Acre, Brazil: Supporting Progress to accelerate change
Alto Acre region, in Acre State, Brazil, achieved notoriety in the 1970s, when local rubber tree tappers clashed with large outside farming and ranching interests over the conversion of forests into pasture land. It was the catalyst needed for the Government of Brazil to establish Extractive Reserves managed by local communities. Since then, over 100 million hectares of forests in Brazil are under some kind of community ownership and/or management arrangement.
Acre has been developing its productive capacity in the past few years. The State government has invested in forest based processing plants and industries which have been managed by local cooperatives or by private enterprises. In the Brazilian nuts productive chain, the two processing plants implemented by the government and managed by COOPERACRE have already resulted in family income increasing by 20%. However, the challenge to add value locally to Acre’s forest products and further increase the income of local families, needs support.
Stakeholders in Acre are convening a workshop in July 2009 as the start of a process to jointly address implementation of State policies and programmes related to restoration.
Restoration is good business in Brazil
The participation of businesses such as pulp, paper and timber companies is vital to many forest landscape restoration schemes; in some cases, major western corporations are seeing the value of taking the initiative.
For example, Veracel is a partnership between two international pulp and paper companies – Aracruz Celulose of Brazil and Stora Enso of Finland – that operates several forest restoration sites in the Mata Atlântica region of Brazil. Since 1994, the partnership has worked with Instituto BioAtlâtlantica and Conservation International to conserve, restore and reconnect fragments of this important ecosystem.
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