Anna Júlia Lopes*
Last week, IPAM (Amazon Environmental Research Institute) held a training session on the instruments and procedures for regularizing the CAR (Rural Environmental Registry), in accordance with the Forest Code. The event took place in municipalities in the Juruá Valley, located in Acre.
Although the main focus of the event was producers, the training, held in Cruzeiro do Sul (8), was also offered to local and municipal technicians and managers. In addition, joint efforts were offered to producers seeking to regularize the situation of their properties. The workshops were held in the days following the lecture, both in Cruzeiro do Sul (9) and in the municipalities of Mâncio Lima (10) and Rodrigues Alves (11).
Funded by the European Union and NICFI (Norway’s International Climate and Forest Initiative), the joint efforts were attended, in addition to IPAM, by public bodies such as Sema (the State Secretariat for the Environment) and Imac (Acre’s Environment Institute).
The project sought out producers who needed to regularize the CAR, either by rectifying the document or by joining the regularization program. The CAR is a self-declaratory document. With it, the owner indicates the extent of the territory and, from this, receives a provisional registration about the place. Finally, it is up to the federal and state governments, through technical teams, to validate the registration. As one of the services offered, the joint efforts also provided analysis for financing or licensing for producers who needed it.
For Claudio Cavalcante, Sema’s coordinator, the joint efforts were an “opportunity” for producers to seek out these services, offered free of charge, in order to advance in the environmental regularization of their properties. “The producer who has his rural property regularized has the possibility of financing and has legal security because, when the control bodies – such as Imac – pass through the region where he lives, they will know that it is regularized,” he explains.
Cavalcante adds that, with regularization, new opportunities arise for farmers, such as the possibility of bank loans and access to public policies.
According to IPAM researcher Jarlene Gomes, who is responsible for coordinating the project, the initiative is about more than just the environmental issue. She says that technical assistance and support for processing production are also some of the benefits offered by the project. She added that the project is also developing a business plan so that the farmers can access different markets.
“Producers can only gain when they seek environmental regularity, land tenure regularity and good production practices. He optimizes the use of his property, of the soil, and also has an economic gain from what he can increase in production,” says the researcher.
Francenildo Nunes de Oliveira, one of the producers assisted during the joint efforts, says that IPAM is the “godfather of family farming” in the region. Although his CAR has been regularized, Oliveira’s document was overlapping, i.e. the area of his property was registered as part of different properties in the system.
“Our plot is regularized, yes. We have the CAR, but unfortunately it was overlapping and, with this IPAM initiative, we came to regularize and remove this overlap, rectify the CAR,” says the producer.
Oliveira’s property is on the banks of the Rio Crôa, where he grows bananas, chacrona, pumpkin, pepper, açaí and cocoa. According to him, IPAM has contributed not only to his territory, but to others in the region, both with the issue of regularization and with the presentation of good production practices.
“Today, not before, I see nature as a partner, as a mother, because nature gives us something to drink, to eat, to wear and to put on. I tell everyone, at every meeting I go to, that nature doesn’t need us, we need it,” says the producer.
*IPAM journalist, anna.rodrigues@ipam.org.br