CONTEXTUALIZATION

The annual rate of deforestation in the Legal Amazon fell 77% in the period from 2004 to 2015, that is, from 27,772 km² to 6,207 km^². Some initiatives of the Brazilian government were inducers of this reduction, among which the Action Plan for the Prevention and Control of Deforestation in the Legal Amazon (PPCDAm) stands out. Organized civil society was also an important actor in this regard, and one of the institutions working on the subject is the Amazon Institute of People and the Environment (Imazon), with research activities and support for the formulation of public policies related to land use and the conservation of natural resources in the Amazon, notably in the state of Pará.

Imazon had an initial project supported by the Amazon Fund that was executed from 2011 to 2014. Its actions were implemented in the state of Pará, highlighting the mobilization of the governments of eleven municipalities and  the state government, as well as rural producers and their unions, to accelerate adherence to the Rural Environmental Registry (CAR), as well as the monitoring of deforestation through satellite images^¹.

Imazon is a research institute whose mission is to promote sustainable development in the Amazon through studies, support for the formulation of public policies, dissemination of information and professional training. The Institute was founded in 1990, and its headquarters are in Belém, in the state of Pará. In more than 30 years of existence, Imazon has published 648 technical papers, of which about a third were published as articles in international scientific journals.

¹ http://www.fundoamazonia.gov.br/pt/projeto/Gestao-Socioambiental-de-Municipios-do-Para/

THE PROJECT

The project "Strengthening Environmental Management in the Amazon" trained public officials of priority municipalities for actions to prevent and control deforestation in the Amazon biome, in the use of geotechnology and forest monitoring. Technical assistance was also provided to these municipalities to improve their environmental management.

A diagnosis of the land situation in the states of Amazonas, Mato Grosso, Pará and Rondônia was prepared, in order to support the formulation of public policies that allow progress in land regularization, in addition to promoting greater transparency to the activities carried out in this theme. The project also worked to strengthen the management of state Conservation Units (UCs) in Calha Norte of Pará.

INTERVENTION LOGIC

The project is part of the "Monitoring and Control" (2), "Territorial Planning" (3) and "Science, Innovation and Economic Instruments" (4) components of the Amazon Fund Logical Framework.

Its direct effects were defined as follows: (i) municipal environmental agencies structured and modernized in the states of Amazonas, Mato Grosso, Pará and Rondônia; (ii) expanded access of rural producers to the environmental regularization of their properties in municipalities in the states of Amazonas, Mato Grosso, Pará and Rondônia; (iii) consolidated management of the Faro, Trombetas and Paru State Forests in the state of Pará; (iv) and knowledge and technologies aimed at monitoring, control and  spatial planning produced and disseminated in the states of Amazonas, Mato Grosso, Pará and Rondônia.

Through actions aimed at improving municipal environmental management, transparency of land regularization and the consolidation of state UCs, the project aimed to contribute to the general objective of the Amazon Fund to "reduce deforestation with sustainable development in Legal Amazonia".

Click on the following image to view its objectives tree, that is, how the project's outputs and linked to the expected outcomes and impact.

ACTIVITIES CONDUCTED

The project was implemented at three geographic levels: (i) municipal level – referring to actions aimed at improving municipal environmental management, covering 38 municipalities that in 2015 were part of the MMA list of priority municipalities for actions to prevent, monitor and control deforestation; (ii) state level – referring to actions aimed at transparency of land regularization; and (iii) regional level – referring to actions to consolidate state UCs of Calha Norte in Pará, within the scope of a mosaic of protected areas that encompass seven municipalities.

The main activities carried out by the project are highlighted below. The environmental management systems of 45³ municipalities in the states of Amazonas, Mato Grosso, Pará and Rondônia were evaluated and diagnoses⁴ of these municipalities in the land, deforestation and rural environmental registration (car) aspects were developed in the Portal "Strengthening Environmental Management in the Amazon".

Technical workshops were held to strengthen municipal environmental management, based on the evaluation of environmental regulatory frameworks and state resolutions on the decentralization of this management. 

The project also held the seminars called “Environmental Embargo: Procedures and Opportunities for the Adequacy of Embargoed Areas ", with the participation of 66 people. This seminar aimed to broaden the understanding of the environmental embargo on rural properties, with emphasis on the work of the municipal environmental agency. A seminar called "Environmental Management: a decade of learning and challenges" was held, with the participation of 151 individuals. Both of these seminars were held in Belém, in the state of Pará.

