First established in 2002 by the Brazilian government, and later expanded with the support of WWF and private donors, the conservation program known as ARPA helps protect 120 conservation areas spanning more than 60 million hectares — about the size of Ukraine — of the Brazilian Amazon. The program initially worked on creating new protected areas and then on designing a durable financial mechanism to support their protection.

A new phase, called ARPA Comunidades (Communities), is now shifting the focus to the traditional communities who live within the forest and help protect it. Half of the conservation areas covered by ARPA are sustainable-use conservation units like the Chico Mendes Extractive Reserve, inhabited by local communities who live sustainably off the forest‘s resources.

Announced during the COP30 climate summit in the Amazonian city of Belém, ARPA Comunidades will focus on these 60 sustainable-use reserves, which together cover an area of 23.7 million hectares, nearly the size of the U.K. The aim is to help reduce deforestation and improve the well-being of the local populations by supporting the development of local bioeconomies. Over 15 years, the program hopes to directly impact 130,000 people. It will also seek to add a further 3 million hectares of protected areas.

A 2023 paper by the Escolhas Institute, a Brazilian research organization, found that a 1% reduction in extreme poverty in the Brazilian Amazon has the potential to reduce deforestation by 27,000 hectares in the region.

Greater recognition of local communities‘ needs and role in protecting the forest is not a new demand, said Carlos Durigan, a researcher at the Amazon Environmental Research Institute (IPAM).

Internet: <https://news.mongabay.com> (adapted).