In the almost 30-year history of IPAM (Amazon Environmental Research Institute), Lucimar Souza has worked for 26 of them supporting sustainable rural development in the biome. Daughter of farmers, the Institute’s Director of Territorial Development has coordinated projects which, in terms of restoration alone, have benefited thousands of families, as well as contributing to the planting of more than a million trees in the Amazon region.
PAS activities included training family farmers, in this photo Lucimar leads one of the workshops (Photo: IPAM Collection)
Among the highlights of her work is coordinating the PAS (Sustainable Settlements Project in the Amazon), carried out between 2012 and 2017 and awarded by the United Nations. The initiative increased the gross income of the families involved by 135%, while at the same time reducing deforestation on their properties by 76%, proving that it is possible to reconcile increased rural productivity and income with conservation.
Participants received support for land and environmental regularization; rural technical assistance; support for adding value to production chains; support for marketing products; strengthening management capacities; and financial compensation for environmental services provided.
“We worked on various aspects of rural production and environmental issues in a single initiative. We worked on the property as a whole. This work generated an increase in income and preservation. PAS shows a path that can be applied as a public policy for the development of family farming throughout the country,” he explains.
Restoring the Amazon
Since 2010, Lucimar Souza has been working on forest restoration projects for degraded areas in the Amazon, focusing on the implementation of agroforestry systems and natural regeneration. After 15 years coordinating these efforts, she and the IPAM team have already planted more than 1 million trees in support of restoration.
Lucimar Souza in the midst of field work aimed at restoring degraded areas (Photo: IPAM Collection)
“Restoring altered areas is one of my favorite things to do at IPAM because it’s very stimulating to see the results, to watch people making an income from the restored areas. The productive restoration of altered areas has a greater chance of keeping the territory protected over time, because once an agroforestry system has been set up that can generate income, the farmers start looking after it.”
Even after impacting thousands of families, Lucimar Souza hasn’t stopped dreaming. One of her ambitions is to help influence different sectors of society to develop “climate citizenship”, which would drive them to act to mitigate climate change. “We need to take responsibility for the planet, and that’s my wish,” she says.