Instituto Sociedade, População e Natureza

Brasilia, Brasil

An Overview Of Our Solution

Even though Brazil is a multi-diverse country, the investments are still targeted to large agribusiness, meanwhile small farmers find hard to organize their production chains based on biodiversity fundamentals. That’s why the ISPN invests in strengthening small organizations that want to produce and preserve. Since 1995, the ISPN invested US$ 16 million into 556 small productive projects, until 2017, focusing in endangered biomes. We also act in the barriers of productive chains: lack of credit, lack of technical information, lack of market and inappropriate laws. We have developed a number of publications, knowledge exchanges, courses and released 2 thematic websites: CAPTA a guide of how to financially elaborate projects; and CERRATINGA which is aimed to the promotion of biodiversity theme, formation of markets and connections between producers and consumers.

Who is this solution impacting?

Community Type

Rural

Organization type

Sem fins lucrativos

Ecosystem (select all that apply)

Forests

Grasslands

Population impacted

Not possible to estimate. Grants/policies/websites

Size of agricultural area

800,000 ha under sustainable use

Production quantity

Not possible to estimate

People employed

ISPN has about 35 permanent employees

Describe your solution

On 1995 ISPN started the Small Grants Programme (SGP/UNDP/GEF), which supports sustainable production of small groups. 566 initiatives were supported on 10% of Brazilian municipalities. With low investment, managed to structure their production based on native biodiversity. Following it, numerous obstacles have been identified that prevented the full development of these initiatives, such as lack of credit, lack of technical assistance to production outflow, lack of qualification and capacitation, lack of market and inappropriate laws to the local/community production model. We began to act, together with the partners, in keep the activities going. We also provided thematic capacitations, seminars and exchange among the grantees. In addition, we developed one methodology where the own farmers provided technical assistance to other groups, achieving success due appropriate communication – similar culture and language. Moreover, on the political field we worked with advocacy to adapt the rules to the official bodies. Currently we have now been able to simplify sanitary regulations, which impact the whole society. Finally, we published numerous series, seeking the democratization of the knowledge about the enterprise and product management. On the digital environment we created websites focusing small companies and also to the consumers education, offering recipes with those products.

Describe your implementation

In addition to project financing, we seek to work within the barriers of productive chains, mainly influencing public policy managers, to achieve broad and lasting impacts. In the field of technical knowledge we seek to democratize access to information that is not available in an organized and proper language. We also produced booklets on sustainable fruits management for the most endangered biomes, as well as technology manuals for the agribusiness processing of the products. We also released a guide of barriers to wild fruit collection, directed to public managers; and a guide with technical standards that gather all the main legal requirements of the sanitary field, environmental and supervisory, to help the new groups. On 2013 we released the website CERRATINGA which aims to increase consumers for the native products, by investing at the top of the production chain. The website has information about biomes, the main food species and information of economic interest. www.cerratinga.org.br On 2015 we released the website CAPTA to help small groups attracting new resources. On the site there is a step by step project preparation and we post weekly open notices to finance socio-environmental issues. www.capta.ispn.org.br Finally, on 2017 we launched the Jorg Zimmermann Prize of Sociobiodiversity that warded 5 significant experiences in the agroecology area and sustainable use of biodiversity (www.ispn.org.br/resultado-pjz). Moreover, recently we launched the debate on the simplification of sanitary standards to small farmers; we did seminars and articulations that culminated in the awareness of the official organ that published new simplified rules to the small farmers and companies. This influence has impact on the whole national territory. Therefore, the number of people benefited today and the future is invaluable.

External connections

The conservation strategy by the sustainable use of biodiversity is the guideline to Small Grants Program. On its 22 years of existence ISPN received financial support from Global Environment Facility, MacArthur Foundation, European Commission, Amazon Fund, Brazilian Fund to Biodiversity, Doen Foundation, Finland Fund for Local Cooperation, private sector, and others. We have partners on Brazil that are investing on the socio-environmental area, some with a more conservationist approach, other work with indigenous issues, other with research, etc. Our partners are IPAM, WWF Brazil, Conservation International, IEB, CTI, Central do Cerrado, Rede Cerrado, UNDP, GEF, BNDES, VALE, The Satoyama Initiative, and others. Currently we occupy the coordination position of Rede Cerrado, a NGOs network that gather about 200 organizations. We also have space on about 20 boards and public policy committees, where we have the opportunity to participate and influence policies. Recently we elaborated, in partnership with the Conservation International, the Ecosystem Profile of the Cerrado Biodiversity Hotspot, document that justified the investments from Critical Ecosystem Partnership FUND (CEPF) on Cerrado, recognizing the conservation urgency in the Brazilian savannahs. The investments from CEPF are starting on 2017. The benefits to the conservation strategy by the biodiversity sustainable use are still invaluable. cepfcerrado.iieb.org.br/cerrado/

What is the environmental or ecological challenge you are targeting with your solution?