A third seminar was held on the theme of protected area management, called “1st Meeting of Community Environmental Agents of Northern Pará”, in the municipality of Oriximiná, in the state of Pará.

In order to support the review of the environmental regulatory frameworks of 33 municipalities in the states of Amazonas, Mato Grosso, Pará and Rondônia, the municipalities' compliance with the requirements for the practice of decentralized environmental management was analyzed, as well as two workshops were organized with the municipalities interested in returning these analyses. This project action was inserted in the context of Complementary Law No. 140/2011, which established the hypotheses in which municipalities have the competence to promote the environmental licensing of activities or enterprises that cause or may cause environmental impact at the local level.

Six geotechnology training courses applied to environmental management were also carried out, two field deforestation verification training and three field inspection training, training technicians from institutions that work in priority municipalities for deforestation monitoring and control actions in the states of Amazonas, Mato Grosso, Pará and Rondônia.

With the support of the project, several publications were prepared on the relationship between the lack of ownership of rural properties and deforestation, as well as the book “Transparency of State Land Agencies in the Legal Amazon”^³. In this book, the results of the evaluation promoted by the project on whether state land agencies in eight of the nine states of the Brazilian Amazon meet the Access to Information Law (Lai) in active transparency (when data disclosure should occur regardless of request) and passive transparency (when the agency meets requests for information) were presented. It is worth clarifying that the state of Rondônia was not evaluated, since the action for rural land regularization in its territory is primarily of the federal government.

In order to contribute to the expansion of the transparency of state land agencies, as one of the appendices of this book, a "Term of Reference for Active Transparency of State Land Agency" was prepared, which can be used by these agencies in their processes of improving their management. 

To strengthen the management of state UCs in the Northern Trough of Pará, 166 volunteer environmental agents were trained to carry out monitoring and surveillance activities. To promote joint actions for the management of protected areas of Calha Norte, two plans for the protection of the territory (with partial support from the project) were prepared, one of integrated actions between the Chico Mendes Institute for Biodiversity Conservation (ICMBio) and the Institute for Forest Development and Biodiversity of the State of Pará (Ideflor-Bio) and the other with integrated actions between the municipalities that make up the territory.

The area called Calha Norte of Pará has the largest forest mass of tropical protected areas in the world, located on the left bank of the Amazon River, in the state of Pará. It gathers a continuous mosaic of indigenous lands (TIs), federal UCs, state UCs and quilombola lands⁵.

Finally, the project contributed to the realization of a seminar whose objective was to enable a greater rapprochement between environmental managers in the region, namely: the "First Meeting of the Environment Secretaries of the Northern Trough", held in the municipality of Óbidos, also in the state of Pará.

¹ The set of 45 municipalities encompasses the 38 priority municipalities for actions to prevent, monitor and control deforestation in the states of Amazonas, Mato Grosso, Pará and Rondônia, as well as the seven municipalities in which the protected areas of Calha Norte of Pará are located.
² See data portal: https://gestaoambiental.org.br
³ https://imazon.org.br/publicacoes/transparencia-de-orgaos-fundiarios-na-amazonia-legal/#:~:text=A%20transpar%C3%AAncia%20nas%20a%C3%A7%C3%B5es%20dos,and%20property%20de%20im%C3%B3veis%20rurais.
⁴ Law No. 12.527, of 11.18.2011
⁵ Quilombos consist of communities formed by descendants of escaped slaves before the abolition of slavery in Brazil in 1888.

Indicators of efficacy and effectiveness

The project activities contributed to the results related to the components "Monitoring and Control" (2), "Territorial Planning" (3) and "Science, Innovation and Economic Instruments" (4) of the Amazon Fund Logical Framework.

Below are the results of some of the indicators agreed to monitor the expected direct effects.

• Number of municipal employees trained in geotechnology tools to improve environmental management and deforestation control (output indicator)
  Target: 152  | Result achieved: 263 (90 women and 173 men)

• Number of municipal employees trained in participatory mapping methodology for purposes of rural environmental registration (output indicator)
  Target: 76  | Result achieved: 176 (60 women and 116 men)

• Number of rural properties registered in the CAR (outcome indicator)
  Target: not defined  | Result achieved: from 72,200 (2015) to 121,708 (2019)

• Area of rural properties registered in the CAR (outcome indicator)
  Target: 80% of the area registered in the CAR| Result achieved: 84% of the registerable area

• Number of volunteer environmental agents trained and specified by gender (output indicator)
  Target: 30  | Result achieved: 166 (72 women and 94 men)

• Extent of protected areas with strengthened environmental management and/or with the control of their strengthened territory (outcome indicator)
  Target: 7.6 million ha  | Result achieved: 22 million hectares

• Number of scientific, pedagogical or informative publications (outcome indicator)
  Target: 9 | Result achieved: 23

The measurements of the agreed indicators show that all expected values were exceeded.

