Renewable Energy and Efficiency (EACREE), echoed this point.
“If the capacity is there, it will be possible to extend the life of various decommissioned batteries,” he told Dialogue Earth.
“And then enable them to serve longer or repurpose them for other uses like supporting e-mobility in 3-wheelers (keke/tuk-tuk/rickshaw) and 2-wheelers (okada/bodaboda).”
Currently, a handful of pioneering ventures across Africa are demonstrating how homegrown, scalable recycling models can meet the challenge. Hinckley Recycling in Nigeria, SLS Energy in Rwanda, and Cwenga Lib in South Africa are three examples of companies attempting to build sustainable, safe systems for battery recovery.
Cleaning up battery waste legally and at scale in Nigeria
Last year, Hinckley Recycling announced the launch of a USD 5 million lithium-ion battery recycling facility in Ogun State, Nigeria. Though the plant is still scaling up to full operation, the company has already begun repurposing usable battery cells into modular power packs for mini-grids.
“First, we test them to separate the good cells from the bad ones,” Apeh explained.
“The good cells are repurposed into power packs [for mini-grids], while batteries that reach their end-of-life [bad cells] are collected and sent to our partners outside Nigeria for material recovery.” Metals like lithium, nickel and cobalt are extracted from these exhausted batteries.
“Instead of mining virgin materials from the earth, we do what is called urban mining,” Apeh said, referring to materials extraction from e-waste.
In 2024, Hinckley processed around 10,000 individual lithium-ion batteries and exported 25 tonnes of battery waste for recycling. These figures are expected to rise significantly once the new facility reaches capacity.
Hinckley’s power packs are built in partnership with Aceleron Energy, a UK-based firm, and incorporate a compression technology that allows individual cells to be replaced, extending their life span.
A persistent challenge in Nigeria is the lack of formal battery collection centres.
“At the moment, the burden of rightfully disposing batteries lies with the consumer,” said Owuor. He added that incentivised collection programmes would help strengthen recycling value chains. Hinckley is attempting to do just that by operating over five collection centres across the country.
The company sources used batteries primarily from telecom operators and solar home system providers.
“We work closely with IHS Towers, which powers telecom towers across Nigeria,” Apeh said.
“They use a lot of batteries for backup power, and when those go bad, they send them to us.”
Hinckley is also relying on policy enforcement. Nigeria’s National Environmental (Battery Control) Regulations, 2024, are designed to support the rollout of extended producer responsibility (EPR) programmes. Such programmes aim to make the recycling of products a duty of their manufacturers.
Apeh believes enforcement will help build awareness, formalise collection, and scale battery-recycling efforts nationwide.
A community-based approach to battery recycling in South Africa
In South Africa, Cwenga Lib is pursuing a decentralised model for lithium-ion battery recycling that emphasises safety and modularity. Rather than build large-scale plants, the company is deploying compact facilities that can be situated in communities across the continent.
“At the core of our process is safety and local adaptability,” said Lesego Siwela, Cwenga’s project lead.
“We use food-grade reagents, no high heat, and no pressure-based systems. That means our technology can run in a small community in Mauritius just as well as it does here in South Africa.”
Developed from purification research conducted at the University of the Western Cape, Cwenga’s ion-exchange process extracts key metals without generating harmful secondary waste. “We’ve built a clean chemistry process that works in a containerised, decentralised facility,” Ed Hardwick, Cwenga’s founder, shared. “That means we don’t need to ship batteries across borders, or invest hundreds of millions in a huge, dangerous plant. We want this to be Africa’s own answer to the battery-waste problem.”
Cwenga receives only 10-15% of formally collected waste in South Africa (which is around 4% of the country’s total waste). By using modular units, the company aims to minimise transport costs and ensure scalability. “We can place small facilities closer to collection zones instead of shipping waste across countries to one huge plant,” said Siwela.
