An Overview Of Our Solution
Corridors for life: improving livelihoods and connecting forests in Brazil
The project will contribute to the survival of the Atlantic forest’s remaining biodiversity, ensuring that measures to promote the conservation of the black lion tamarin and other endemic species will also increase the farming income, by approximately 25%, of poor smallholders in Brazil. By implementing 200 ha of income-generating, sustainable, biodiversity-friendly production systems and providing training support to 800 families to access markets for their products, and agroforestry interventions with scientific measurement, this project will translate into global learning and impact for the construction of landscapes with forest stewardship, forest connectivity and poverty-reduction agroforestry in low income tropical areas.
Who is this solution impacting?
Community Type
Suburban
Rural
Additional Information
- Population Impacted:
- Continent: South America
General Information
Organization type
Nonprofit
Ecosystem (select all that apply)
Forests
Population impacted
Training in agroforestry for aprox 800 farmers
Challenge
Size of agricultural area
200
Production quantity
250 kg / year of cassava, corn, tree seeds for restoration and organic shade grown coffee.
People employed
250 among rural farmers, biologists, foresters, environmental educadors, economists, controllers, community nurseries coordinators.
Solution
Describe your solution
Brazil is an upper middle income country with an average income around U$10,000. São Paulo is considered the richest state in the country. However, Pontal do Paranapanema, in the west, is one of the state’s poorest and least developed regions. Based on average income, the project area and settlers’ community consists of a low income population when compared to the average income of the country’s citizens. Due to lack of knowledge of viable economic alternatives for its use and lack of enforcement of financial and policy mechanisms, the forest does not represent a real source of income. Forest conservation efforts, sustainable use and restoration have been the result of isolated initiatives. The challenge is to move from this scenario to one where the forest is a living part of the landscape. It will be easier for Brazilian society in general and rural people in particular to commit to their conservation if forests are an economically competitive part of the productive landscape. The project fits well with economic planning and priority poverty reduction strategies through the development, testing and implementation of innovative economic activities to improve forest value and livelihood; and the identification, dissemination and/or creation of finance mechanisms and policies to improve successful activities. This project therefore provides an experimental solution of a globally relevant model for improving forest value and livelihoods in lower income countries.
Implementation
Describe your implementation
Agroforestry interventions designed and established at a pilot scale: Fragment connectivity will be promoted through agroforestry systems (AFS) tested in the region, including home gardens (“stepping stones”), corridors between fragments and buffer zones “embracing” fragments to avert edge effects. These approaches allow movement of threatened fauna through fragmented landscapes, ensuring genetic exchange as well as reversing the erosion of biodiversity. AFS provide a source of income and wood, substituting for illegally extracted timber.
Community-based training programme in agroforestry systems: To increase the scale of AFS in the region it is necessary to remove barriers of knowledge. Project activities will fill remaining gaps through training settlers and “project promoters” (community members who lead the process). Training for project promoters will include basic conservation principles, communication skills, agroforestry systems, organic farming, fruit and leguminous tree species production, rural appraisals, nursery establishment and management and environmental education.
Community-based system of nurseries established, producing 125,000 seedlings/year: This project will double the number of community forest nurseries supplying seedlings for agroforestry from 5 to 10. Through a local partner, Alvorada nursery, the project has been offered co-financing as a practical training platform in community agroforestry seedling production and planting techniques.
Assessing conservation value of AFS systems: To begin assessing the specific value of AFS for biodiversity conservation, developing corridors and stepping stones will be monitored for increasing availability of essential resources.
External connections
In São Paulo, the State Land Institute (ITESP) and Brazilian Institute for the Environment and Renewable Resources (IBAMA) responsible for protected area administration aiming at increasing forest connectivity in the “Pontal” site. A collaborative effort by State and Federal government agencies and settlers in the area to establish criteria for forest corridors led to adoption of an indicative land use map presented by IPÊ for the project area. This project fits strongly into the Federal agenda for Agrarian Reform, concerned with environmental issues. IPÊ is already in contact and negotiating with the Agrarian Development Ministry in order to apply the Project’s learning on public policies and to disseminate them to INCRA officers. The settlers’ headquarters is strengthening its leadership in environmental issues, aware that distribution of lands in itself will not solve the issue of land availability for settlers. Experience has shown that without a strategy for sustainable use and poverty alleviation the soil becomes degraded, rivers dry up and in the end, families have to abandon their lands. Land reform settlers have asked for support from IPÊ in developing effective solutions that can be used as guidelines and also for capacity building of its technical staff.
Results
What is the environmental or ecological challenge you are targeting with your solution?
The Project will promote widely replicable, biodiversity friendly, and economically viable land-use alternatives, thus reducing barriers to biodiversity conservation within the Atlantic Forest, a highly threatened and biologically significant ecoregion whose original native forest cover has been almost completely lost. Remaining fragments, primarily on private land, are nominally protected but protection is rarely effective, and their long-term viability is in danger from edge effects of neighbouring agro-pastoral land uses (fire, grazing, poaching, etc.). The principal conservation approach is therefore to increase the viability of remaining fragments and integrate forest species with productive and income-generating systems.
