Massive carbon stocks in grasslands are ignored by climate finance

Open ecosystems — nonforested landscapes such as grasslands, shrublands, and savannas — can store vast amounts of carbon while supporting water supply, biodiversity, and other ecosystem services. Yet the potential of open ecosystems to serve as natural climate solutions remains ignored by policies that privilege forests. So reports a team of researchers in a policy brief published today in Plants, People, Planet. 

“All of the standards and methods for carbon markets are based on forested areas, so there is no way right now to include grasslands, savannas, and other open ecosystems,” said lead author Franciele Peixoto, an environmental analyst for the state of Goias in Brazil. “Open ecosystems are under threat and continue to be neglected by climate policies that focus exclusively on forests and trees.”

Peixoto and the paper’s coauthors — including Amy Zanne, an ecologist at Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies — hope their policy brief will raise awareness about why these ecosystems are important, and guide the creation of policies and programs that ensure their inclusion in climate finance mechanisms. 

Grasslands matter

The paper’s authors have years of research and outreach experience in Brazil’s Cerrado, the most biodiverse savanna in the world, home to more than a thousand different kinds of animals and more than 10 thousand plant species. 

“There are so many interesting plants there, like ‘Princess-earring grass’ (capim-brinco-de-princesa in Portuguese), which has fruits that dangle like pendants. They are a beautiful golden color when the sunlight hits them,” said Zanne. “The Cerrado is a gorgeous place that provides many important ecosystem services.” 

One of those services, as research from Zanne and other coauthors on the policy brief has demonstrated, is as a carbon storage powerhouse, with soils that can store six times as much carbon per hectare as the vegetation in the Amazon rainforest. “However,”  Zanne added, “whereas trees in the Amazon can grow back in decades to centuries, the carbon in some of the Cerrado soil has been there for as long as 20,000 years and cannot be replaced so quickly.”

In addition, the Cerrado serves as the headwaters for two-thirds of Brazil’s major waterways, including the Amazon River. 

“People tend to think of forests as being important for the water supply, but actually, open ecosystems can be as or even more important,” said colead author Natashi Pilon, a plant ecologist at the State University of Campinas (UNICAMP) in Brazil. “In open ecosystems, the plants take up less water, so more water infiltrates into the soil and replenishes groundwater. It is this water that supplies the Cerrado and other ecosystems like the Amazon in the region. It is important that society and the government understand how important the Cerrado is for Brazil's water security.”

These underappreciated ecosystem services are not unique to the Cerrado. Other open ecosystems around the world bring similar benefits to people and the environment, while remaining largely neglected and misunderstood. 

Open ecosystems – overlooked and under threat

The new paper grew out of a policy brief that the authors presented at COP30, the 2025 climate conference in Brazil. They drafted the brief because “nobody was talking about open ecosystems and the importance of these areas for carbon storage,” said Peixoto. 

Despite their ability to store as much as 1200 tons of carbon per hectare, ecosystems like the Cerrado are not included in climate finance mechanisms such as REDD+, a United Nations initiative that pays developing nations to protect and sustainably manage their forests to reduce carbon emissions, nor in other carbon credit programs. These tools were developed specifically for forests, the authors point out, so grassy ecosystems do not fit into their measurement and certification frameworks. 

“Without this recognition, projects in open ecosystems cannot issue credits or access resources from climate funds,” the authors write. 

Open ecosystems have been undervalued since colonial times, Pilon explained. “When the Europeans were mapping the land in Brazil, the forests were ‘good’ because they had wood, but in the Cerrado, it was difficult to produce food without Indigenous knowledge or modern technology, fires would happen, and the trees were smaller and twisted — so they considered it a wasteland.”

This historical viewpoint is reflected today in the relative scarcity of scientific data about open ecosystems and the lack of public policies and programs aimed at conserving these areas. Instead, open ecosystems are often targeted by development projects and tree-planting programs that would disrupt or destroy these natural ecosystems and their carbon stocks. 

