By Mariana Güths*
Task forces held in Brasil Novo, Vitória do Xingu and Medicilândia, municipalities in Pará, supported rural producers in analyzing and validating 226 CARs (Rural Environmental Registry). The initiative is the result of a partnership between IPAM (Amazon Environmental Research Institute), SEMAS-PA (Pará State Secretariat for the Environment and Sustainability) and the municipal environmental secretariats.
According to SEMAS-PA, 91% of the CAR-registrable areas in these municipalities have already been registered. However, it is necessary to speed up the validation of these rural properties.
Sirleia Fernandes Serafim de Almeida, a family farmer from the municipality of Medicilândia, one of the producers benefiting from IPAM’s Sustenta Inova Project and partners, took part in the joint effort. She says that by making it easier to regularize land, actions like these increase the chances of getting credit from the bank. “With this, those of us who have crops can get the money to buy a wire, to buy a screen to raise chickens, to make a vegetable garden,” she says.
The aim of the joint efforts is to decentralize SEMAS-PA’s action so that the municipalities that qualify can carry out these demands through their municipal environmental secretariats. IPAM supports the action by promoting the strengthening of municipal environmental management, contributing to control, monitoring, environmental and economic planning, as well as creating interactions between farmers and municipal officials.
Bruna Balieiro, a research analyst at the institute, explains how the partnership worked. “In October 2023, we held a training session for technicians from the municipal environmental departments, with the aim of leveling up knowledge about the agenda and improving service to the region’s environmental regularization demands. Now, joint efforts have been organized in which the trained teams from the municipal environmental secretariats, together with the state team from SEMAS-PA, have been able to promote environmental regularization through the analysis and validation of the CAR, ensuring more sustainable management of natural resources,” he says.
Compensation for environmental services
In addition to validating the CAR, the action made it possible to recognize some landowners who meet the criteria of the Forest + Project, allowing them to be selected to receive compensation for the environmental services they provide, since to participate it is necessary: to have a rural property of up to 4 fiscal modules; to have the Rural Environmental Registry registered, analyzed and validated; to have no history of environmental infractions; to have at least one hectare of native vegetation; and, in cases of environmental liabilities, to have joined the Environmental Regularization program.
Producers who meet the requirements can be selected or registered to receive financial compensation for promoting the conservation of native vegetation and for contributing to the recovery of forests. This initiative aims to encourage rural landowners to comply with environmental regulations, thereby promoting the conservation and recovery of ecosystems.
The joint efforts to analyze and validate the CAR are activities supported by the Sustenta e Inova projects, which are funded by the European Union, and PDRSX 031/2013 – Strengthening Municipal Environment Departments to Comply with Policies in the Transamazon and Xingu Regions – which is funded by PDRSX. Both cover the municipalities of Pará: Placas, Uruará, Medicilândia, Brasil Novo, Altamira, Vitória do Xingu, Senador José Porfírio, Anapu and Pacajá.
*Intern under the supervision of Sara Leal