Picture this: the sun rises over pale tree trunks as the distant bleat of goats echoes across a dusty landscape. Here, nestled in northeastern Brazil, a unique symphony of life unfolds in Malhada de Areia, a rural area in the northeastern state of Bahía where community members blend innovation and tradition to fortify one of the world’s rarest ecosystems.
When you think of Brazil, the lush canopies of the Amazon rainforest might first spring to mind. But this expansive country is home to six diverse biomes, including one of its most unique yet lesser-known regions: the Caatinga. Home to 27 million people and covering nearly 850,000 square kilometers across ten states, the Caatinga biome is found exclusively in the northeastern reaches of Brazil.
Known for its striking landscapes — verdant during rainy months, but stark and sparse most of the year — the Caatinga is one of the most biodiverse semi-arid regions in the world. It’s also the backbone of life in towns like Malhada de Areia. Here, a combination of community-driven efforts is transforming the future of the land, as well as the lives of those who depend on it.
Life in the Caatinga
“We take our livelihood from [the Caatinga],” says Iracema, president of the local community association in Malhada de Areia. Her words echo a sentiment that’s rung true for generations. Malhada de Areia is what’s known as a fundo de pasto community typical throughout the Caatinga, a traditional social structure centered on communal use of land and natural resources for grazing systems and smallholder farms. Families rely on the land for medicine and food, including its bounty of native fruits like umbu, a tart and juicy fruit often turned into jams, and licuri, a small, nutritious palm nut enjoyed fresh or roasted.
The Caatinga provides more than resources though; its backdrop is deeply woven into the cultural fabric of the community. “Our way of living here is one of creation. We don’t know how to live any other way,” she explains. “If we went to the city, we’d be completely lost.” The term itself means “white forest” in the Tupi-Guarani language, referencing the pale, skeletal trunks of trees that shed their leaves during prolonged dry seasons to conserve water. But beneath this deceptively desolate exterior, the Caatinga teems with life. Home to thousands of species, including at least 1,200 types of plants, 591 bird varieties, and 221 kinds of bees alone, the region is rich in biodiversity.
This is crucial because biodiversity underpins global ecosystems, helping regulate the climate, support pollinators, and sustain vital biomes. Yet it is increasingly under threat due to climate change: Rising temperatures, creeping desertification (the process in which once-productive land becomes barren), and the expansion of industrial agriculture and deforestation have made the Caatinga one of Brazil’s most vulnerable biomes. In Malhada de Areia, these changes aren’t just headlines to be wary of; they threaten peoples’ way of life.
Recaatingamento: Embracing Rest to Recover
Enter “Recaatingamento,” a reforestation approach championed by the Pro-Semiárido Project (PSA), an agroforestry program that funds technologies and community workshops supported by the government of Bahía in partnership with the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), an agency of the UN. Roughly translated, it means “re-Caatinga-ing,” or protecting the land to give it the space it needs to regenerate.
Within the Malhada de Areia community, this includes fencing off 449 hectares of communal land to prevent overgrazing and encourage regrowth. “It was hard work,” Iracema recalls. “It was all fenced in through a collective effort. We took women, young people, children, the elderly, and so we saw how strong we are together.”
Inside the preserved area, native plants are making a comeback, endemic wildlife have reappeared, and families are diversifying their livelihoods with expanded honey and fruit production.
“We’ve learned to preserve the Caatinga,” adds Rodrigo Nonato da Silva, the association’s vice president, reflecting on workshops that demonstrated the value of regenerative agricultural practices rather than destructive ones, such as slash-and-burn. “What changed after the course was our thinking about preservation, the awareness of our community and neighboring ones.
“Recaatingamento is part of our Caatinga, that’s the way we see it. When we destroyed it, we only saw negative results. Today, we see it differently.”
Tackling Desertification Head-On
Still, the existential threat of desertification looms large over the Caatinga, where 13% of the soil has already been declared sterile. But Malhada de Areia is showing that solutions are within reach. The introduction of techniques such as cisterns and small stone dams have helped slow water runoff and improve soil quality. Meanwhile, planting hardy species like aroeira trees helps restore soil fertility and create a buffer against extreme weather. These methods have the potential to be scaled, providing a model for other communities across the Caatinga.
At the heart of these efforts is each community’s intimate understanding of the biome’s needs. “Recaatingamento is a way for us to preserve,” says Rodrigo. “It’s not only planting new plants, but yielding results from regeneration, growing on their own and multiplying right here.”
This preservation has ripple effects. Despite its comparatively barren landscape, the Caatinga is one of Brazil’s best carbon sinks, underscoring its potential role in combating global climate change. With projections indicating that 99% of local plant communities could lose species by 2060, the urgency of Recaatingamento becomes overwhelmingly clear.
Strengthening Community
But this strategy isn’t just about technical solutions — it’s also about community empowerment, especially among women. Iracema highlights the training she received through the PSA “Along with [the project] came training for us to empower ourselves, to know that we women have our place. Our parents raised us [to believe] that we just had to be homemakers. No. We have other spaces where the semi-arid region brought us to help us become stronger.”
This mindset has strengthened communal bonds. When illegal occupation threatened members’ land rights in 2015, the community united to push back and win formal recognition of their ancestral home. That same sense of togetherness fuels conservation efforts. “This project has given us the certainty of how strong and united we are,” Iracema says. “It was hard work, but we ended up celebrating.”
The Caatinga’s Future
Despite challenges, communities like Malhada de Areia provide reasons to be optimistic about the Caatinga’s future. As stewards of the land, this community is invested in protecting the biome now for future generations. “We do preservation work because we are afraid that in the future, our children won’t know what we have today,” Iracema warns.
The degradation of unique biomes like the Caatinga prove that local actions have international impact. Each drop of rainwater captured, each tree allowed to flourish, and every community action is a step toward creating a more sustainable future. With the right infrastructure, policy support, and collective effort, the PSA is showing that it may be possible to help restore even the most fragile ecosystems. As Rodrigo says, “The Caatinga is our way of life. [It] must be kept standing.”