Ten years later, the Peugeot–ONF Carbon Sink Project in Amazonia is a success, with more than 2 million trees of 50 local species planted, accompanied by a high-level multi-disciplinary scientific programme uniting the efforts of Brazilian and French teams at Fazenda São Nicolau, where the project is established.

«agricultural pioneer front», which marks the progress of agriculture at the expense of the Amazonian forest, the Carbon Sink project of fazenda São Nicolau forms above all part of an experimental and demonstration approach: it is truly a «pilot» project designed, insofar as possible, to serve as a model.

The primary aim of the project is to demonstrate that it is possible to carry out reforestation with local species in Amazonia, and that this reforestation, through the accumulation of atmospheric carbon in the wood through the process of the photosynthesis contributes, as the trees grow, to efforts to prevent the greenhouse effect. Ten years after its launch, the project has fulfilled its objective: two one thousand hectares of former pasture lands have been successfully reforested, largely with Amazonian species, and the storage of CO2 on the project is monitored annually by an internationally recognised methodology (GIEC/IPCC1 method).

But the project vision has not remained fixed around this initial objective. It is designed to evolve and has adapted to the questions posed by the scientific partners, and to the current state of discussions on efforts to prevent the greenhouse effect..
The second aim of the project is the study of the conditions of establishment of this forest planted from scratch: what are the most promising Amazonian tree species for planting? Those that store the most CO2? How is carbon stored at the soil level? But also: How do animal species invest this new afforested area? What are the parasites which the planted trees may have to face and the strategies to deal with them? etc. All these questions interest the scientific community and the answers to them will be useful to master the conditions of success of reforestation programmes in tropical regions.

Fazenda São Nicolau thus represents today a real «field laboratory» in fields as varied as forestry, ecology, entomology2 , soil sciences and, of course, research on the carbon cycle. In all these fields, for almost a decade now, the project has served as a field of analysis for numerous studies, carried out in cooperation with Brazilian and international scientific partners, who appreciate the long-term research made possible by this project, undertaken over a period of 40 years.

Accordingly, vast experience feedback has developed. It is now available to the Brazilian and international scientific community.
At present, when international negotiations are under way on the mechanisms of «prevented deforestation» and «prevented damage», the project wants to nurture scientific thinking as a background to the discussions, by exploiting its natural forest area which will receive the system for monitoring of carbon stocks (see IV): this turning point in international research on the greenhouse effect represents a new challenge for the project!

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Photo de Antonio Carlos de Freitas