Bulcão farm, Salgado’s family property, in the Vale do Rio Doce region, Minas Gerais, Brazil, before reforestation. Photo by Sebastião Salgado, used with permission.
In an interview for Deutsche Welle Brasil, renowned Brazilian photographer Sebastião Salgado said people were living almost as aliens on their own planet, seeing everything from afar, with the climate crisis coming to a point of no return. “Spiritually, we must go back to the planet to help rebuild it,” he said. A take that echoes a life work he developed in his hometown, Aimorés, with a 25,000 population, in the southeastern state of Minas Gerais.
In 1998, it was there that he and his wife, cultural producer Lélia Wanick Salgado, founded Instituto Terra, a non-profit civil organization dedicated to environmental education, conservation, and large-scale restoration of degraded ecosystems.
Terra, which in Portuguese means both “land” and “Earth,” is located on a property that was once a degraded family farm of about 600 hectares (2.3 miles) owned by Salgado’s family. Like many other areas in the region, it suffered years of exploitation that left the soil barren and the ecosystem severely damaged, reflecting the broader destruction of the Atlantic Forest biome.
In their 2023 annual report, it was noted that after more than 25 years of work, the area now has over 3 million native trees spread across 709 hectares (2.7 miles) of forest, which has also facilitated the return of native fauna to the site.
The initiative focuses on lands throughout the Vale do Rio Doce (Sweet River Valley) region, and aims to contribute to a broader recovery of the local threatened biome ecosystem; it is estimated that 80 percent of tree species present in this tropical forest are at risk of extinction.
Salgado himself is a powerhouse name, considered one of the most important photographers in history. He died on May 23 this year from leukemia, a consequence of malaria, which he contracted while working in Indonesia in 2010. His ashes were spread over the land he recovered.
Since discovering his passion for photography in 1973, he abandoned a career as an economist and used his lens to document historical events and societies around the world. Alongside Lélia, he became a passionate advocate for nature and took meaningful action in environmental restoration.
The act
Terra Institute was established with an urgent mission: to create and implement a replicable model of reforestation that would go hand in hand with educational programs and community engagement.
The institute, which is now chaired by their son, Juliano Ribeiro Salgado, hosts students, researchers, and visitors, offering guided tours, educational workshops, and hands-on training in reforestation techniques, as is mentioned in a Google Arts & Culture page about it.
Sebastião and Lélia have witnessed the long-term consequences of deforestation and the unsustainable exploitation of natural resources while traveling the world. After witnessing the genocide in Rwanda and the Yugoslav War in the 1990s, Salgado started to feel “ashamed to belong to the human species.”
He then returned to his childhood family farm, Fazenda Bulcão, to find a barren and sick landscape. His home state, Minas Gerais, in the southeastern region of Brazil, is historically known for mining sites and other exploits of the land.
The impact includes, among others, severe soil erosion and an increasing scarcity of water, as highlighted in a video from TV Câmara, where the couple talks about Terra’s work. Seeing the damage up close and its broader implications, they decided to act.
In an interview for the Brazilian TV program, Globo Repórter, Salgado said:
Quando comecei aqui, eu vinha doente de reportagens duríssimas que eu fiz na África. Meu corpo estava morrendo e essa terra me curou. É algo assim que te dá um prazer de lavar a alma.
When I started here, I was sick from the very harsh reporting I had done in Africa. My body was dying and this land healed me. It’s something that gives you a soul-cleansing kind of joy.
They went on to transform the property into a Private Natural Heritage Reserve (a RPPN, in the Portuguese acronym). Reforestation began in 1999 with support from the local community: the first planting was carried out with the help of students from the town of Aimorés.
A view of the Bulcão farm after a few years with the reforestation project. Photo by Sebastião Salgado, used with permission.
Terra doce: Sweet land
One of Instituto Terra’s most impactful recent initiatives is the Terra Doce program, which promotes cacao and coffee crops in a symbiosis of native and fruit trees, enhancing biodiversity and helping with the resilience of soils and water resources.
According to the institute, the program is designed to support small- and medium-sized rural producers throughout the Rio Doce basin, encouraging the adoption of sustainable agroforestry systems, creating economic opportunities for local communities.
Currently in its first phase, which is projected to span five years, the program targets the ecological recovery of 4,200 natural springs by planting 2 million trees through agroforestry.
Terra also aims to turn the program into a replicable model for environmental restoration and climate resilience, with the potential to help reestablish ecological balance in other parts of Brazil suffering from water scarcity and prolonged droughts.
Aerial view of reforestation on Instituto Terra’s land. Photo by Leonardo Merçon, used with permission.
A pilot for the world
Salgado was a vocal critic of humanity’s extractive relationship with the environment. In interviews, he often emphasized not only the need to raise awareness but also to take meaningful action toward change.
The institute placed great importance on sharing knowledge to promote a culture of environmental awareness, according to Thaís Moraes, pedagogical coordinator of the Terrinhas program. On a LinkedIn post, she defines the project’s purpose as “to integrate the socio-environmental dimension into education, shaping more conscious and engaged citizens in their relationship with the environment.”
“It is a model, a pilot for Brazil, and I would say it might even be a pilot for the world. What we did at Instituto Terra needs to be done throughout Brazil,” Salgado told TV Globo in 2021.
The Terrinhas Project reached over 80,000 children and teachers from public schools in municipalities surrounding Aimorés. In 2024 alone, 560 students participated in a seven-month course combining theoretical and practical components.
Terra’s impact
Juliano Salgado told Globo Rural’s website that their goal is to transform an 85,000-square-kilometer (32.8-square-mile) region by shifting mindsets and creating a new production chain based on agricultural products resulting from reforestation. This transformation is expected to significantly boost the region’s GDP.
Also, as the Atlantic Forest regenerates, native wildlife returns, accelerating natural ecosystem recovery and boosting biodiversity.
By integrating ecological restoration with community empowerment, the institute wishes to also help redefine the region’s cultural identity around environmental protection. Márcio Lima, a local rural producer, said in a video:
A nascente que a gente está protegendo hoje existe desde 1961 e nutre com água toda a minha família. […] Nós esperamos que essa água nunca seque e que o replantio vá ajudar nisso, isso vai manter a propriedade viável.
The spring we’re protecting today has existed since 1961 and it provides water for my entire family. […] We hope this water never dries up and that the reforestation will help with that, keeping the land viable.
In an interview alongside Salgado at an event called Sempre um Papo (Always a Talk), Lélia Wanick looked back on their work with Terra:
No início, foi uma tristeza, ver uma terra completamente degradada, um córrego seco, as árvores sem passarinhos, sem animais. Era uma coisa tão triste. (…) Hoje, nós temos uma floresta que eu chamo de ‘floresta criança,’ porque as copas das árvores ainda estão amadurecendo. Os animais voltaram, pássaros, insetos, mamíferos (…) Hoje, quando a gente vê aquela floresta, nem sabe que aquilo ali foi outra coisa.
This post was originally published on this siteAt first, it was such a sadness seeing a completely degraded land, a dry stream, trees without birds, nor animals. (…) Today, we see a forest that I call ‘child forest,’ because the trees’ canopies are still maturing. Animals returned, birds, insects, mammals (…) When we see that forest now, those who arrive there have no idea it used to be something else.