A major barrier remains battery literacy
“People aren’t sorting their e-waste,” noted Jenny Falconer, Cwenga’s technical lead. “Many don’t know batteries are hazardous and when labels don’t indicate battery chemistry, you can’t even tell what’s safe to handle or not.”
South Africa’s 2021 EPR policy mandates that battery producers take back their products at end-of-life. Cwenga is one of the only companies operating under this framework and successfully turning lithium-ion waste into reusable materials.
“Our model is still young, but it’s working,” said Falconer. “We’re showing that battery recycling doesn’t have to mean industrial risk or toxic runoff. It can be clean, decentralised, and community-run.”
Cwenga currently doesn’t directly handle the repurposing of used batteries. It works closely with upstream partners who do. These partners test and extract viable cells from spent batteries, often from e-mobility or solar power systems, and assemble them into power solutions for backup systems, clinics, or rural mini-grids. Only once those batteries are fully exhausted do they arrive at Cwenga’s plant for processing. There they are able to extract cobalt oxide, which is sold to ceramics and pottery makers, and nickel carbonate, which goes into glassmaking and industrial catalysts.
From e-mobility to community power in Rwanda
SLS Energy is a Rwanda-based firm founded by renewable-energy engineer Léandre Berwa. It is repurposing lithium-ion batteries from electric motorcycles and solar systems into modular power packs. SLS power packs now serve telecom towers, rural health centres, and refugee camps.
Berwa noticed that batteries used in two-wheelers with battery-swapping systems reached the end of their life far faster – sometimes in as little as three years – despite still retaining up to 70% of their storage capacity. “I saw that they weren’t dead,” he stated. “They just weren’t fit for their original purpose anymore. But they could still be really valuable in new roles.”
SLS is also targeting use cases on farms. In partnership with agricultural initiatives like One Acre Fund, its battery packs now support the company’s “irrigation-as-a-service” offering, where farmers are provided with on-demand access to water delivery systems, so they can grow crops more efficiently. With SLS’s battery packs, it is able to dispatch mobile, solar-charged units daily to smallholder farms growing crops, often for export. “The electric pumps reduce the farmers’ reliance on diesel,” said Berwa. “And they can share the system between plots, which lowers cost.”
Each battery is tested with proprietary software, matched by chemistry and age, and tagged with a QR code that tracks its deployment and performance.
“The biggest safety risks come from human error or mismatch,” Berwa told Dialogue Earth. “But we carefully address both through traceability and smart configuration.”
In 2023, SLS helped divert more than 100 tonnes of battery waste from landfills. The company is now expanding into Nigeria and Kenya, where partnerships with Hinckley and other stakeholders are already in place.
“EVs are scaling, and with that comes battery retirement,” Berwa said.
“If we don’t have local reuse solutions, we’re just shifting the waste problem.”
Like Cwenga and Hinckley, Berwa sees the work SLS does as economic justice. “Africa can’t afford to mine minerals, export batteries, and then throw them away,” he stressed.
“We need to keep those resources on the continent, powering our homes, our businesses, and our growth.”
In Rio Grande do Sul, as a wave of solidarity recedes, farmers face up to financial obligations, trauma, and preparing for the next extreme weather event.
The collapsed roof of the barn, once the shelter for 500 pigs, is a constant reminder to Gustavo Lorenzon of the catastrophic floods that hit his farm, and much of the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul, in May 2024. A year later, he still cannot afford to fix it, even if it means a 30% reduction in his annual turnover. “Refurbishment would be expensive and we thought it prudent to wait. It’s not the time to take on another debt,” Lorenzon told Dialogue Earth in April.
The third generation of a family of pig farmers, Lorenzon said that in 2022 he invested 1.3 million reais (USD 233,000) to modernise his sheds. The government’s rural credit scheme provided for a two-year grace period, which he began paying back in 2024. However, the floods of that year drastically reduced his production, forcing him to tighten the family budget. “We’ve taken from our own salary to honour the 210,000 reais [USD 38,000] annual instalment,” Lorenzon explained.