Brazil has most of its biodiversity threatened. The savannah biome (Cerrado) occupies ¼ of the territory and suffers with the highest rate of deforestation. It is a biome ignored that gives place to the agribusiness. The biome Caatinga presents the highest rates of biodiversity on semi-arid in the world, also threatened. Traditional farmers have on their culture the harmonious coexistence with the biodiversity. Yet the poverty and lack of economic options leads them to conventional activities, to attend the conventional market. Large enterprises have been pressing the natural resources. Therefore, water contamination, silting and deforestation are common and it leads to drought and migration to urban centers. The solution is to invest in productive chains based on biodiversity, to give natural biomes economic value, allowing the local and small farmers to keep their sustainable processes, creating income and maintaining the environmental services that are fundamental to society.

Describe the context in which you are operating

Brazil is a rural country that is suffering the impacts of the modernization of economy. Family farmers and traditional people are still greatly responsible for providing food to the country, however they are not recognized. The life of the small farmer is becoming increasingly difficult. In the past years the difficulties have increased due to prolonged drought, caused by deforestation, and use of technological packages that make them dependent.
Most of local biodiversity products do not have an organized market, technical assistance nor appropriate legislation that allows the outflow of these products to the formal market. Thus, the biodiversity products are limited to the informal market that in general is not sufficient to the maintenance of the families producing it.

How did you impact natural resource use and greenhouse gas emissions?

All the ISPN work is geared to enable sustainable economic activities base on biodiversity. The projects that invest in agroecology commonly implant productive backyards, vegetable gardens, agroforest systems and systems that incorporate agriculture, livestock and forests. The results are more biodiversity, more balanced ecosystems, more food security and financial income to the families, boosting the local economy. The recovery projects of degraded areas usually buy seedlings to the application of methods for the recovery of the soil fertility and the vegetal cover. The projects of agribusiness or handicraft usually begin to value more native vegetation, because that is where their raw materials come from. Areas that previously had no economic value are now important and protected. Projects of honey production, the environmental benefits are even more visible as communities cease deforestation and usage of fire to clean the area.

Language(s)

Brazilian Portuguese

Water

Part of our portifolio is projects that invest on water management. In addition to those that rely on forest and water springs recovery, many others have demanded the construction of flood containment basins and contour level lines. New technologies have been tested or adapted, such as water-saving gardens, grey water bio-remediator, sewage evapotranspiration basin and the underground dams.

Food Security/Nutrition

Increased food security is an indirect result on most of our projects, providing improvement in the quantity and quality of local foods, as well as the consumption of biodiversity products. Through the website Cerratinga we are spreading these products to the whole society, which has much to gain using products of the season and from local biomes. We had many experiences of native fruits inserted in the school menu, benefiting thousands of children.

Economic/Sustainable Development

Most of the projects that we support are productive; they seek environmental and economic impacts, looking for the autonomy of farmer’s families and the small companies. We collect income indicators by each family on each project. As our financing periods are relatively short (2 years), it is still a challenge to measure the results that the projects achieve in the medium and long term, after several cycles of financing from different sources.

Climate

Initiatives to recover degraded areas, water management and use of biodiversity have a direct impact on climate change mitigation, as they result in increased vegetation. Adaptation is the focus of some initiatives that pursue to develop agricultural techniques adapted to lack of water, or even reusing it or making more efficient use of water. Moreover, recently our carbon study for 20 projects estimated 15,521,000 ton CO²eq avoided and 70,000 ton CO²eq sequestered.

Sustainability

ISPN works capturing large resources and applying for small grantees. The Small Grants Progamme has been operating for 22 years in Brazil. In the annual selections of new projects, we list the criteria of economic sustainability, replicability and scalability. Most of the supported projects are based in sustainable economic activities that have their plan to ensure long term, even after the funding period.
On 2008 ISPN brought together the more mature and better supply oriented productive groups and promoted the creation of the cooperative Central do Cerrado, which now has about 50 cooperative entities, operating with centralized market strategy. Most of the entities now are independent in the process.

Return on investment

The reported experience involves a long period in which a long-term strategy was developed. Many funders took part on this journey, with different approaches. We have part in the journey and results of more than 300 entities. It is not possible to evaluate the resources that have been applied directly and indirectly, not even the results obtained in financial terms, since that part of these results are presented in the recovery and improvement of environmental and climate services at the local, regional global levels. In addition, only on the grants, were invested US$ 16 million since 1995.

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How could we successfully replicate this solution elsewhere?

Yes. The conservation strategy by the sustainable use of biodiversity has been implemented in most countries that are part of the Small Grants Programme (UNDP/GEF), in different ranks. More recent The International Partnership for the Satoyama Initiative (IPSI) haven been presenting conservation experiences and usage of productive landscapes, with similar approaches that we adopted. On 2013 we were invited to do an investment experience concentrated in a small territory, to achieve impacts on the landscape in the short-term. Also most of the results we seek are related to the improvement of public policies and do not depend exclusively of funding. For this reason is important to keep the task of advocacy and the participation in policy making spaces. Networking is also essential to give voice to small entities in face of the disproportional power among the large corporate groups that are in the political arena.

YouTube URL

Extrativismo sustentável de cagaita - Cerratinga

Overview