Sara Leal*
In its 30 years, one of the main marks left by IPAM (Instituto de Pesquisa Ambiental da Amazônia) has been and continues to be the promotion of the development of a low carbon economy.
The first step was to get closer to family production. It was identified that, in the Amazon, farmers, extractivists and fishermen face challenges such as low technical capacity; lack of access to credit and technology, due to limited resources; and infrastructure such as poor roads or access only by river route.
The result is the establishment of extensive cattle ranching and slash-and-burn agriculture which, in addition to increasing the rate of deforestation, contributes little to improving the quality of life of family producers.
In order to promote a change in the rural development model, the Institute began supporting initiatives in the Transamazon region of Pará in 2001. The focus was on providing technical support for the design and implementation of projects to reduce deforestation in the region, adopting sustainable production alternatives and improving socio-environmental quality.
Paulo Moutinho, co-founder of IPAM, in a field course for students from UFPA (Federal University of Pará), in 1998.
PAS (Projeto Assentamentos Sustentáveis da Amazônia), carried out between 2012 and 2017, was recognized by the United Nations as one of the most transformative experiences for sustainability in Brazil.
The initiative contributed to a 135% increase in the gross income of 2,000 families in western Pará. At the same time, it protected 1.4 million hectares of forest, with a 76% reduction in deforestation in settlements in the region.
“We have developed a set of actions that are essential for rural development: from environmental regularization, valuing forest assets, improving production and productivity in areas that have already been deforested, modern and innovative technical assistance and rural extension, to marketing and strengthening local organizations,” explains Lucimar Souza, IPAM’s Director of Territorial Development.
IPAM technician visits cocoa plantation on property benefiting from PAS (Pedro Alcântara/M’bóia)
Expansion and technology
The lessons learned from PAS are still being replicated today with the inclusion of the Cerrado biome. The Institute is currently developing ten projects aimed at family production in the regions of Pará, Acre, Maranhão and Mato Grosso, impacting the lives of more than 1,100 families.
Over the years and experiences, it has been possible to establish a technical assistance methodology that gave rise to the ATER Paidegua application. The tool allows technical teams to offer continuous support, even at a distance, to overcome the challenges posed by infrastructure.
As well as providing support with ATER (Technical Assistance and Rural Extension), the implementation of SAFs (Agroforestry Systems) and restoration (environmental and productive), IPAM contributes to the regularization of land ownership and the creation of public policies aimed at family producers.
Interaction with agribusiness
Most of Brazil’s remaining native vegetation is on private property. As well as providing the conditions for the planet to remain habitable, this same vegetation is fundamental to the sustainability of rural production – consequently, the country’s economy and global food security.
The Institute realized early on that it needed to engage in dialogue with different sectors of society, including agribusiness. In 2004, IPAM entered into an unprecedented partnership with Amaggi to set up the Tanguro Research Station, which still operates on the company’s property.
The aim was to understand the dynamics between agricultural production and natural resources. “If it’s difficult for NGOs to talk to agribusiness today, imagine what it was like back then,” recalls André Guimarães, IPAM’s executive director.
The interaction, in addition to enabling countless studies on the impact of human actions on the environment, resulted in a clearer understanding of the role of agribusiness in nature conservation.
Located in Querência (MT), the Tanguro Research Station enables studies into the interaction between native vegetation and plantations. (Mitch Korolevl/Woodwell)
Valuing to conserve
If most of Brazil’s native vegetation can be legally suppressed because it is on private property, the challenge was to find arguments for rural producers to choose to keep the so-called “forest assets”.
After decades of accumulated knowledge, IPAM launched CONSERV in 2020. In five years, the project has proven that it is possible to reduce legal deforestation by providing financial compensation to medium and large rural producers who keep surplus native vegetation conserved.
The initiative has reached 32 signed contracts in the states of Mato Grosso, Pará and Maranhão, totaling more than 27,000 hectares of protected vegetation that could have been legally cleared.
Even with the end of the funding, a group of rural producers from Sapezal, in Mato Grosso, set up a collective that intends to continue keeping the areas conserved. “They began to associate that vegetation not only with monetary value, but also with intangible values such as rain and temperature,” explains Guimarães.
Water truck bought by producer benefiting from CONSERV with remuneration from the initiative (Sara Leal/IPAM)
The value of conservation
The interaction with agribusiness also made it possible to identify bottlenecks related to rural production in Brazil – among them, climate change. In addition to rising temperatures, approximately 90% of Brazilian agriculture is not irrigated and depends on the rainfall cycle.
To gain an in-depth understanding of the impacts of deforestation on agriculture, in 2023 IPAM created GALO (Global Assessment from Local Observations). The initiative aims to discover the cost of maintaining forests and restoring production, as well as the connection between these factors and the stability of agricultural production.
“The hypothesis we have formulated is that native vegetation is an asset for production, not a liability or a problem to be removed in order to perform agriculture,” says Guimarães.
GALO was launched during COP28, in Dubai, in partnership with the company Bayer. (Sara Leal/IPAM)
Gaining scale
In its 30 years, IPAM has identified challenges and, based on them, developed and tested solutions. All so that it can continue to produce more and better, while guaranteeing the ecosystem services provided by nature.
Now, the challenge is to scale up initiatives that have proven in practice that it is possible to produce and conserve. “We are facing a paradigm shift. And this paradigm shift presupposes independent research institutions to devise solutions and test them, but also public and private investment,” says Guimarães.
In the Amazon and Cerrado alone, for example, there are 20 million hectares to be recovered in accordance with the requirements of the Forest Code. If the approximate cost of recovering each hectare is 3,000 dollars, it would take 60 billion dollars to recover the entire amount.
“If Brazil is an agricultural powerhouse today, a lot is due to the trillions invested to get to this point. So why not continue along a different path, one that has more harmony between forestry and production? The money is there, it just depends on political will and market understanding,” says the executive director.
As a vision for the future, IPAM intends to show not only how much it costs, but also how to pay for it. And just as dialog was present in the institution’s first steps, the way forward is to interact with the various sectors.
“The commodities market, for example, benefits from the rain that the Amazon brings to the Cerrado and benefits the vegetation. So we want to interact more and more with the sector to get across the message that conserving biomes is good business,” Guimarães concludes.
*IPAM Communications Coordinator
