THE BIOME IS NOT SCENERY -  IT IS LIVING INFRASTRUCTURE

When money believes in pixels but still depends on water

A number appears on a screen.

It can cross cities in seconds, pay a debt, purchase a company, or finance the extraction of thousands of tons of minerals.

It has no smell, weight, or temperature.

It is a digital record.

And yet, we trust that it represents value.

Contemporary money does not need to contain a small portion of gold, grain, stone, or any other material object. In fiat monetary systems, its value depends mainly on trust in institutions, rules, and collective acceptance. As it becomes increasingly digital, money may exist only as an electronic signal recorded in a database.

This does not mean that money is a useless illusion.

It means that its reality is institutional.

Water has another kind of reality.

Even when no one records it, it remains necessary.

Even when it does not appear in an account, the soil continues to retain moisture. Roots continue to slow the rain. Forests participate in the formation of rivers. Mangroves reduce coastal impacts. Microorganisms transform matter, preserve fertility, and sustain cycles that no application can replace.

Money exists because we believe in certain rules.

Life exists because material processes continue to happen.

Perhaps the problem of our time begins when that which depends on trust starts commanding that on which existence itself depends.

What kind of economy have we created when a pixel receives immediate recognition, while a living river remains almost invisible?

The infrastructure that never appears in full

We call roads, ports, electrical grids, and digital systems infrastructure.

They are structures that allow other activities to exist.

But what allows these structures to continue functioning?

A Biome participates in the production and circulation of water, the regulation of temperature, the protection of soils, the maintenance of biodiversity, and the reduction of climate-related risks.

Forests, rivers, wetlands, coastal vegetation, and mangroves store water, slow its movement, and help reduce the risks of floods, erosion, and coastal damage. The IPCC recognizes that conserving and restoring ecosystems can reduce human and environmental vulnerability, although these actions have limits and do not replace direct emissions reductions.

This allows us to say something simple:

The Biome is not located around infrastructure. It is the infrastructure that came before it.

Before the road, there is the soil capable of supporting it.

Before the city, there is the water that will make it habitable.

Before agriculture, there is the relationship between moisture, biodiversity, pollination, and nutrients.

Before the financial market, there is a material world in which buyers, sellers, and digital servers are able to remain alive.

Latin America and the Caribbean contain approximately one-third of the world’s freshwater, as well as major terrestrial and marine biodiversity, primary forests, cultivable soils, and significant mineral reserves. At the same time, the region maintains economic structures that frequently transform this wealth into primary exports, inequality, and degradation.

The colonial-extractivist system has a short-range vision.

It sees the tree when it becomes timber.

It sees the soil when it receives a concession.

It sees carbon when it becomes a credit.

It sees data when they can be sold.

It sees water when it passes through a bottle, a tariff, or an energy system.

What remains alive must first be converted into an asset before it receives economic recognition.

Perhaps this is the inversion we need to perceive.

The Biome does not begin producing when it enters the market.

It was already producing the conditions that made the market possible.

When one value erases all the others

In 2022, the IPBES assessment on the diverse values of nature, coordinated by researchers including Patricia Balvanera and Brigitte Baptiste, showed that public decisions tend to privilege values that can be expressed simply through prices and transactions.

This choice can leave ecological, cultural, territorial, and relational values in the background: everything a community recognizes as belonging, memory, care, and continuity.

A forest can store carbon.

But it can also sustain a language, protect a spring, provide food, carry stories, and organize relationships between generations.

When we reduce everything to tons of carbon, we see one function and erase the living system that made it possible.

Ailton Krenak invites us to perceive rivers and forests as presences that participate in the future, rather than silent deposits waiting for economic use. In Ancestral Future, the continuity of life emerges as a relationship that precedes the separation between humanity and nature.

The challenge is not to remove the Biome from the economy.

It is to prevent the economy from reducing the Biome to whatever can be monetized.

New money can begin with continuity

Today, much of the money that reaches a territory arrives because of a promise of extraction.

A company receives credit to mine.

A development obtains financing to occupy land.

A productive chain mobilizes resources to plant, cut, build, or export.

Future extraction is capable of anticipating money in the present.

We can imagine another rule:

The verified continuity of life can also place new money into circulation.

Brazil already legally recognizes ecosystem services such as carbon sequestration, air purification, regulation of the water cycle, reduction of floods and droughts, erosion control, cultural identity, and intellectual development.

The National Policy for Payment for Environmental Services also gives priority to Indigenous peoples, traditional communities, and family farmers in federal programs.

The Brazilian Emissions Trading System, created in 2024, established assets related to the emission, reduction, and removal of greenhouse gases, with requirements for measurement, reporting, verification, and traceability.

These structures open doors.

But we can go further.

We can create a Biome Income, distributed through a future public retail CBDC.

