A project began to cover the nine states of the Northeast to map economic opportunities, productive sectors, capabilities and skills capable of contributing to the region's transition to a low-carbon economy. The initiative, called Green Futures in the Northeast, brings together the Climate and Society Institute (iCS) and the Center for Studies and Advanced Systems of Recife (CESAR).
The proposal is to listen to experts and representatives of the productive sector to transform knowledge about sustainability into strategic guidelines that consider the diversity of the northeastern territories. The mapping also aims to identify the training and training needs of professionals in the face of the new demands imposed by climate change and the transformation of production models.
For Diogo Araújo, biologist, CESAR analyst and one of the project coordinators, the transition to a low-carbon economy does not happen automatically.
"Opportunities are not distributed automatically and there will not be a transformation in such a natural and automatic way [...]. So that is why Green Futures in the Northeast was born. To understand this complexity."
The region brings together, at the same time, some of the main challenges caused by climate change and a set of potential for the development of more sustainable productive alternatives.
According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the caatinga is one of the biomes most threatened by desertification worldwide. In 2025, according to Mapbiomas, three of the five states that deforested the most were in the Northeast: Maranhão, Piauí and Bahia. Four of the seven Brazilian cities most threatened by rising sea levels are also in the region, according to Climate Central: Recife, São Luís, Fortaleza and Salvador.
On the other hand, 92% of all wind energy produced in the country comes from the Northeast. The region is also home to five of the 10 largest solar plants and tourism is an important source of resource generation.
For the Natural Resources Manager at the National Confederation of Industry (CNI), Mário Cardoso, the opportunities could be even broader.
“You have potential in the bioeconomy, in the biodiversity of the caatinga, in the issue of biomass and renewable energy, both with ethanol and solar energy, renewable energy, solar and wind, you have potential in all of this", lists Mario Cardoso, Natural Resources Manager at the National Confederation of Industry (CNI). But he raises a question: "Now, how can we transform this potential into development?
For the specialist, the answer is complex and involves, among other factors, the production chain, demand from the productive sector, market potential, technical feasibility and implementation capacity.
“Are there places that are suited to producing wind energy? He has. But it also depends on the transmission line. Potential alone does not generate development. There is a whole strategy behind it, a condition, an infrastructure, a regulation, everything that supports this potential. There is no simple answer, there is no off-the-shelf solution.”
The implementation capacity also involves training professionals qualified to meet new demands. Nicolis Amaral, from the Climate and Society Institute (iCS), believes that adjustments need to be made in the training of professionals who will face the challenges posed by climate change.
“Professions are beginning to transform on demand” explains the activist who trained as a chemical engineer, but who presents her own career transition as an example of the changes that need to be made:
“We start to look at this more rigid curriculum. I, for example, am a chemical engineer. My chemical engineering was focused on oil, it was not focused on the green economy. So, over time, I specialized [...] today I see myself as a specialist in decarbonization through additional courses, not through my degree.”
Nicolis participates in the project that covers the nine states of the Northeast to map opportunities and think about training professionals who can respond to new demands.
“All that is required is transformation and green employment will require continuous transformation. There’s demand, there’s a market, there’s a project, there’s investment, and with that comes employability.” defends the decarbonization engineer.
For Cardoso, transforming the potential of the region into development requires planning and speed. He points out that companies that do not adopt more sustainable processes may lose space in the market and cites the environmental requirements that have been established by countries and economic blocs, such as the European Union.
The challenge, according to him, is to prevent environmental degradation from eliminating opportunities before they can even be transformed into production chains.
"When we deal with the bioeconomy, deforestation often comes first and ends everything. We have to hurry. We have to start thinking in a more pragmatic way, because the world is moving very quickly. Today, [if] we can't do it, someone else out there does it and from here we buy it. If we don't transform our bioeconomy, our açaí for example, into a really important product in Brazil, soon we'll be buying it from someone else, from another country.”