Institutional and administrative aspects       

For the execution of the project, Technical Cooperation Agreements (TCAs) were signed with the governments of 24 municipalities, in the states of Amazonas, Pará, Mato Grosso and Rondônia, aiming at the implementation of actions to promote the strengthening of municipal environmental management.

An ACT was also signed with the Instituto de Terras do Pará (Iterpa), with the intervention of the following state government departments: State Secretariat for Agricultural and Fisheries Development – Sedap, State Secretariat for Economic Development, Mining and Energy (Sedeme); and State Secretariat for Environment and Sustainability – Semas. This ACT had as its object the elaboration and implementation of the Rural Land Registry (CARF) to improve the process of land regularization of ITERPA in areas under the jurisdiction of the government of the state of Pará.

An ACT was also signed with the Institute of Forest Development and Biodiversity of the State of Pará – Ideflor-bio, in addition to Imazon, civil society organizations, namely: International Conservation of Brazil (CI Brazil); Amazon Conservation Team (Ecam); Institute for Indigenous Research and Training (Iepé); Tropical Forest Institute (IFT); and Institute for Forest and Agricultural Management and Certification (Imaflora). This ACT aimed to develop the thematic components related to the management and monitoring of state UCs in Pará, through technical and scientific support.

With the Secretary of State for the Environment of the State of Amazonas, an ACT was also signed with the purpose of implementing the Sustainable Municipalities Program (MS Amazonas), through joint training actions, technical advice, information exchange and technology transfer applied to environmental management.

In addition to these Acts, informal partnerships were established with the Institute of Technical Assistance and Rural Extension (Emater) and with the Municipal Secretariats of Environment of Oriximiná, Óbidos and Monte Alegre, as well as with the Municipal Secretariat of Agriculture of Oriximiná, all in the state of Pará, which supported the process of training and monitoring the activities of voluntary environmental agents in these respective municipalities.

Risks and lessons learned

In the actions aimed at strengthening the environmental management of priority municipalities, different strategies and levels of implementation of national public policies regarding the decentralization of environmental management and monitoring and control of deforestation were identified. 

In the state of Amazonas there was great synergy between the agenda of the project and that of the Sustainable Municipalities Program – MS Amazonas, with priority actions benefiting seven municipalities in the south of the state, which were also incorporated into the project  that initially planned to act only in Boca do Acre and Lábrea. 

In the state of Pará, due to the history of decentralization of state management to the municipalities, the adherence of the project was also high. In Rondônia, decentralization seemed more incipient, but the four target municipalities joined the project.  In the state of Mato Grosso, the period of implementation of the project coincided with restructuring in the state secretariat and with the discussion on strategies for decentralization of environmental management. In this context, the project was joined by five municipalities in Mato Grosso.

The provision of environmental information to municipal managers was an important point of the project, since some municipalities lacked information and resources to understand their own territory in land and protected areas.

In the actions related to the land theme, it was verified that the theme of transparency remains challenging, because it depends on the progress in the organization of the databases of the land agencies and because it demands the prioritization of this activity by its managers. In this sense, there is a risk that many states will continue with little progress on this agenda if there is no greater demand from society and its control bodies.

A lesson learned from the partnership with the Instituto de Terras do Pará was the importance of having used a participatory process (with its employees) to diagnose the points to be improved in the land regularization procedures, as well as the collective construction of a project for information management software in the agency.

Regarding the Community Environmental Agents Program, it was found that it aroused broad adherence and engagement of the communities. 

Sustainability of results

The people who received training through the project – environmental managers and technicians, leaders and community entrepreneurs – reside and work in the region.  It is understood that the knowledge acquired will continue to be used, replicated and generate favorable socio-environmental impacts even after the completion of the project.

The publications generated, in addition to disseminating results, recorded the experiences and ways to update this information, thus allowing the continuity of its effects.

Finally, the project's implementation strategy and the nature of its products and services favor the sustainability of its results. The project was implemented in cooperation with governmental and non-governmental institutions that are part of the governance structure of the territories or that operate consistently in the region, so that the inputs generated by the project and appropriated by this contingent of organizations will persist being used, shared and generating impacts after its termination.