Milion dolarů pro chráněná území v Amazonii

24.8.2004
MANAUS [WWF]
Autor: Marco Antonio Gonçalves, tel: +556 136 474 86

Brazil's Amazonas State Government Office for the Environment and Sustainable Development (SDS) and WWF-Brazil today signed a technical cooperation agreement through which WWF will invest approximately R$3,150,000 (around US$1 million) over three years to strengthen the state's protected areas system.

"Due to its size and the degree of conservation of its forest amd other vegetation, Amazonas state is crucial for WWF-Brazil’s effort to protect representative areas of the Amazon’s biodiversity", says Denise Hamú, CEO of WWF-Brazil.

Amazonas state covers 1.5 million km2 and includes 13 different ecoregions of the Amazon biome. Through a sustainable development policy, the Amazonas state government is playing an important role in the promotion of responsible use of natural resources and biodiversity conservation in the Brazilian Amazon.

One highlight of the last two years has been the creation of 4.21 million hectares of new protected areas of various categories. These include 4,161,372 hectares of sustainable use areas (reserves and state forests) and 55,851 hectares of strict use protected areasl (state parks). At the same time, less than 3 per cent of the state’s forest cover was destroyed.

The cooperation agreement was signed by Virgilio Viana, the state Secretary of the Environment, and by WWF-Brazil’s Denise Hamú. It confirms the commitment of the Amazonas State government to the ARPA Programme, a Brazilian federal government initiative which is technically and financially supported by WWF and the World Bank, among other organizations.

The funds will go to activities related to the creation and management of state protected areas, including:
• biological, social, and economic studies to define prioritary areas for the creation of protected areas
• public hearings, consultations and/or discussions with the participation of civil society, aiming at the creation of protected areas
• management plans for the implementation of existing protected areas
• implementation of protected areas management committees
• environmental education activities and capacity building of environmental staff and social leadership for selected communities within protected areas and in their surroundings
• conflict identification and management concerning the use of natural resources, aiming towards the establishment of agreements between opposing interests, for instance, fishing agreements.

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