Describe the context in which you are operating
Settlers in the Pontal hail from other parts of Brazil and are often of urban origin, so their general agricultural knowledge and specific awareness of the constraints of production are limited. IPÊ began in the late 1990s to provide capacity building for agroforestry at a pilot scale (e.g., 30 families were involved in shaded coffee trials) and corridor establishment in settlement-level reserved areas (230 ha). These activities will continue in the baseline but will be at a small scale and not over a large enough portion of the landscape to allow effective connectivity. The scale of action in the baseline is as yet insufficient to significantly increase income and habitat connectivity at the landscape level and as such would not achieve conservation of globally significant biodiversity. Baseline activities constitute an initial response to the root causes and threats to biodiversity conservation. Through the proposed actions, their effectiveness would be consolidated, ensuring potential for replication on a broad scale in similarly threatened landscapes. IPÊ’s engagement in the region over the past 20 years ensures continuity in relationships with principal private sector stakeholders, avoiding policy changes and interruptions provoked by electoral processes, but ensuring that links with public action are maintained.
How did you impact natural resource use and greenhouse gas emissions?
The project will demonstrate a series of widely replicable biodiversity friendly and economically viable land use alternatives for recent smallholder settlements in Pontal do Paranapanema, São Paulo State, Brazil. As a result, barriers to biodiversity conservation will be removed within the productive landscape in the Atlantic Forest, a highly threatened and biologically significant ecoregion stretching from northeast Brazil to Paraguay. Along with the above overarching objective of the project, as a result, we expect the following impacts:
1. Develop and implement strategies for sustainable livelihood alternatives, for the more sustainable use of the forest and its products and for forest rehabilitation and species conservation;
2. Identify and develop viable mechanisms for forest maintenance and rehabilitation that will generate income for low income settlers;
3. Contribute directly to the conservation management of black lion tamarins, a key primate flagship for the Brazilian Atlantic rainforests;
4. Strengthen awareness and understanding, among direct and indirect forest users, of the full value of this forest and its biodiversity to Brazilian society’;
5. Implement new systems of landscape management that balance socio-economic gains with the maintenance of ecosystem services and the conservation of threatened species;
6. Empower local community and stakeholders, creating a more participatory process for sustainable development in the region.
Language(s)
Portuguese
Water
Agroforestry can improve crop productivity in several ways: increasing soil organic matter, infiltration and water storage; improving soil physical properties and biological activity; and enhancing nutrient supplies through nitrogen fixation and reduced leaching and soil erosion.
Food Security/Nutrition
Agroforestry – the integration of trees and shrubs with crops and livestock systems – has strong potential in addressing problems of food insecurity in developing countries. Done well, it allows producers to make the best use of their land, can boost field crop yields, diversify income, and increase resilience to climate change.
Economic/Sustainable Development
The challenge is to move from this scenario to a new one, where forest is a living part of the landscape, is a concrete source of livelihood and is considered within governmental and community development plans. It will be easier for Brazilian society in general and rural people in particular to commit to their conservation if forests are an economically competitive part of the productive landscape. Agrarian reform policy in Brazil recognizes the need to reconcile productive activities
Climate
This project will deliver approximately 17.000 tons of carbon or 64.000 tons of CO2 of high quality carbon offsets.
Sustainability
The project is designed to accomplish its capital intensive activities required to protect forest fragments and generate additional income for the community. Application of credit and environmental service financing will reinforce the continuing availability of sources to build on the project experience. Financial sustainability of these efforts in the period beyond support will thus depend only in part on IPÊ’s continuing success in mobilizing sources to this task. The most important condition for sustainability of the measures proposed is the profitability of alternative production systems and markets based on AFS and shade coffee in the llandscape. These potentials will be thoroughly explored by IPÊ’s Business Unit.
Return on investment
Evidence of cost-effectiveness of the project strategy includes the lower cost to train promoters than to train all settlers. Various approaches are adopted simultaneously for training of extensionists and promoters, but this combined approach leads to knowledge and ability to communicate this greater than the sum of its parts. Although the short-term costs of reforestation are relatively high, reforestation will eliminate the need for a costly long-term programme for genetic interchange to ensure survival of endemic and rare species in this region. Also, once completed, the achievements of the project should be self-sustaining.
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Replication and Scale
How could we successfully replicate this solution elsewhere?
The project incorporates an entire component dedicated to incorporating Best Practices and lessons learned into policy frameworks. Implementation of conservation plans include stakeholder workshops and project publications. IPÊ’s work involves different forms of knowledge sharing to a great variety of publics. Environmental education has been treated scientifically, as approaches are evaluated in a formal way to understand what is and what is not effective and to enhance replicability.
In order to reach broader audiences, IPÊ has created the Brazilian Center for Conservation Biology, and a Graduate Program in Sustainable Development where courses are offered year-round on environmental and sustainable development topics. These Centers have been conceptualized to share lessons learned by researchers. IPÊ’s researchers have published widely, an effective way to disseminate lessons learned. Ten books have been published based on the organization’s range of project experiences.