30 years of IPAM: a history of love for the Amazon

The 30th anniversary of IPAM (Amazon Environmental Research Institute) in 2025 marks a history of love for the Amazon and, more recently, for the Brazilian Cerrado.

This history began in Belém, Pará, on May 29, 1995, with a group of researchers who wanted to put science to work for conservation and sustainable development.

That same year, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the UNFCCC, was ratified, in favor of an agenda with which IPAM would be linked many times from then on.

IPAM was born from the combination of three initiatives: 1) an agreement between Embrapa (Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation) Eastern Amazon and the international organization then called Woods Hole Research Center, now Woodwell Climate Research Center; 2) the Várzea project, in Santarém (PA); 3) and a project organized by Professor José Benatti, from UFPA (Federal University of Pará), related to the rights of Amazonian populations.

Curiosity and knowledge sewn together by many hands have elevated the Institute to a position of global credibility: what IPAM says, writes and publishes is used by society, companies, governments and national and international organizations.

It is possible to say that few private, independent and proactive institutions have maintained these characteristics for so long.

A few months after IPAM was founded, the then recently graduated Ane Alencar, now the Institute’s Director of Science, embarked on research into forest fires in the Arc of Deforestation and began mapping fire scars in the Amazon.

Common sense at the time dictated that fire in the region was a myth. Alencar’s work would prove otherwise: the forest was burning and the fire was caused by human action.

The first experiments to study burned areas in the Amazon required creativity. A camera attached to a kite was used by Alencar and researchers in 1997 to try to measure how long it took for burnt pasture to recover.

The improvisation also involved two wooden stakes of the same size, painted red and held in the shape of a cross. At the time of the photo – when the kite was flying – the researchers ran to position themselves and simulate a scale, with which they could calculate the distances captured in the photograph.

Shaping fire management policies

In 30 years of IPAM, scientific research and the production of data on vegetation fires in Brazil have become consolidated as indicators of ecosystem health and as guidelines for public policies.

Click here to learn more about IPAM’s work on fire.

Highlights of this history include the publication of the book “Floresta em Chamas” (Forest on Fire) in 1999. Bringing together the results of studies mapping fire and its scars in the Amazon, the book was one of the bases for the creation of programs such as Prevfogo, run by Ibama (the Brazilian Institute for the Environment and Renewable Natural Resources).

The creation of the first model of fire risk in the Amazon landscape made it possible to understand the dynamics of fire on a large scale in the biome. What’s more, it showed the economic losses associated with the lack of prevention. The work supported laws for controlled burning by communities and farms, preventing the flames from escaping.

Training and courses on fire management in the Amazon have become a regular feature of IPAM’s program. It has also taken part in events and decision-making panels on the subject.

One of the largest and longest-running fire experiments in Brazil is still being monitored at the Tanguro Research Station, which IPAM runs in partnership with Amaggi. From 2004 to 2010, different fires in selected areas revealed the impacts on biodiversity and how long the forest takes to recover.

Joining the MapBiomas consortium in 2015 enriched the Institute’s work with monthly and annual mapping of burned areas and fire scars.

From the perspective of emissions, which come not only from fire, but from the land use change sector – which also includes deforestation – the Institute’s contribution to the SEEG (System for Estimating Emissions and Removals of Greenhouse Gases) has, since 2013, fed one of the largest emissions databases in the world.

Putting forests in the climate change debate

At the end of the 20th century, there were still myths about the Amazon, such as it being the “lung of the world” or having “poor soils”. The research carried out by IPAM has contributed to the understanding of the biome, showing the specificities of the multiple Amazons, their populations and the benefits of the forest for the climate.

 

Digging rectangle-shaped holes up to 20 meters deep was part of the research that overturned another myth: that the roots of the Amazon did not go beyond the first meter below ground.

The researchers had to use oxygen cylinders to do the “reverse climb”, with abseiling training. They collected material and took it to the laboratory to wash and count the fine roots.

They discovered that a large part of the maintenance of leaves in the Amazon rainforest during drought came from this hitherto unknown characteristic: the ability of deep roots to capture water.

The research, carried out in Paragominas (PA), was followed by rumors. On their way back to the city after the field day, the scientists were asked how much gold they had found there. It was then that Paulo Moutinho and Daniel Nepstad, co-founders of IPAM working on the study, decided to start an educational project inviting public schools to visit. The chatter died down.

