GEI and the State of Mato Grosso Achieved Intent of Cooperation on Promoting Sustainable Meat Value Chain

On March 8, 2022, the Global Environment Institute (GEI), the Mato Grosso State Government, the Federation of Agriculture and Livestock of Mato Grosso (FAMATO), and the Mato Grosso Meat Institute signed online a Memorandum of Understanding for Cooperation on Sustainable Meat Value Chain. This MoU is the first cooperation agreement signed between a Chinese NGO and the Brazilian state government in the field of sustainable agriculture, which will promote the sustainable development of the Brazi-China meat value chain and China’s low-carbon livestock and help the two countries to address climate change, ensure food security, and achieve carbon neutrality.

Mr. Mauro Mendes, State Governor of Mato Grosso, Ms. Jiaman Jin, Executive Director of the Global Environment Institute (GEI), Mr. Normando Corral, President of the FAMATO, Mr. Caio Penido, President of the Mato Grosso Meat Institute, simultaneously signed the MoU online. Mr. Felipe Martiningui, head of Agricultural Sustainability Department at the Embassy of Brazil in Beijing, and Ms. Ying Chen, director of Cereal and Oils Department at the China Chamber of Commerce of Foodstuffs and Native Produce (CFNA), delivered opening speeches and witnessed the signing ceremony of the MoU online.

After the online signing ceremony, Mr. Dimitri de Boer, Director of the China-EU Environmental Programme and Chief Representative for ClientEarth China, Ms. Qingzhi Liu, Vice Manager of the China Environment Certification Centre, and Mr. David Cleary, Director of The Nature Conservancy, Mr. Letian Chen, Dean of College of Life Sciences at the South China Agricultural University, and Mr. Joao Shimada, Agrocommodities Lead at the Earth Innovation Institute, commented and gave keynote speeches respectively. The representatives addressed that the MoU sign will be a multi-stakeholder cooperation model among the government, non-governmental organizations, industry associations, and so on.

In the end, Mr. Cesar Miranda Lima, Head of the State Secretariat for Economic Development of the Mato Grosso State Government, and Dr. Jiqiang Zhang, Steering Board Chair of GEI, delivered the closing remarks via video respectively and wished the four signatories to achieve more significant goals in the field of sustainable agricultural development. Dr. Zhang believed that this cooperation had set up a new paradigm of sustainable and low-carbon development of the global agricultural supply chain and hoped that this paradigm would provide adequate references for sustainable agriculture and international low-carbon development.