A year ago, torrential rains caused the worst climate tragedy in Rio Grande do Sul’s history. The Taquari valley, a rural area north-west of the state capital, Porto Alegre, and home to the Lorenzon farm, was one of the regions most affected both by the overflowing of the Taquari River and its tributaries, and by landslides.
The disaster, driven by the El Niño weather phenomenon and exacerbated by climate change, devastated the agricultural sector in Rio Grande do Sul, which is among the country’s largest producers of rice, soya and pork. Figures from Emater, the federal rural technical assistance agency, show that 206,000 properties lost crops, animals and facilities.
In 2024, the Dialogue Earth team travelled through the regions most affected by the rains – the plains of the Taquari and Caí valleys, and the Porto Alegre metropolitan region. We came across devastating losses, stories of resistance, and urgent calls for support.
On returning almost a year later, the team found traumatised farmers, in debt and afraid to invest in their production in the face of climatic extremes.
“I kept cleaning the house, fixing things, seeing how to get back into production because I didn’t want to stop and think about what had happened,” said farmer Roselei dos Santos Porto, as if she were reliving what had happened.
For 15 days, the Porto family’s house and allotment remained submerged. They live and work in the municipality of Eldorado do Sul, in a settlement belonging to the Landless Workers’ Movement (MST), a nationwide agrarian reform and land distribution movement.
In the municipality of Encantado, 150 kilometres to the north, farmer Mauro Vieira Marques and his wife, Ivete Justina, looked out on their property’s fallen trees and plots left churned by the force of the flood. It was only in April this year that the local government sent in machinery to finally level the land and remove the debris.
They now plan to replant their orchard with oranges, limes, papaya and persimmons. After the tragedy, only one banana tree survived.
The deluge also destroyed the facilities in which the couple produced artisan cheeses and eggs to sell at the local market. They have not been rebuilt. “I only managed to plant pumpkins, some spices and a few corn stalks to make flour. We’re coming back little by little,” said Marques.
To supplement her income, Justina started working as a carer for the elderly. The couple still live in the house that was flooded, restored with the help of donations, but are waiting for support from the state to build a new home on a hill.
Making agriculture climate-resilient
A year after the rains, the region’s residents are still coming to terms with the catastrophe, and clouds remain over the enormous task of making local agriculture resilient to the next climatic extreme. On the heels of the flood, 2025 brought another challenge: brittle soils due to lack of water. Under La Niña, drought and heatwaves have led 60% of municipalities in Rio Grande do Sul to declare a state of emergency.
The swing between droughts and floods has become part of the reality in the state since 2020. The Federation of Agriculture of Rio Grande do Sul (Farsul) estimates that the state’s losses in the sector linked to droughts between 2020 and 2024 will reach more than 106 billion reais (USD 19 billion).
Experts interviewed by Dialogue Earth agree that this debate has not yet been taken seriously enough by the state government. “From a certain moment on, there was a ‘naturalisation’ of the hecatomb we suffered,” said Sérgio Schneider, professor of postgraduate studies in rural development at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS).
Schneider pointed out that the reopening of the airport on 21 October 2024, following a seven-month closure due to the floods, gave the feeling that everything was back to normal, that the flood had only been an exceptional event, and “not part of the new normal”.
Given the scale of the tragedy in Rio Grande do Sul, it is likely that the issue will feature on the agenda at COP30, the UN climate summit scheduled for November in the Amazonian city of Belém. The disaster, Schneider said, could serve as an example to share lessons learned and reinforce the urgency of actions involving climate justice, funding for losses and damages and support for vulnerable communities. But he added that the state has missed the chance to become an example of climate governance at the Belém summit.
“We haven’t learnt our lesson,” he said. “We could have done much more and better, such as creating a climate change secretariat [at the state level], which would bring together academia, government and companies to plan public policies, but these bodies are still not aligned.”
