In 2022, while Amazon faces the worst deforestation in 15 years, Brazilians went to the polls to choose a new president. However, presidential candidates talked about everything, except protecting the forest. Some of them even denied that the forest was at risk, even when data showed that the Amazon had lost an area bigger than 10,000 km2 only in 2022. As the biggest cosmetics brand in Brazil and deeply engaged with Amazon’s preservation for more than 20 years, Natura took the bold initiative to put pressure on candidates in public. Bringing a new way to measure deforestation to the media, the brand made it easier to visualize the urgency of the issue, making Brazil finally give the forest the attention it deserves.

It’s hard for the audience to understand the real dimension of deforestation using regular data parameters, like “hectares” or “MI2”. So, Natura developed a platform fed with satellite data to monitor Amazon’s deforestation, based on a new unit of measurement to enforce how fast deforestation is taking over: the number of trees cut down per second. A new way to make people understand how fast the forest is being destroyed. Then, we took this new way to visualize deforestation to the media - and to the presidential candidates, to turn the protection of the forest into a national issue during the elections.

Using daily deforestation alerts from the National Institute for Spatial Research (INPE) DETER program, the PlenaMata platform multiplies this data by the number of trees on each hectare within the Amazon Basin. DETER alerts are released on a weekly basis, so we can include a real-time estimate of how many trees are being cut down, including the conversion of square hectares to the number of trees. This way, we can translate the deforestation data into an easier way of understating - instead of squared hectares, we use “trees fallen per second”, with a real-time update.

To develop the new unit of measurement to highlight deforestation (the number of trees cut down per second in the Amazon Forest), we created PlenaMata, a platform in partnership with a network of NGOs, universities, and technology startups with satellite data, that can be accessed at https://plenamata.eco/. During Brazil’s elections, Natura brought this data to the public, putting pressure on presidential candidates to take a pledge to protect the forest. Deforestation numbers were informed on Twitter, targeting candidates directly. Commercial breaks during debates on TV showed the numbers in real-time. A panel in Brasilia, the government’s headquarters, did the same. Wherever candidates went, we followed them with real-time data, making it impossible for them to ignore the deforestation issue.

During presidential debates aired on TV and watched by more than 50 million people, the “Amazon Forest” and “Natura” were trending on Twitter. In fact, Natura was the only brand to reach the trending topics during the event, being organically mentioned by journalists, Brazilian celebrities and news profiles. The campaign was shown at the country’s Senate. Even candidates started to use our unit of measure (trees cut down per second) and data from the PlenaMata platform to ask each other about plans to fight deforestation. While the campaign ran, interactions online with Natura’s grew 90%. Taking a risk with this initiative paid off, in the end of 2022, Natura was elected the Brazilian brand with the best reputation, and the leader in sustainability. As many tweets said during the campaign, Natura was the biggest winner of the presidential debate.