The Brazilian rEDD sTraTegy - mma.gov.br · José Alencar Gomes da Silva Vice-president Ministry of...

Copenhagen, DeCember 2009

How the country has achieved major deforestation reduction in the Amazon

15th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework

Convention on Climate Change

The Brazilian rEDD sTraTegy

Foreword

Brazilian society is committed to reducing deforestation in the Amazon. And the federal government does its part, through initiatives that address the root cause of this long-standing problem. The federal government promotes the establishment of protected areas, creating green barriers against deforestation; demarcates indig-enous lands; uses new technology and satellite images to analyze, prevent and control illegal for-est cutting; invests in intelligence and in joint in-spection and enforcement operations with state governments; encourages sustainable manage-ment of public forests; legalizes squatters who occupy uncontested federal lands in a peaceful manner, in compliance with the environmental legislation; and, above all, it has initiated a fruit-ful cooperation between state and local govern-ments, so as to promote the transition of local economies towards sustainability.

These actions are in place because of the strong will of the President of the Republic. The presidential determination is outlined in the Ac-tion Plan for Prevention and Control of Defores-tation in the Amazon - the PPCDAm, which pro-vides for a consistent and integrated arrange-ment. Under the coordination of Minister Chief of Staff of the Presidency, the Plan includes 13 ministries and twenty agencies. After five years of implementation, the results can be measured by constant decline of deforestation rates. Ac-cording to recent estimates, deforestation has fallen from 27.4 square kilometers in 2004, to 7 thousand square kilometers in 2009.

But even such a reduction is not enough. We must move forward. And, in order to do that we need more investments in economic options that keep the forest standing, land reclaiming, increased productivity of areas already occu-pied, creation of sustainable jobs, biotechnol-ogy, value-added products for the Amazonian market. Therefore, the PPCDAm’s new focus is to foster sustainable productive activities, establish

agreements with economic sectors, state and local governments, while also concentrating on environmental inspection and control, and land use planning. And we are working on it, either through the Arco Verde Operation, which led the Brazilian Government through the 43 munici-palities with the highest deforestation rates, or through sector agreements between the Min-istry of Environment and soybean and timber exporters, or through the Amazon Fund, whose first projects are being approved.

This publication provides an overview of gov-ernment action against deforestation and shows that in addition to preventing forest cutting in the Amazon, we are also working to extend our initiatives to the savannas, such as the Cerrado, Pantanal and Caatinga biomes.

The good results obtained so far endorse Bra-zil’s bold proposal for a voluntary reduction of up to 38.9% of greenhouse gas emissions by 2020, based mainly on reducing deforestation in the Amazon and savannas in five-year periods. It will be a contribution to a cooler planet. We are sure that it is possible, because we have the engage-ment of Brazilian society. However, we need fur-ther international support for reduced emissions to translate into improved quality of life of Ama-zon populations and so that we can continue to move forward.

Carlos Minc Minister of State for the Environment

Federative Republic of Brazil

Luiz Inácio Lula da SilvaPresident

José Alencar Gomes da SilvaVice-president

Ministry of Environment

Carlos MincMinister

Izabella Teixeira Executive Secretary

Mauro Oliveira PiresDirector of the Department for Policies Against Deforestation

Nazaré SoaresProject Manager of the Department for Policies Against Deforestation

Roberto Messias Franco President of the Brazilian Institute for the Environment and Renewable Natural Resources (Ibama)

Rômulo Barreto MelloPresident of the Chico Mendes Institute for Biodiversity Conservation (ICMBio)

Antônio Carlos HummelDirector of the Brazilian Forest Service (SFB)

Research and writing: Marco Antonio GonçalvesCoordination: Mauro Oliveira Pires (Ministry of Environment) and Johannes Scholl (GTZ)Maps: Walda Veloso (Ministry of Environment)Translation: Cristiane Feitosa e Patricia OzorioGraphic project: Milena HernándezPrinting: Semear Editora GráficaCollaborators: INPE: Dalton de Morrison Valeriano / GTZ: Johannes Scholl and Monika Röper/ Ministry of Environment: Anael Aymoré Jacob, Daniela Silva, Josana de Lima Esser, Juliana Simões, Leandro Valentim, Paulo Guilherme Cabral, Raquel Resende, Rodrigo Afonso Guimarães, Sérgio Cortizo / Geoprocessing consultancy: Marcos Reis Rosa