Schneider likened the inaction in Rio Grande do Sul to that of the COP meetings themselves. There is good will and critical mass, but “procrastination” prevails. “We’re dealing with an emergency very slowly,” said Schneider, who is also a consultant for the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation.
The Rio Grande do Sul government told Dialogue Earth that it has created a committee of scientists to advise its Reconstruction Secretariat on analysing climate resilience projects. Among these is a water management proposal to reduce the impacts of constant droughts and floods. The project, however, is still being drawn up.
In addition to guaranteeing food production, a vital and strategic priority for the country, analysts have highlighted the need for Brazil to rethink its agricultural model if it is to meet its emissions reduction targets. Today, agriculture accounts for almost 74% of the country’s emissions, mainly due to the conversion of soil into monocultures, according to the Climate Observatory, a civil society network that monitors Brazil’s emissions.
Inadequate management also reduces the soil’s ability to retain carbon, and can turn the land into an agent of the climate crisis. A study by the Amazon Environmental Research Institute (Ipam) shows that soils cultivated for more than a decade with a single species lose 38% of their carbon stocks – double the losses felt by soils suffering recurring forest fires.
“There’s no point in having more drought-resistant plants if we don’t manage the soil correctly,” says agronomist Francislene Angelotti, a researcher specialising in climate change at Embrapa, a federal agency focused on agricultural research and innovation. She cites, for example, techniques such as alternating crops to preserve nutrients, planting different species in the same space, covering the soil with plant remains to conserve moisture and cultivating without ploughing the land to prevent the loss of nutrients.
According to the researcher, Brazil already has a policy capable of meeting this challenge, in the form of the ABC Plan, whose initials stand for “low-carbon agriculture”.
The state government told Dialogue Earth that it is committed to the ABC Plan and has equipped technicians to measure emissions from crops, and plan for reductions. However, serious debt struggles in rural Rio Grande do Sul have postponed these long-term actions.
‘The countryside’s problem is financial’
After the tragedy of 2024, Rio Grande do Sul raised billions for its reconstruction. At the time, the national congress suspended for three years the repayment of 11.7 billion reais (USD 2.1 billion) of the state’s debt to the federal government. Most of the funds so far have been invested in emergency support for the victims, and in building new homes and infrastructure works: the floods left ten bridges collapsed, more than 8,000 kilometres of roads were damaged, and there were also impacts on the state’s network of waterways.
The federal government has also committed 6.5 billion reais (USD 1.1 billion) for works to adapt to climate change, such as the construction of flood dykes in the most vulnerable areas. So far, state governor Eduardo Leite’s administration has put out to tender the first such project for Eldorado do Sul. However, the proposed dykes do not reach the neighbourhood where the seven Landless Workers’ Movement (MST) settlements are located, and farmers report living in fear whenever the river level rises.
“We run the risk not only of losing our production, but of losing our lives,” said Marcia Riva, an agroecological producer of shimeji mushrooms and a partner in the Pão na Terra organic bakery, based in the same MST settlement as the Porto family.
When the floodwaters receded, there were cracks in the hills, cracked soil and farmers in debt who didn’t know how to resume production. With the support of her brothers and resources raised by the movement itself, Riva rebuilt the industrial kitchen to make bread and cakes. The shimeji greenhouse, however, has come back smaller.
“I can’t afford to invest any more,” she said. “We don’t have access to any public policy because we’re still in an area that could be flooded again,” she said, referring to the precariousness of the flood-protection infrastructure which, a year later, has reportedly barely got off the ground.
In 2024, a committee formed by ministries in Brasilia renegotiated 140,000 credit contracts under Pronaf and Pronamp – federal programmes aimed at family farming and medium-sized producers – with discounts that reached almost 1 billion reais (USD 180 million). However, farmers and technicians from rural assistance agency Emater interviewed by Dialogue Earth maintain that the financial aid is still not enough.
