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Project

Training to Conserve

Amazon Conservation Team (Ecam)

Project official website
Total project value
R$ 1,404,360.67
Total support amount
US$ 588,337.11
organization type
Third Sector
Themes
Conservation units
Location
Amapá
Axises
Land use planning
Concluded

Presentation

Objective

Train environmental agents and managers aiming to strengthen protected areas in the state of Amapá

Beneficiary

Managers and members of the management councils of the PAs and residents of these units and their surroundings

Territorial scope

Protected areas (PA) in the state of Amapá

Description

CONTEXTUALIZATION

Protected areas play a strategic role in reducing deforestation. However, managing these units throughout the Amazon is a great challenge given the size of their territories and the limited resources available for their conservation. In Amapá, a state in which these units occupy 62% of the territory, this issue has particular relevance.

The PAs of the state of Amapá are federal, state, and municipal, both full protection and sustainable use. The basic objective of full protection PAs is to preserve nature and only the indirect use of its natural resources is allowed; on the other hand, the basic objective of sustainable use PAs is to make nature conservation compatible with the sustainable use of part of its natural resources.

Throughout its experience in projects with PAs, the Amazon Conservation Team (Ecam) identified, as one of the main deficiencies, the insufficient level of knowledge of environmental agents and unit managers on topics such as community relations, communication, using tools for PA management planning, producing information, as well as monitoring and evaluating actions under this theme.

THE PROJECT

The project aimed to train environmental agents and managers to consolidate the manage protected areas in the state of Amapá. To this end, training courses and training of environmental agents and park rangers aimed at a broad audience and, specifically, for managers and members of the management councils of the units, advanced courses
focused on improving the implementation of public policies in the PAs.

The organization responsible for executing the project was Ecam, a civil society organization of public interest (Oscip) created in 2002 and which works with indigenous peoples and traditional communities, aiming to conserve the environment and the sustainable management of their territories. Ecam carries out projects in the states of Amapá, Amazonas, Rondônia, Roraima, and Pará.

To support it in defining the themes to be taught, in the dissemination to the interested public and to make the courses possible, Ecam counted on its partnership with ICMBio, Universidade Federal do Amapá (Unifap), the State Environmental Department of Amapá (Sema-AP), and the State Forestry Institute of Amapá (IEF).

INTERVENTION LOGIC

The project is part of the “Territorial Planning” component (3) of the Amazon Fund Logical Framework. Its direct effect was defined as: “Improved management of federal and state PAs in the state of Amapá.”

Training environmental agents and managers of the PAs that protect the units contributes to reduce the loss of vegetation coverage in these protected areas and, therefore, to the general objective of the Amazon Fund of “reducing deforestation with sustainable development in the Amazon.”

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.

_objectives-tree

 

Evolution

Date of approval 09.23.2014
Date of the contract 12.02.2014
Date of conclusion 12.31.2021
Disbursement period 36 months (from the date the contract was signed)
approval
09.23.2014
award
12.02.2014
conclusion
12.31.2021

Disbursement

date amount
1º disbursements 05.14.2015 R$330,000.00
2º disbursements 08.15.2016 R$597,057.54
3º disbursements 09.19.2017 R$504,039.56
4º disbursements 11.19.2021 -R$26,736.43
Total amount disbursed R$1,404,360.67

Total amount disbursed in relation to the Amazon Fund’s support

100%

ACTIVITIES CONDUCTED 

The project was structured with the objective of promoting, through formal training actions, efficiency in the management of PAs and reducing the lack of human resources trained for this purpose.

The actions were divided into two categories. The first one aimed at training the general public according to the criteria of representativeness of the PAs present in the public notices through six editions of training courses for environmental agents and park rangers, while the second one consisted of two advanced courses (called master courses) for decision makers, experienced unit managers and environmental agents who stood out in the training of the training module for environmental agents.

The target audience for the six environmental agent courses were people who work in the protection and management of PAs, which can be from public or private institutions and even residents of the units and their vicinity. Training covered a wide scope of topics, such as basic cartography, notions of GPS, water rescue, environmental legislation, climate change, surveillance practice, fire prevention, and firefighting, among others.

Regarding the master course aimed at managers and members of the management councils of the PA, two editions were carried out, each lasting 12 days. The contents covered involved theoretical and practical aspects, which included monitoring, by dividing the classes into working groups, of the selected territories of the Environmental Protection Area (APA) of Fazendinha, Araguari, Cunani, Amapá Forests, Mapinguari, Parna do Tumucumaque, Rebio do Lago Piratuba, and Rebio Parazinho.

Each group was composed of at least one civil servant (public official) of the PA but was mostly community members who support the actions in the aforementioned territories. In the end, the students developed seven strategic plans containing the structuring of actions to solve perceived problems in their units, which range from practicing environmental education, such as awareness for garbage collection, to the preservation of vulnerable species.

The other activities carried out were related to the dissemination of the project and its results. As enrollment to participate in the training was public, it was necessary to make the public notices and other relevant information for each edition of the project available on Ecam´s website. In addition, reports by TV Amapá’s journalism team and a video about the project on YouTube were produced and dissemination on social media¹.

With support from the Amazon Fund, a publication was also produced on the project entitled: Perspectives and dialogues for territorial management: training community park rangers to conserve protected areas.²

¹ Information on the project can also be found at http://ecam.org.br/projetos-sociais/.