This income would not be delivered first to financial funds and only later partially returned to the territory.

The money would be created or distributed with the following as its first recipients:

• people who live in and care for the Biome;

• Indigenous peoples and traditional communities;

• regenerative farmers and cooperatives;

• community water funds;

• flood, drought, and wildfire prevention;

• restoration and biodiversity projects;

• circularity and zero-waste initiatives.

Part of the resources could come from carbon credits, payments for environmental services, royalties, compensation payments, and fines.

Another part could come from circularity credits, recognizing waste reduction, repair, reuse, composting, and material recovery.

When a zero-waste initiative also reduces emissions in a measurable way, it may generate verified carbon credits.

When its main result is the prevention of waste and raw-material extraction, it should use its own instrument instead of calling everything carbon.

The central point is not to create another speculative asset.

It is to create a flow that returns to the place where the production of life occurs.

Those who live the Biome must participate in the measurements

Biome Income would need to emerge from territorial governance.

It would not be enough for distant specialists to define how many tons, species, or liters possess value.

Communities would need to participate in selecting the indicators:

• water quality and availability;

• diversity of species;

• soil regeneration;

• carbon retention;

• flood protection;

• temperature reduction;

• waste destination;

• cultural continuity;

• food security;

• the ability to remain in the territory.

No single measurement would represent the entire Biome.

The indicators would need to form a living and revisable image.

The income could not function as a payment for communities to surrender rights, accept surveillance, or give up their knowledge.

The Biome would generate income because it remains alive.

And those who sustain that continuity would share agency over the resources.

The Neuro Challenge Latam

Why do we account for the profits of extraction while leaving the continuous services produced by the Biome invisible?

The Neuro Challenge Latam can investigate how different environments participate in attention, fatigue, and the ability to imagine possibilities.

First, however, the research would need to return value.

Participants and territories would receive Citizen Drex and Biome Income before any EEG or NIRS data were collected. Payment would not depend on the findings or on the responses provided.

Only then could we compare experiences in:

• preserved areas;

• degraded spaces;

• intense urban environments;

• places with greater or lower biodiversity;

• real experiences and virtual representations of nature.

EEG could accompany rhythms associated with attention and cognitive effort. A randomized trial published in 2024 compared walks in natural and urban environments, combining EEG, performance, and reports of affect and attention. The results found differences in some measures while also reinforcing that the mechanisms still require further investigation.

NIRS can accompany changes in cortical oxygenation in real environments. A recent study using portable fNIRS found reduced negative affect and exploratory differences in prefrontal activity during exposure to nature when compared with an urban environment.

We could also observe:

• memory;

• perceived tiredness;

• ability to concentrate;

• heart rate;

• temperature;

• noise;

• air quality;

• reports of safety and belonging.

The question would not be which environment “activates the brain better.”

It would be:

What can the Body-Territory perceive and create when the environment no longer demands permanent vigilance?

EEG and NIRS could demonstrate specific effects of particular environments.

They could not determine the constitutional value of a Biome.

That value also appears in water, biodiversity, climate protection, and the ability of a community to continue existing.

The real world that sustains the future

We can return to the number on the screen.

Now we know that it has power because institutions and people decided to trust it.

That trust can transfer resources, organize projects, and produce futures.

It can also be reorganized.

We can trust a currency capable of recognizing the continuity of water.

We can create rules in which a living forest generates income before being converted into timber.

We can allow circularity to receive resources before waste becomes a disaster.

We can make it possible for those who live in the Biome to participate first in the wealth it produces.

Money will remain digital.

But its origin may once again encounter the real.

Water.

Soil.

Biodiversity.

Care.

The Body-Territory.

Perhaps the Biome was never scenery.

Perhaps we simply created an economy incapable of seeing it at work.

When this perception changes, a new question opens:

What if democracy began by recognizing as wealth everything without which no money could continue to exist?

Essential references

Bank for International Settlements. Central Bank Capital and Trust in Money: Lessons from History for the Digital Age. 2024.

Baptiste, B.; Balvanera, P.; Pascual, U. et al. Methodological Assessment Report on the Diverse Values and Valuation of Nature. IPBES, 2022.

ECLAC. Natural Resources and Sustainable Development: Theoretical Proposals in the Context of Latin America and the Caribbean. 2024.

IPCC. Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability. 2022.

Krenak, A. Ancestral Future. Companhia das Letras, 2022.

McDonnell, A. S.; Strayer, D. L. The Influence of a Walk in Nature on Human Resting Brain Activity: A Randomized Controlled Trial. Scientific Reports, 2024.

Brazil. Law No. 14,119/2021 — National Policy for Payment for Environmental Services.

Brazil. Law No. 15,042/2024 — Brazilian Emissions Trading System.