The state government estimates that local producers’ debts due in 2025 will reach 28 billion reais (USD 5 billion). “The biggest problem in the countryside right now is financial,” said Márcio Madalena, deputy secretary of the State Secretariat of Agriculture. He added that the outlook for the next harvest, between 2025-26, “worries us a lot”.
The state government has also suggested to the Ministry of Finance the use of the Pre-Salt Social Fund to support its recovery. This fund was created to distribute part of the revenues of oil production from the deep pre-salt layers of Brazil’s offshore fields to areas such as health, education and the fight against poverty, but also provides support for states affected by extreme events. The fund’s resources are available and would have no fiscal impact. Negotiations, however, have not yet progressed, according to Madalena, and the agricultural sector’s recovery remains at risk.
For farmer Riva, more than the debts, it is the farmers’ trauma that requires more attention: “We’re still very shaken up. Thankfully we’re a united group, but we need all the help we can get.”
Most of the producers interviewed by Dialogue Earth said they had needed psychiatric medication for anxiety and depression after the 2024 tragedy. A recent study published in the Lancet points out that extreme weather events are linked to worsening mental health – an impact that can be even greater among low- and middle-income populations, including a large part of the Latin American population.
A landscape transformed
In rural areas, the landscape is beginning to change following the tragedy of 2024. In the Taquari Valley – where small properties predominate, averaging 16 hectares – corn and vegetable crops are being set back from the banks of rivers and tributaries, under the guidance of Emater technicians.
The deforestation of hillsides directly contributed to worsening the tragedy, according to an analysis by Eduardo Vélez, from the Mapbiomas platform. Data shared with Dialogue Earth showed that the Guaíba River basin, where the greatest damage from the flood was concentrated, has lost 26% of its native vegetation since 1985. The reduction in cover has made it difficult for water to infiltrate the soil, facilitating runoff and worsening the flooding.
“The idea is to no longer use the flooded area, to let the riparian forest recover,” said Cristiano Carlos Laste, Emater’s manager in the municipality of Lajeado. “Nature has already taught us what not to do.”
The region’s dairy industry, which was hit hard by the flood, has not recovered. Properties that lost all or part of their facilities have reportedly stopped breeding dairy cows, with livestock areas converted to growing grains and fodder to feed the herds of less affected farms.
In the medium term, Emater and Embrapa plan to set up “technological reference units” (URTs) in the most affected regions. The URTs function as model farms, where sustainable agricultural practices adapted to the climate are tested. The aim is to promote dialogue with farmers and encourage the construction of landscapes that are more resilient to extreme events.
For Ernestino Guarino, a researcher at an Embrapa unit focused on Brazil’s temperate climate regions, the emphasis on URTs reflects the need for recovery to involve a redesign of the rural landscape – “a new agreement between man and nature”, as he puts it. He stressed, however, that “this inflection takes time”.
The Porto family, from Eldorado do Sul, managed to keep the organic certification of their plantation, despite its submersion in last year’s tragedy. According to the farmers, analyses of the soil carried out by UFRGS professors and technicians from the Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock did not identify any contamination by pesticides or other residues.
A month and a half after the flood, the soil on the property was ready for replanting. “We got 15,000 seedlings from partner restaurants and started all over again,” recalls Roselei Porto.
To ensure customer confidence, the family displayed the results of their contamination-free soil analyses next to the prices of organic produce at a traditional market in Porto Alegre. Whenever someone stopped by their stall, they took the opportunity to explain the situation further. “You can’t imagine how happy I was when customers started coming back,” she said.
But the resumption soon ran into a new obstacle: yet another drought. In the MST settlements in the Metropolitan Region of Porto Alegre, the summer drought jeopardised the production of vegetables and spices.
“The impression I get is that we no longer have a full agricultural year, planting all year round,” commented farmer Marcia Riva. “We need new production alternatives and a lot of help.”