Cover photo: GTZ Archive

This publication was supported by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) and the German

Technical Cooperation Agency (GTZ)

Contents

1. The Brazilian policy to reduce deforestation and forest degradation in the Amazon

2. The Brazilian Amazon today

3. Control and prevention of deforestation in the Amazon

4. The National Plan on Climate Change

5. The Amazon Fund: facility to finance deforestation reduction

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The Brazilian rEDD strategy

8 | 15th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change

Between 2004 and 2009, the Brazilian gov-ernment put in place a set of measures to reduce deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon, which, in turn, allowed for a reduction of greenhouse gas emissions derived from land-use change. Based on the successful results achieved by such mea-sures, Brazil has created a fund to raise resources to finance forest conservation initiatives and has established a voluntary target of 80% deforesta-tion reduction by 2020.

Brazil is an emerging economy, with a signifi-cant share of its energy deriving from renewable sources (hydroelectricity and biomass). Accord-ing to preliminary data of the second national emissions inventory, containing data on 2005, 57.5% of the country’s emissions – equivalent to 1.26 billion tons of CO2 equivalent (tCO2e) - arise from land use change and forests, which includes deforestation.

The policy to reduce emissions from defor-estation and forest degradation (REDD) is struc-tured on three pillars, managed in an integrated manner, and described below.

• Setting deforestation reduction targets to be achieved by 2020

In December 2008, the Brazilian government launched the National Plan on Climate Change (PNMC), which summarizes actions in the areas of mitigation, adaptation, research and develop-

1. The Brazilian strategy to reduce deforestation and forest degradation in the Amazon

Sheltering the planet’s largest tropical rainforest, Brazil has decided to reduce deforestation in the Amazon by 80% by 2020. Moreover, in the last five years, the country achieved a substantial reduction of illegal logging in the region and created a fund to finance REDD activities, demonstrating its determination to contribute to global climate change mitigation efforts

Considered the most comprehensive national program for conservation of tropical forests, the Brazilian initiative was praised by experts in the August 2009 issue of Nature magazine.


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ment, education, training and communication, and outlines the implementation of tools need-ed to address climate change nationwide.

In order to improve the PNMC’s effectiveness, in November 2009, the Brazilian government announced a voluntary target of 36.1%-38.9% reduction of total greenhouse gas emissions by 2020, in a “business as usual” scenario, equivalent to a reduction ranging from 975 million to 1.052 billion tCO2e. Since most of this reduction is to be achieved by containing forest clearing, Brazil established as a target to reduce deforestation rates in the Amazon by 80%, and in the Cerrado by 40% in the same period.

In the case of the Amazon, taking as a baseline the average deforestation rate for the 1996-2005 period, i.e. 19.6 thousand km2, five-year targets were set to reduce Amazon forest cutting by 42%. The reduction projected for the first period (2006-2010) should be achieved quite easily, since in the last five years, deforestation rates in the region declined steadily until reaching, in 2009, the low-est figure in history – from 27.7 thousand km2 to 7 thousand km2, a 75% decrease. With such figures, Brazil has avoided the emission of around 2,661 million tCO2e, considering the average of 100 tC per hectare of intact forest.

For further information about the proposed 80%-reduction target, please read Chapter 4 - The National Plan on Climate Change (page 27).

• Integrated action for deforesta-tion control and prevention

The backbone of the Brazilian REDD policy, described in detail in this publication, is the Ac-tion Plan for Prevention and Control of Defores-tation in the Amazon (PPCDAm). Established in early 2004, this program integrates forest cover monitoring, land use planning and land titling, inspection and enforcement, and promotion of sustainable use of natural resources, involving 13 ministries in the implementation of its initiatives. Recently, states and municipalities in the Ama-zon joined this effort, increasing the PPCDAm’s potential for success.

Remote sensing systems developed in the country to monitor deforestation in the Amazon are key elements to guide the Program’s actions. Currently, four systems monitor forest cover sta-tus at different time and space scales in an area of 5 million km2 – i.e., larger than the European Union.