 

Moutinho was at the heart of the concept of REDD+, which combines the compensated reduction of emissions from deforestation and forest degradation with conservation activities and sustainable forest management.

From the initial proposals for an idea of “avoided deforestation” to the adoption of REDD+ as a mechanism within the UNFCCC in 2009, there have been years of work and negotiations at climate conferences.

Remember the three decades of IPAM at the COPs, the global climate conferences.

The central contribution of this mechanism lies in the valorization of tropical forests, in the National Policy on Climate Change, for example, as part of the response to mitigating climate change and global warming.

This is a line of reasoning that is commonly present in current debates, but which has not been seen before on the climate circuit, even in milestones such as Rio-92 or the Kyoto Protocol. The signing of the Glasgow Leaders’ Declaration on Forests and Land Use by more than 100 countries in 2021 is also a milestone resulting from this process.

As a wide-ranging institution, IPAM expands the conservation character to include people in conservation. Taking into account the interests of traditional peoples and communities, as well as governments and companies, as long as they are aligned with the maintenance of nature, has become part of the equation for development compatible with life.

Find out more about IPAM’s support for Jurisdictional REDD+ in the Amazon states.

Another experiment that added to the debate on forests and climate was Seca Floresta, held in its first edition in Santarém (PA), now revived under the name Seca Limite and underway at the Tanguro Research Station. The aim is to assess the impact of extreme droughts on biodiversity and scientists do this with a physical barrier: preventing rain from reaching the forest floor in the study areas.

 

Monitoring deforestation

Calculating the projected deforestation caused by the paving of highways such as BR-153 (Belém-Brasília) and BR-230 (Transamazônica) was one of IPAM’s missions in the early years of its work.

The Scenarios for the Amazon program created a simulation model of deforestation in the Amazon Basin under different conditions. The “same old, same old” scenario, without governance and oversight, estimated deforestation of up to 85% of the original forest cover in the face of infrastructure expansion.

The discussion around territorial planning grew and another IPAM program, Regional Planning, would play a fundamental role in listening to the population of the municipalities along the roads that could be paved.

 

The result of the combination of technical knowledge and dialogue on the demands of the region, the book “Deforestation in the Amazon: Going Beyond the Chronic Emergency” became the second publication of its kind at the Institute.

The work over the years has taken the issue of deforestation to INCRA (National Institute for Colonization and Agrarian Reform), contributing to the creation of the Green Settlements Program. This was because IPAM showed that a small number of rural settlements were responsible for large areas of deforestation in the Amazon, indicating that it was not necessarily the settlers who were responsible for the suppressions.

But deforestation in another category of land in the Amazon also caught the researchers’ attention: undesignated public forests. The deforestation in the biome was concentrated in areas of public domain that had been grabbed and which needed – and need – to be set aside.

Read more about undesignated public forests.

The expansion of monitoring to the Cerrado biome led to the launch of SAD Cerrado (Cerrado Deforestation Alert System) in 2022. This reinforces IPAM’s work on the issue, which also includes the inter-institutional initiatives of the Annual Report on Deforestation and MapBiomas Alert.

Helping to create and maintain protected areas

The Terra do Meio Mosaic of Protected Areas brings together indigenous lands and conservation units covering 8.5 million hectares in the transition zone between the Amazon and the Cerrado in the Xingu River Basin.

It was conceived by many hands and involved IPAM in a collective effort by civil society to carry out the survey that would give rise to the mosaic proposal.

Working on land-use planning in the region would also open up the Sustainable Development Plan for the Area of Influence of the BR-163 highway, with the creation of more protected areas, such as the Verde para Sempre and Tapajós-Arapiuns Extractive Reserves.

In 2018, years of experience with protected areas in the Amazon culminated in the launch of SOMUC (Conservation Unit Observation and Monitoring System), with the aim of providing information to support the management of the sites, as well as actions to mitigate and adapt to climate change.

See how climate adaptation and resilience apply to Amazon populations.

 

Talking about fishing agreements

The application of science in large-scale solutions designed for the territories and in dialog with multiple actors has been part of IPAM’s capillarity since its inception.

It was through surveys of the population that the Institute founded the first riverside settlements in the Amazon.