In Brazil, “the Cerrado is considered the biome that can be sacrificed to protect the Amazon,” said Zanne. “So instead of cutting down more rainforest, agribusinesses are converting massive amounts of Cerrado to grow soybeans to feed to livestock — without realizing that they’re going to lose the Amazon by drying out these biomes.”

More than 46% of the Cerrado’s original land cover has already been cleared to make way for crops and pastures, according to a study published in 2022. 

Steps to protect open ecosystems 

The first step toward protecting open ecosystems, the authors write, is helping people recognize the benefits they provide to society and the environment. For example, they call for greater investments in environmental education and public communication to raise awareness about the Cerrado’s role in ensuring climate security, water availability, and the well-being of people across Brazil. 

At the international level, carbon credit methodologies need to be revised to include parameters for measuring and including belowground carbon storage, particularly in deep soils and root systems, instead of just in tree trunks and branches. 

The authors call on Brazil to create and strengthen federal and state legislation and increase funding around managing, monitoring, licensing, and restoring open ecosystems, and form a strategy that includes open ecosystems in national climate and biodiversity targets and carbon quantification systems.

“It is also essential,” says Pilon, “to protect these areas from tree-planting projects, which may be well-intentioned but threaten the region’s water supply, biodiversity, and carbon stocks.” 

Gaining momentum 

The paper’s authors are working to understand how the Cerrado functions, in order to inform restoration and conservation practices. Through a government program called Campos do Cerrado, Peixoto, Pilon, and colleagues are also raising awareness among policymakers and civilians about why open ecosystems are important and need protection. As a result of their efforts, public interest in the Cerrado is growing. 

The team presented their ideas at COP16 (the global biodiversity summit in Colombia) and COP30 (the global climate summit in Brazil), with promising results. Following the successful inclusion of open ecosystems in the COP16 agenda (through the efforts of the authors and a broad network of collaborators across Brazil), Brazil’s Ministry of the Environment established a working group to develop a national strategy for the conservation and restoration of open ecosystems. The strategy will also consider the incorporation of these ecosystems into climate policies, acknowledging their crucial role in climate mitigation, adaptation, and biodiversity conservation.

“Transforming a global system that was not designed to account for open ecosystems will not happen overnight,” said Peixoto. “Today, there is broad recognition of this limitation, but recognition alone is not enough. What matters now is moving from awareness to action, and these initiatives represent an important first step — not only for the Cerrado, but for open ecosystems around the world.”

Authors

Franciele Parreira Peixoto - Secretariat of Environment and Sustainable Development, State of Goiás (SEMAD) 

Gerhard Ernst Overbeck - Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul

Fernando A.O. Silveira - Federal University of Minas Gerais

Newton La Scala Jr. - São Paulo State University

Alexandre Bonesso Sampaio - Centro Nacional de Pesquisa e Conservação em Biodiversidade e Restauração Ecológica

Giselda Durigan - Instituto de Pesquisas Ambientais

Amy E. Zanne - Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies

Larissa Verona - Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies; State University of Campinas

Valério D. Pillar - Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul

Ellane Van Wyk - Sustainable Finance Coalition

Rafael S. Oliveira - State University of Campinas

Alessandra Bassani - State University of Campinas

Camila Carvalho de Carvalho - Instituto de Desenvolvimento Sustentável Mamirauá

Natashi Pilon - State University of Campinas

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Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies is an independent nonprofit center for environmental research. Since 1983, our scientists have been investigating the complex interactions that govern the natural world and the impacts of climate change on these systems. Our findings lead to more effective resource management, policy actions, and environmental literacy. Staff are global experts in the ecology of: forests, soils, freshwater, disease, and cities. 

Plants, People, Planet is a multi-disciplinary Open Access journal, owned by the New Phytologist Foundation and published by Wiley. The journal publishes outstanding plant-based research in its broadest sense and celebrates everything new, innovative and exciting in plant-focused research that is relevant to society and people's daily lives. The New Phytologist Foundation is an independent, not-for-profit organisation dedicated to the promotion of plant science.

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