These systems are deployed in an integrated manner and allow public authorities to, on the one hand, monitor the spatial dynamics of de-forestation, issuing regular warnings to agen-cies in charge of enforcement operations on the ground (Deter System), and on the other, to pro-vide yearly deforestation data (Prodes System). Monitoring of the region is complemented by

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the Degrad System, which keeps track of forest degradation processes and indicates clear fell-ing trends, and the Detex System, developed to monitor the impact of timber activities on public forests operated under concession schemes.

These monitoring systems are internation-ally renowned for their efficiency and enable the provision of reliable, reportable and measurable data on the implementation of the country’s commitments for reduction of emissions from deforestation and environmental degradation.

Even though the primary focus of such moni-toring systems is the protection of the Amazon forest, they are being adopted in other Brazilian biomes, such as the aforementioned Cerrado. For further information on the PPCDAm, please read Chapter 3 - Control and prevention of deforesta-tion in the Amazon (page 11).

• The Amazon Fund: facility to fi-nance deforestation reduction

The implementation of measures to curb deforestation in the Amazon rainforest and the support to initiatives that promote its sustain-

able use require high financial input. Therefore, the Brazilian strategy to control deforestation and maintain environmental services provided by the forest is complemented by the Amazon Fund, a financial mechanism established in Au-gust 2008 to support projects aimed at prevent-ing, monitoring and fighting deforestation and at conservation and sustainable use of the Ama-zon forest, in line with the PPCDAm.

The aim of the Amazon Fund is to use na-tional and international donations to finance initiatives that complement national efforts to reduce deforestation in the Amazon. The Fund has a steering committee composed of govern-ment agencies and civil society, responsible for defining guidelines and criteria for resource al-location, and a technical committee, comprising highly reputable experts with outstanding tech-nical and scientific knowledge, whose task is to demonstrate the effective reduction of carbon emissions from deforestation.

For details on the operation of the Amazon Fund, see Chapter 5 - Amazon Fund: facility to fi-nance the reduction of deforestation (page 29).

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The Brazilian Amazon region covers an area of 5,139,741 km2, officially termed the Legal Amazon, equivalent to 60% of the country’s total area. The region is larger than the territory of the European Union. It encompasses different eco-systems, with a predominance of dense tropical rainforest characterized by vast biodiversity, and provides irreplaceable environmental services.

Although most of its 24.7 million inhabitants live in urban areas, a significant number lives in rural areas, comprising farmers who emigrated to the region, and culturally diverse communi-ties, such as rubber tappers, indigenous peoples and other groups that rely on nature for their livelihoods.

Until the 1960s, the Brazilian Amazon economy was primarily based on extractivism. The main cit-ies were located on the banks of major rivers and the newly-built Belém-Brasília was the single road linking the region to other parts of the country. At that time, the regional population was estimated at five million people and only 2.5% of the Ama-zon forest cover had been removed.

In the following decades, government invest-ments in the region substantially altered the re-gion’s social and economic features. New roads were opened and colonization centers were set up, increasing the flow of people and goods. An industrial complex and large mining projects were established, supplying part of the global demand for raw materials such as iron and steel, which re-quired major infrastructure works. The Amazon

also began to supply timber to the domestic mar-ket, and in the last 10 years it has become the fast-est growing region in the country for grain and meat production, mainly for exportation.

In 1995, the historical deforestation record: 29,000 km2

On the one hand, the fast pace of occupation in the region brought about economic growth; on the other, it generated social conflicts and led to indiscriminate forest clearing. In the late 1980s, deforestation in the Amazon emerged in the political agenda of the Brazilian government

2. Investments made along two decades have allowed the Amazon to join domestic and global markets as a provider of commodities such as ores, beef and grains. However, they have generated serious social conflicts and systematic increase of deforestation

The Brazilian Amazon today

The expansion of livestock-raising has become the main driver of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon in the last two decades

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as a matter of growing concern, requiring new measures to address the problem. In 1988, the National Institute for Space Research (INPE), a federal agency linked to the Ministry of Science and Technology, started to produce yearly esti-mates on deforestation in the Amazon.

