103-1 | 103-2 | 103-3

Visit the Legado das Águas website

Reservas Votorantim materializes Votorantim’s commitment to the conservation of land and water resources and to the development of communities through the management of Legado das Águas.

Legado das Águas is the largest private Atlantic Forest reserve in Brazil, covering 31,000 hectares across the municipalities of Juquiá, Miracatu and Tapiraí. Acquired in the 1950s, this land was instituted as Legado das Águas by the four founding companies (CBA, Votorantim Cimentos, Votorantim Energia and Nexa) in 2012, when Votorantim formally committed to protect and maintain the area.

As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Legado das Águas production and commercial processes were interrupted between March and September 2020. Despite that, Reservas made the commitment to maintain all jobs, including outsourced workers, and contracts with suppliers, with whom it negotiated process and cost optimizations to ensure the continuity of the partnerships.

While it waited for the reopening, Reservas involved BP – A Beneficência Portuguesa de São Paulo in an effort to prepare for the return of public activities (ecotourism, environmental studies and environmental education), which included training teams and producing a video and a safety protocol manual that is being used as a reference by other organizations. It also strengthened its relationships with the municipalities surrounding the Legado, which benefited from the activities to address the pandemic led by the Votorantim Institute; they received technical support and donations of personal protective equipment (PPE) and respirators for their health institutions and food vouchers for local families in situations of vulnerability.

In addition, the company maintained close contact with its partners through live virtual events and other interactive initiatives, such as a children’s contest for painting images of the Atlantic Forest. These activities helped increase the social media engagement of Legado das Águas, which, between March and December 2020, gained more than 4,000 new followers on Instagram. Public activities were partially resumed at the end of September, when some contracts were also already in progress for the execution of environmental compensation.

Another initiative developed by Reservas, in partnership with the Office of Infrastructure and Environment of the State of São Paulo, the Pomar Urbano Project (Urban Orchard) to revitalize the Marginal Pinheiros (São Paulo) using seedlings grown in Legado das Águas, maintained its pace of expansion by caring for the existing specimens at the beginning of the year and initiating a second phase of planting in November. In total, more than 200 trees and 2,000 seedlings of shrub species from the Atlantic Forest were planted in the 12 km stretch included in the project. Pomar Urbano was strengthened during the year by the inclusion of new partners that, like banco BV, became a Companhia Amiga do Legado (Corporate Friend of Legado), a seal of recognition for companies and institutions that define activities, work plans and strategies to help the conservation of the Atlantic Forest and/or directly or indirectly create mechanisms to generate revenues to maintain the area.

Also in the area of ​​landscaping but with a focus on retail, Pátio Caeté, a space for the sale of native species from the Atlantic Forest, was inaugurated at the end of the year in the Vila Leopoldina neighborhood, in São Paulo, where Altre develops real estate projects. Its target market is professional landscapers and enthusiasts of native flora, who have increasingly used these species in their projects, thereby promoting Brazilian biodiversity. Most of the products sold in the space, including emblematic trees such as cambuci, embaúba and palmito-jussara, are grown in Legado das Águas.

Scientific research conducted in the area was also maintained during the year. One of the studies led Legado das Águas to be labeled a Global Priority Area by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN), as one of the last refuges for southern muriquis, the largest primate in the Americas in risk of extinction. At the end of 2020, there were six studies underway, of which four were internal projects and two were developed through partnerships. One of them is studying the possibility of reintroducing jaguars into the Atlantic Forest in partnership with the Onçafari Association, aiming at the conservation of the species—this is the objective of a project being carried out by the association in the Pantanal. Another highlight was the discovery of a new species of orchid, named after Legado das Águas, during a study conducted by the São Paulo Botanical Institute and Zandoná Conservação in the area.

Reservas intensified a partnership with the Butantan Institute to raise the awareness of the communities of Vale do Ribeira about the importance of preserving species of snakes, spiders and other animals living in the region, ways of coexisting with them and how to respond in case of bites or other emergencies.