This Sunday, June 17, the Sustainable Amazonas Foundation promoted, in a partnership with the Amazonas Preservation and Sustainable Development Institute (Instituto de Conservação e Desenvolvimento Sustentável do Amazonas – IDESAM) the event “South-South Cooperation and lessons learned on Payment for Environmental Services (PES)”, part of Rio+20’s side-events.

The seminar was opened to the public to show the civil society the successful experiences accomplished by the Forest Fund, the largest Payment for Environmental Services (PES) program in the world. Besides that, it talked about the partnership that the Foundation has with Mozambique’s Federal Government in the exchange of experiences on sustainable production.

The program, created in 2007, encourages the rural producers to protect the forest, use its natural resources consciously and teaches how production can be sustainable. The idea is simple: to pay the producer to preserve the forest, reverting the logic of predatory exploration: the more forests are preserved, the more the farmers will gain. 

Besides direct payment, the program also encourages the creation of cooperatives, searches for certifications for the products, teaches sustainable production practices, helps the rural communities in the development of local production, provides training and buys equipment. 

“The Payment for Environmental Services is a fundamental part of the new economy. We need to value these actions from rural producers and the subsequent preservation of our natural resources. This question is at the core of the green economy.  Every PES experience should be followed with interest by society because it is through these mechanisms that we will make our resources withstand”, praises João Pezza, techno-scientific superintendent of Sustainable Amazonas Foundation.

Understand how the Forest Fund works

The program was initially created by the Amazonas State Government, at the end of 2007, to increment the work of resident families of the State Preservation Units and nowadays is managed by the Sustainable Amazonas Foundation, with the slogan “Making forests worth more standing than felled”.

The Forest Fund is subdivided in four projects:

• Income Forest Fund (R$ 350 per family/year)
• Social Forest Fund (R$ 350 per family/year)
• Forest Fund Association (R$ 60 per family/year)
• Family Forest Fund (R$ 600 per family/year)

In total, each family gets a benefit of R$ 1.360 per year. The funds for the project come from two places: one is the Sustainable Amazonas Foundation itself and the other is the Amazonia Fund.

To support the rural producers, it was created, in 2008, a R$ 60 million fund, financed by the Amazonas State Government, Bradesco Bank and the Coca-Cola group (each of these entities donated R$ 20 million). This fund finances the Familiar Forest Fund, in which each participant family gets R$ 50 a month to preserve the forest. 

However, the main tools of the program are the Income Forest Fund and the Social Forest Fund, in which the rural producers decide amongst themselves where the money will be invested. Then each of the registered families gets R$ 350, to be used in benefits for the community, such as buying equipment and the improvement of transportation and sanitation.

“The important thing is that rural producers decide where they want to invest the money. The amount is not deposited in their bank accounts, it is given as benefits to the community, such as buying equipment, for example”, explains Pezza.

These projects get funds from the Amazonia Fund, created by the Federal Government and managed by ‘Banco Nacional do Desenvolvimento Econômico e Social’, BNDES (the National Bank for Economic and Social Development). The Forest Fund was approved by BNDES to receive the annual assistance that were then given to the registered families.

Environmental Education

The program also offers environmental education through the Preservation and Sustainability Nuclei (Núcleos de Conservação e Sustentabilidade - NCS), which are different education centers that focus on the socio-environmental reality of the deep Amazonia. Among the actions are also the improvements on transportation, health and communication to the so-called “Forest Guardians”, with funds from the Amazonia Fund.

There were already more than 8 thousand families registered in the Forest Fund this year until February, and more than 7 thousand families benefited from it, almost 32 thousand people. 

Find out more about the Forest Fund