However, the policies adopted at that time failed to contain the advancement of economic forces over the forest. In 1995, the historical yearly record of deforestation was registered (29 thou-sand km2), and in 2004, the second highest yearly rate ever (27.4 thousand km2) was registered.

The region has lost 18% of its forests

INPE’s data indicate that by 2008, the Brazilian Amazon had lost 713,226 km2 of its original forest cover, equivalent to 18% of the forest area in the region.

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the same time, it envisages integrated initia-tives targeting the different causes of econom-ic pressure over the forest, which also repre-sents a breakthrough as regards the approach to deal with the problem.

An assessment carried out by the Brazilian government on the reasons that led to defores-tation concluded that the main causes were:

• impunity of environmental offenders

• weakness of the region’s environmental agencies;

• expansion of livestock raising activities, with conversion of forest into pasture by large- and medium-sized producers;

• illegal occupation of non-allocated public land;

Increased deforestation rates in the Amazon between 2000 and 2003 led the Brazilian gov-ernment to change its strategy for tackling the issue. After eight months devoted to identifying the causes of increased forest cutting in the re-gion, in March 2004, the Action Plan for Preven-tion and Control of Deforestation in the Amazon (PPCDAm) was launched.

With the PPCDAm, the fight against de-forestation in the Brazilian Amazon began to engage, in an unprecedented manner, over a dozen ministries, rather than being seen as a specific issue to be addressed solely by the Ministry of Environment. The Program’s co-ordination was taken on by the Office of the Chief of Staff of the Presidency of the Republic, which conferred to the Program greater prom-inence in the government’s policy agenda. At

3. In 2004, the Brazilian government launched a new policy to reduce deforesta-tion in the Amazon, based on the implementation of integrated monitoring, en-forcement, environmental control and land use planning, involving joint initiati-ves carried out across several agencies. In just five years, the yearly deforestation rate in the region declined by 75%

Control and prevention of deforestation in the Amazon

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Yearly Deforestation in the Legal Amazon

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• poor procedures to verify the legitimacy of existing land titles;

• incipient sustainable economic activities.

The Plan’s initiatives and activities are or-ganized around three main themes: i) land and territorial planning; ii) environmental monitoring and control; and iii) promotion of sustainable productive activities. Its main ob-jectives are to:

• improve monitoring of the deforestation process, taking it from the regional to the local scale, so as to expedite the action of public authorities against offenders;

• increase the presence of public authorities in areas considered critical, a longstanding request of the most vulnerable sectors of the region’s society;

• address land speculation with public lands, a problem that is central to the advancement of economic powers over the forest;

The “arc of deforestation” in the Brazilian Amazon

In the Brazilian Amazon, the humid areas deep inland have the lowest population densities and the best preserved forests in the country, concentrating most of the existing forest carbon. The less humid areas, located around these forests, have been gradually occupied by farming activities and unmanaged forest exploitation.This part of the Amazon, easily observed in satellite images, constitutes the so-called “arc of deforestation”, and it is where the Brazilian government is focusing current efforts to reduce deforestation in the region.



• devise land use plans for municipalities with high deforestation rates, including land rights and proper assignment of the purpose of public lands, such as the establishment of protected areas;

• contain predatory logging while fostering productive activities that lead to forest conservation.

In the first three years, the implementation of these actions resulted in a cumulative decline of 58% of the yearly deforestation rate in the re-gion - in absolute numbers, a reduction from 27.7

thousand km2 (2004) to 11.6 thousand km2 (2007), equal to the 1991 rate, which had been the lowest recorded until that time. After a small rise of 4% in 2008, the deforested area plummeted, reaching 7 thousand km2 in 2009, according to INPE’s esti-mates. This is the lowest yearly rate registered since 1988 (see graph). Thus, Brazilian policies have pre-vented the emission of about 2661 million tCO2e between 2005 and 2009, if one considers the aver-age of 100 tC per hectare of intact forest.

The following chapters summarize the ac-tions that enabled the country to achieve these results.

