Brazilian Rainforest Reserves

Brazil has different categories of environmental reserves

Extractive Reserves

These are designed to allow the local population to remain in the protected area, tapping rubber, picking fruits and nuts and extracting other regenerating goods from the forest.

The environmental ministry said of two newly created extractives reserves that it would benefit some 2,600 families who will be able to better market products extracted from the jungle with the reserve designation.

"We will guarantee the preservation of areas and the end of illegal occupations," Environment Minster Marina Silva said in a statement, referring to the loggers who invade areas of forest belonging to the federal government.

Chico Mendes was the first to promote Extractivist Reserves (RESEX). In these reserves small communities live and work collectively according to a well designed plan of use. They extract the forest's resources sustainably and without harm to the environment. The land remains property of the union; however, its use is defined by an association of local communities and government agencies. The RESEX offer a variety of products including rubber, coco and other nuts, the açai fruit, alternative medicine, fish and beautiful handicraft made of seeds, left-over wood and other natural material. The profits go directly back to the communities.

Private Natural Heritage Reserves (RPPN)
This is what STARO aims to create with the ICGA

When Pedro Carlos de Oliveira Cardoso began clearing his farmland in 1948, he decided to leave a wide swath of forest untouched. In 1998, he registered 173 hectares of his land as a Private Natural Heritage Reserve (RPPN). The reserve counts among the nearly half-million hectares of privately-owned land protected by federal and state laws in Brazil. Nearly 600 individuals, corporations and activist groups have voluntarily registered private property under the RPPN scheme since 1990. Sr. Pedro’s home state of Paraná in southern Brazil boasts almost one-third of them.

Under the RPPN program, land use is restricted to research, environmental education and ecotourism – forever.. By allowing private citizens and organizations to solicit registration of their land as RPPNs, the Brazilian government is essentially adopting a "privatized" approach to creating easements or zoning restrictions. “This is something very new," said Wilson Loureiro, director for biodiversity and protected areas of the Paraná Environmental Institute, a state agency. “When you tell foreigners about this, they don’t believe it. Anywhere else in the world, you would use environmental zoning laws."

RPPNs are helping to fill a gap left by the absence of a more aggressive conservation policy in Brazil. Whether due to strapped public finances or simply because they have different priorities, Brazilian federal and state governments spend less on conservation than environmentalists would like. RPPNs act as a convenient escape valve. “For the public sector, it is good business," said Loureiro. “Otherwise the government would have to appropriate land, indemnify owners, and spend money to manage the area. This way, the burden is on the private landowner."

Landowners must apply for RPPN status with the Brazilian Environmental Institute (IBAMA), the federal watchdog agency, or – where state laws permit - with local officials. If approval is granted, owners receive modest breaks on property taxes and – in principle – priority for certain kinds of public financing like cash distributed by the National Environmental Fund (FNMA), a program backed by the Interamerican Development Bank. As a rule, the tax breaks weigh lightly in the balance, especially since most rural landowners can receive similar breaks under a parallel but less restrictive program. Few RPPNs report much luck with public financing schemes.

The concept of privately-owned nature reserves dates back at least 100 years. For early examples, scholars reach back to 19th century Europe, notably to 1899 and the founding of the Wicken Fen National Nature Reserve in England. Today the Nature Conservancy manages over 500,000 hectares of wilderness areas in the United States, and a handful of countries like South Africa have explicit policies that regulate and even encourage private reserves.

Launched by a 1990 decree, the Brazilian program was revised six years later and incorporated into legislation passed by Congress in 2000. Six of Brazil’s 26 states have enacted copycat legislation that mirrors the federal law. The original federal decree was enacted at the behest of the owner of the second tract to be accepted into the program, according to that reserve’s manager Paulo Schveitzer. Russell Wid Coffin, the heir of a Coca Cola distributorship, has been putting his money where his mouth was ever since. For the last 13 years he’s been spending between $50,000 and $300,000 a year to maintain as a strict wilderness preserve on the 4,200-plus hectares that make up the Caraguatá area in Santa Catarina state.

The Brazilian program is considered unique among international schemes because of its scope and the strategic role it plays in key conservation efforts. Environmental groups like the WWF and The Nature Conservancy encourage and help landowners to create RPPNs, especially when land is located near already existing public nature reserves. The Pantanal Matogrossense National Park is augmented by land acquired by Ecotrópica, a Brazilian environmental group. A similar mosaic of private reserves surrounds the Chapada dos Veadeiros National Park in the central state of Goiás. Near the Una Biological Reserve in Bahia state, the Socio-Environmental Institute of Southern Bahia (IESB) provides agricultural extension services to farmers who create RPPNs as a form of “payment." Where ecotourism is viable, as in the Itacaré region, IESB provides technical assistance to landowner-entrepreneurs who establish RPPNs.

Experts consider the private reserves as key elements in Brazil to the “corridor" strategy, a method now in vogue to preserve biodiversity. Under the approach, larger areas like national parks and wilderness areas are linked by corridors of smaller nature reserves that allow species to roam over a wider area, thus encouraging greater genetic diversity among sometimes dwindling populations.

According to the federal legislation, the environmental agency IBAMA responds to requests for registration and even offer technical assistance to interested property owners. After registration, the rights and responsibilities of the property owner are essentially the same. But during the preparation and approval process, Paraná residents can call upon one of the 20 local offices of the state environmental agency. They also receive free technical support. Partly as a result, the state boasts over one-third of all RPPNs nationwide.

The state hopes to pass new legislation that will cut even more red tape. “Our goal is to have 300 RPPNs in the state by 2006," said state official Loureiro. “The proposed bill would create procedures that are more secure from a legal and institutional point of view. And we want to make the system more agile."

Paraná counts among six Brazilian states that apply environmental criteria to a rather arcane federal scheme that earmarks for revenue sharing a portion of cash garnered from a value-added tax (ICMS). Under Paraná state law, environmental protection means more revenue-sharing money for City Hall, so mayors have been encouraging rural property owners to apply for RPPN status.