² Available at: http://www.fundoamazonia.gov.br/export/sites/default/pt/.galleries/documentos/acervo-projetoscartilhas-outros/Ecam-Olhares-Dialogos-Gestao-livro.pdf.

Final Evaluation

Result and impact indicators

The project activities contributed to the results related to the “Territorial Planning” component (3) of the Amazon Fund Logical Framework.

Direct effect 3.1 – “Improved management of federal and state protected areas (PA) in the state of Amapá.”

The main indicators used to monitor this objective were:

  • Number of individuals trained in activities related to the management of public forests and protected areas – environmental agent courses – specified by gender (output indicator)
    Target: 150 | Final Result: 123 (82.0% of the target – 36 women and 87 men)
  • Number of individuals trained in activities related to the management of public forests and protected areas – master courses – specified by gender (output indicator)
    Target: 50 | Final Result: 38 (76% of the target – 15 women and 23 men)
  • Number of individuals trained in activities related to the management of public forests and protected areas effectively using the knowledge acquired – environmental agent courses and master courses – specified by gender (outcome indicator)
    Target: 200 | Final Result: 161 (80.5% of the target – 51 women and 110 men)

The training goals were set as a parameter for the expected results and were important in the project planning process. Although the classes were composed through public selection processes, there were requirements imposed on the  training candidates in the public notices and the percentage goals achieved between 75% and 80% can be considered satisfactory.

  • Extent of protected areas with strengthened environmental management and/or with the control of their strengthened territory
    Target: 18.7 million ha | Final result: 8.9 million ha (48% of the target)

Regarding the territorial coverage of the PAs to which the students selected for the training actions should be linked, the goal was below expectations. This is explained by the demands of the public selection, in which it was not possible to ensure that all state PAs had representatives.

The following table shows the evolution of deforestation in the last seven years in the areas affected by the project. It is observed that Amapá, in comparison with other states of the Brazilian Amazon, has the lowest deforestation rates, which is explained, in part, by the relevant area of PAs in relation to the total area of the territory.

 

2014

2015

2016

2017

2018

2019

2020

Deforestation in Federal and State CUs in Amapá

6.62

4.85

3.07

5.25

7.33

7.45

3.43

Source: http://www.dpi.inpe.br/prodesdigital/prodesuc.php

The average deforestation verified in federal and state PAs in the state of Amapá was approximately 5.2 km²/year, in the period between 2015 and 2020, compared to the project’s baseline of 6.6 km²/year in 2014. The constant improvement of this indicator depends on the continuity of projects aimed at the protection and sustainable use of the forest, combined with the permanent involvement of the communities and local representative entities.

Institutional and administrative aspects

Throughout the execution of the project, Ecam was able to attract and mobilize several partners in addition to those previously mentioned, highlighting the International Federation of Park Keepers (FIG), the Brazilian Association of Park Keepers (ABG), the Institute of Scientific and Ecological Research of Amapá (Iepa), the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), and Unifap, which issued certificates to students who completed the courses taught by the project.

The broad programmatic content of the courses favored the articulation of these partnerships and represented an opportunity to build contact and knowledge networks for the participants.

Regarding the administrative aspects, the investments of the project in the items associated with communication deserve to be highlighted, allowing Ecam to carry out distance learning modules provided for in the master courses for managers.

Risks and lessons learned

The project was executed in a phased manner in six courses, which allowed Ecam to make adjustments to enhance the expected results. When forming the first classes, for example, it was identified that the participation of women in response to the public notices was low. This fact ended up being the subject of a specific debate module in the third class, which was asked to disclose the public notice to the female public of their localities after returning to their communities. This action resulted in a significant increase in the participation of women in subsequent classes.

Another lesson learned for future projects concerns territorial coverage. It is desirable to think about selection rules that contemplate the participation and goal of qualified agents for all PAs in the state. This could be done by adapting the public notices that consider the particularities of each region surrounding the protected areas and also by mapping potential candidates, adjusting the requirements and contents to be addressed in the courses.

Sustainability of results

The courses made it possible to renew and strengthen the network of park rangers in the state of Amapá, which represents an important gain in PA conservation. It should be noted that the group supported by the project integrated a network of approximately 450 park rangers trained in the state of Amapá throughout previous editions of the Training to Conserve project.

After the training, the participants acted in several voluntary actions in several municipalities of the state, which confirmed the recognition of their role as environmental agents in the region, in addition to operating in the region as park rangers, for example, in the Arinaldo Gomes Barreto Amazon Biopark, in Macapá.

Finally, it is worth highlighting the indirect effects of the project and the incorporation of its contents in regional public policy initiatives, such as: (i) adopting the curriculum developed by the project as one of the hiring criteria for new PAs Brigade members by ICMBio; (ii) using the knowledge acquired in actions to generate income combined with awareness about biodiversity conservation, of which the structuring of an ecotourism business model in the municipality of Serra do Navio (AP) by a trained student in the project is an example; and (iii) the institutional strengthening of the Association of Park Keepers of Amapá (AGPA), which had relevant participation from project students in preparing the institutional video from the training in the audiovisual workshops that integrated the content of the courses¹.

¹ Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWy1ZcJ18Mk.

Collection

In this area we offer some PDF files with the main publications generated by the project. Click the filename to start the download.