Even before it had an institutional name and organization, the team was already working with riverside communities through the Várzea Project, under the auspices of UFPA’s (Federal University of Pará) Center for High Amazonian Studies, to understand their sustainable use of natural resources.

From the first workshop in 1990 to its conclusion in 1995, research and training of riverine leaders was carried out in the Lower Amazon region of Pará. The work resulted in the formalization of a partnership with INCRA to continue the activities of co-management, organization and allocation of territories in agro-extractivist settlements.

 

Normative instructions from the Ministry of the Environment in the late 1990s and early 2000s, such as IN 29, on fishing agreements and lake management, were based on IPAM’s work in the area. These actions also inspired the creation of Pró-Várzea by Ibama and the formalization of fishing agreements throughout Brazil.

In the first ten years of working with riverside communities, IPAM delivered 15 basic land-use planning projects, with utilization plans as the technical basis for allocating the areas, benefiting more than 15,000 traditional occupant families.

Transforming family farming

It’s in IPAM’s DNA to work at the cutting edge: from its roots to the present day, it is one of the few institutions that manages to test solutions found through science and dialog at the micro level and scale them up to the macro level.

IPAM’s initial work focused on fire management by farmers, holding workshops, formalizing burning agreements and assessing the impacts of flames on settlements.

IPAM intensified fire prevention initiatives while investing in work to recover degraded areas along the Transamazon highway. Trips to deliver seedlings in the region often resulted in bogged down trucks due to the rains of the Amazon winter.

 

Even though, by 2025, more than 1 million seedlings had been planted in favor of forest restoration, the Institute was still driven by restlessness. After all, it was necessary to think of economic alternatives for rural producers to the burning and logging that was at its peak at the time.

Still in the early 2000s, the Oficinas Caboclas do Tapajós project encouraged the production of furniture from dead wood, through community forest management. By selling the products at local fairs in Santarém (PA) and then nationally, the communities saw a 50% increase in income.

The way was clear for IPAM to plunge headlong into a project that would transform the vision of rural family production in the Amazon.

Between 2012 and 2017, PAS (Projeto Assentamentos Sustentáveis na Amazônia) increased the producers’ gross income by 135%, while at the same time reducing deforestation on the plots by 76% – these together occupy an area of 1.4 million hectares.

 

These results, awarded by the United Nations, prove that it is possible to reconcile increased rural productivity and income with conservation. Starting with land and environmental regularization, the economic valuation of the forest, with rural technical assistance, adding value to production chains and strengthening management capacities.

With similar inspiration, the Sustainable Family Business Project contributed to a 61% increase in the gross income of 350 farming families through sustainable management, combined with forest protection, between 2018 and 2020.

The experience and knowledge accumulated in the area was included in IPAM’s contribution to the National Policy for Payment for Environmental Services and the proposal to regulate law 14.119/2021.

Walking alongside indigenous peoples

The combination of science, work with Amazonian populations and the protection of rights is what gives IPAM the character it has today.

Indigenous peoples are at the heart of any climate and socio-environmental discussion. That’s why the Institute works alongside indigenous organizations, associations and leaders to integrate knowledge and responses to the climate emergency.

On indigenous lands, according to an IPAM study, the average annual temperature is up to 5°C cooler than that recorded in agricultural areas, for example. This makes the territories protected by indigenous peoples the “air conditioning of Brazil”.

As one of the first observers of the Climate COPs to include representatives of indigenous peoples in its delegation, IPAM has started to run courses on the topics of the negotiations with a focus on indigenous peoples.

Since the 2000s, collective construction seminars have been held, which have contributed to the formation of climate leaders among the peoples. These have helped to multiply indigenous voices in national and international debates.

While one front of action was focused on people, another relied on improving technology. SOMAI (Indigenous Amazon Observation and Monitoring System), which celebrated its tenth anniversary in 2024, monitors more than 60 million hectares of Amazonian indigenous lands for the presence of enterprises and mining, as well as deforestation, fire, drought and rain, for example.

 

In its wake came the free mobile application ACI (Alerta Clima Indígena), developed by the Institute in partnership with indigenous organizations to map and enter information for land management.

