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Page 16 of 23 Chaib et al. Carbon Footprints 2026, 5, 23

Limitations of carbon finance and the role of regenerative agriculture
In the Curiaú Quilombola territory, agriculture is dominated by small mosaics of cassava and maize fields
interspersed with grazed pasture. Although land-use strategies vary across families, a severe flood scenario
could affect a substantial share of cultivated and grazed land within a single year. The several dozen hectares
that could be re-established annually with the US$40,000-80,000 would potentially correspond to only a
fraction of the agricultural area on which households depend for food and income. This is because these
illustrative preliminary calculations do not explicitly incorporate other post-event re-establishment costs -
such as housing, basic infrastructure and equipment - the ongoing expenses of maintaining
forest-conservation arrangements, or the transaction, monitoring and certification costs associated with
high-integrity carbon projects. As a result, the net share of carbon-credit revenues that could be directed to
re-establishing production systems is likely to be considerably smaller than the gross figures reported
[Table 5].

For this reason, the analysis refrains from identifying a minimal break-even carbon price based solely on a
small number of hectares of restored production and instead interprets the US$20-40 tCO e range as a
-1
2
normative benchmark under which carbon-credit revenues play a catalytic but clearly partial role. Consistent
with risk-layering approaches in climate and disaster risk finance and in the emerging Loss and Damage
literature, which distinguish resources for risk reduction and transformational adaptation, for managing
residual risks and post-disaster recovery, and for addressing unavoidable losses and damages [77-79] , an
illustrative three-pillar allocation can be considered for the specific study case in which approximately one
half of net carbon-credit revenues is directed to the re-establishment of annual cassava-based cropping and
basic pasture rehabilitation after extreme events, while the remaining half is divided equally between
maintaining forest-conservation arrangements (including community monitoring and enforcement) and
financing gradual transitions towards more climate-resilient agroecological and agroforestry systems. This
structure is also coherent with the literature on payments for environmental services and benefit-sharing,
which emphasizes that high-integrity schemes should simultaneously reward the provision of environmental
services, support local livelihoods and invest in longer-term changes in land-use practices [80,81] .

Global meta-analyses of agroforestry systems and pasture management indicate that, on average, converting
cropland or pasture to agroforestry and adopting more intensive or otherwise improved grazing
management tend to increase above- and below-ground carbon stocks, while in many cases enhancing
indicators of system resilience and livelihood stability [82,83] . Evidence from experimental and farm-level
studies in the eastern Amazon is broadly consistent with these findings, reporting higher biomass and soil
organic carbon, improved soil structure and greater species and functional diversity in agroforestry systems
established on previously degraded pasture, as well as under improved pasture management, when compared
with degraded pasture baselines [84,85] . In this sense, directing a defined share of carbon-credit revenues
towards the gradual expansion of agroforestry and improved pasture management can be interpreted as an
investment in both mitigation and adaptation co-benefits, when implemented within the financial and
operational constraints discussed above, rather than as a purely short-term recovery measure.

Beyond the avoided deforestation component, this second mitigation lever in Curiaú, represented by the
gradual adoption of regenerative practices on existing cropland and pasture, is subject to potential additional
removals and incomes through incremental soil organic carbon (SOC) gains. Meta-analyses of cover
cropping, diversified rotations and reduced soil disturbance in croplands generally report SOC sequestration
rates in the upper 0-30 cm on the order of 0.30-0.60 tC ha yr -1[86] , with mean values around 0.32 tC ha yr -1
-1
-1
for cover crops in global datasets and 0.56 tC ha yr when pooling a broader set of conservation-agriculture
-1
-1
practices . Converted to CO -equivalent, these ranges correspond to approximately 1.1-2.2 tCO e ha yr -1
-1
[87]
2
2
under well-implemented conservation agriculture on cropland [86,87] . Recent syntheses of agroforestry systems