Adriana Garcia Santos

Brazilian environmental engineer leading reforestation efforts in the Amazon through community-driven tech solutions

Adriana Garcia Santos is a Brazilian environmental engineer pioneering large-scale reforestation in the Amazon through her startup ArborAI. Based in Manaus, she developed an AI-powered seed dispersal drone system that plants 100,000+ trees daily, targeting degraded areas inaccessible to traditional methods. By 2024, her project had restored over 50,000 hectares of rainforest, earning a UNEP Climate Innovation Award.

Garcia's approach integrates local indigenous knowledge with cutting-edge technology, training over 2,000 community members as 'eco-rangers' to monitor progress via her app GreenGuard. This hybrid model achieved 78% survival rates for saplings compared to 30% in traditional methods. Her 2023 partnership with NASA uses satellite data to optimize planting zones, featured in National Geographic.

A vocal advocate for 'climate justice,' Garcia co-founded the Amazonia Voices Network, amplifying marginalized communities' roles in conservation. Her TED Talk 'Rewilding the Amazon: A Blueprint for Survival' (2022) has been translated into 15 languages. Critics highlight her systems thinking, with Scientific American calling her work 'a blueprint for global reforestation.'