Around 182 indigenous organizations and more than 700 people use the tools, which are constantly being updated based on feedback from their use in the territories. The data is protected and confidential, published in aggregate form to expose the reality of the indigenous lands of the Amazon and in favor of effective actions for and with their populations.

Engaging large rural producers

The path to sustainable rural production, in balance with nature and in line with a habitable planet in the future, lies through the engagement of small, medium and large producers.

In the wake of the understanding of some Brazilian agribusiness leaders about the risks posed to the sector by climate change, IPAM began to occupy spaces for dialogue with agribusiness about 20 years ago.

The Institute’s proactive nature, headed by André Guimarães’ executive director, led to the development of yet another solution: this time focused on reducing deforestation on large properties in the Amazon and Cerrado.

With CONSERV, another “taboo” was put to the test by the Institute. The financial mechanism that remunerates rural producers for maintaining vegetation that they could, by law, suppress, has resulted in more than 26,000 hectares protected and the avoided emission of 2.3 million tons of carbon dioxide.

Find out more about the low carbon economy in rural production.

On a visit to one of the areas contracted by CONSERV on a property in the state of Mato Grosso, during the Covid-19 pandemic in 2021, IPAM’s executive director André Guimarães saw a water truck up close, for the local fire brigade, which the rural producer had funded with the project’s support.

CONSERV entered a new phase in 2024 and began offering rural technical assistance, promoting good practices in land use and increasing productivity.

 

Looking at the multiple dimensions of the Amazon and Cerrado, as well as their challenges, IPAM has been showing various sectors that the protection of biomes is a positive part of the equation that makes up the sustainability of the planet.

By considering the social and economic interests that hover over nature, the Institute is able to promote comprehensive and inclusive solutions for the sustained reduction of deforestation and fires, with climate justice and benefits for all.

Today, thanks to shared reports and testimonies, it is possible to say that some agribusinesses think twice before deforesting because there are initiatives like CONSERV.

IPAM’s work is precisely to put a “flea behind the ear” of groups that are key to the country’s progress on the climate agenda. Showing, based on science and practice, that growth and economic prosperity can only truly occur in a world in balance.

Promoting changes that match the challenges

IPAM’s work has permeated and continues to permeate multiple areas, resulting in contributions to the production of theoretical and practical knowledge in various sectors of society.

But this external reach would not be possible without a solid internal structure to guide the Institute’s work. Over the course of its 30 years, IPAM has undergone transformations that have brought about changes and made it increasingly up to the challenge.

It was just before its 20th anniversary that one of these key moments occurred, creating the organizational vision that perseveres at the Institute to this day.

The executive board at the time was headed by Paulo Moutinho, a senior scientist and co-founder of IPAM, who saw the need for a new step: after a process that involved hiring an external consultancy and an open call for proposals, André Guimarães took over the institutional board.

The agronomist, who has worked for national and international organizations, headed up the restructuring of IPAM’s areas of activity in order to direct effective actions focused on large-scale solutions.

This led to the definition of the three main axes that have guided IPAM’s work ever since: Sustainable Family Production, Protected Natural Territories and Low Carbon Agriculture. The Institute’s research, territorial development and advocacy projects are distributed and oriented along these lines.

Added to this institutional planning is the strategy of directly supporting decision-makers, be they political actors, leaders of indigenous peoples and traditional communities, medium-sized and large rural producers.

These agents are capable of multiplying benefits not only for their groups, but also for sustainable production chains and the bioeconomy, for example, which is why working alongside decision-makers is one of IPAM’s main work fronts.

Furthermore, the investment in Communication over the last ten years, following the guidelines of the same institutional restructuring, has led IPAM to become an Institute known in society and in the media, in addition to already being recognized among peers and partners.

 

Celebrating three decades of life means recognizing the challenges overcome and the progress made by an institution that has become a benchmark in Brazil and around the world. It is also to remember the hundreds, if not thousands, of people who have been part of this trajectory.

In the past, we have the chance to revisit lessons learned and apply them with a view to the future, permeated with new challenges. IPAM continues to invest in research, projects and actions focused on territorial development and application in public policies, thinking not only about the next 30 years, but also about the long-term well-being of life on Earth.

IPAM’s anniversary in 2025 is marked by a series of contents and actions. Follow us on the website and on our @ipam_amazonia social media profiles.

Keep browsing the stories and see IPAM’s data from 30 years of activity.