3.1. Improving forest monitoring systems

In recent years, Brazil has invested in the development of systems to monitor de-forestation at different scales. They are internationally renowned and are able to provide reliable and measurable data on reduced emissions from forest clearing

Since 1988, official yearly estimates on deforestation in the Amazon have been pre-pared by INPE, an institution internationally renowned for its scientific expertise in the ar-eas of climate monitoring and analysis. Yearly deforestation rates are calculated by the Proj-ect for Deforestation Monitoring in the Legal Amazon (Prodes) based on analysis of images generated by high spatial resolution sensors of the Landsat (TM-Landsat) and CBERS satellites. They allow for the identification of changes caused by clear felling – i.e. total clearing of a forested area after the removal of commer-cially valuable species – occurring in areas of primary forest.

Prodes carries out digital analyses on col-or images at a 1:250,000 scale, which enable identification of deforestation areas larger than 6.25 hectares (0.0625 km2). It provides

Illegal deforestation of the clearcutting type registered in 2006 within a protected area in the Brazilian Amazon

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the yearly deforestation rate for the period between August and July and the cumulative gross rate for the whole region. In addition, Prodes presents an estimate of the deforesta-tion rate for the current period by every De-cember, with final results published in the first half of the following year.

Monitoring tools based on remote sensing are being scaled up to other Brazilian biomes. Re-cently, the Center for Environmental Monitoring of IBAMA - the federal environmental agency - pre-sented the first data on monitoring of forest cover in the Cerrado biome, which has undergone an ac-celerated deforestation process in the last 20 years. This results from the efforts by the Ministry of En-vironment to monitor via satellite the changes in land use of all terrestrial biomes in the country.

• The Detection of Deforested Areas in Real Time System (Deter)

While it is useful to monitor the spatial dy-namics of deforestation in the Amazon, Prodes has methodological limitations that hinder the use of the data generated to anticipate defor-estation control actions along the year. To that effect, INPE developed the Deter system, which reduced response time against offenders.

The Deter System monitors the surface of the Amazon region every fortnight through im-ages from sensors installed on Terra, Aqua and CBERS-2 satellites, able to detect forest degrada-tion processes and clear felling-type deforesta-tion in areas over 25 hectares (0.25 km2). Thus, the lower spatial resolution of these sensors is offset by the frequency of observation.

Deter provides real time deforestation alerts with the location and approximate size of new changes in forest cover to guide, in particular, deforestation inspection and control activities. The areas identified as deforested along one year are listed in chronological order to show the evolution of deforestation and the effect of inspection activities. Since December 2004, the monthly analyses of the Deter System are pub-lished on the Internet (www.obt.inpe.br/deter) for unrestricted viewing and downloading.

• Making data available on the Internet, conferring transparency to the estimation of yearly deforestation rates in the Amazon

• Improved cartographic quality of analyses

• Increased number of sensors used in deforestation analysis, from different satellites, minimizing cloud cover problems

• Increased number of technical staff and equipment for analysis, contributing to the delivery of deforestation data in the same year they are calculated

• Length of time between image analysis and delivery of final data reduced from eight to five months

• Installation of the TerraAmazon System, a consolidated database containing the surveys of Prodes digital, which also incorporates data from Deter, Detex and Degrad Systems

• For further information on Prodes, please visit http://www.obt.inpe.br/prodes/.

Recent progress by Prodes



• The Degrad SystemDeforestation monitoring in the Amazon car-

ried out by INPE is complemented by the Degrad system, which maps out the areas where forest cover has not been fully removed, but have a tendency to be converted into clear-cut areas. It is the case, for example, of public areas illegally

exploited by loggers. The system uses Landsat and CBERS images and, like the Prodes system, the minimum area mapped out is 6.25 hectares. However, the areas mapped out by Degrad are not computed in Prodes.

In order to measure forest degradation pro-cesses, INPE developed specific techniques to

Fishbone – Satellite image of the Transamazonica Highway, one of the priority areas for deforestation prevention initiatives in the Amazon

System prevented deforestation from “skyrocketing” in late 2007

The effectiveness of the Deter System was put to the test in late 2007, when its deforestation warnings showed an increasing forest clearing trend during the rainy season in the Amazon - when deforestation-related activities traditionally retreat. Based on Deter information, new strict enforcement and inspection measures were adopted in a group of municipalities where the system identified increased deforestation. In addition to preventing the “explosion” of the rate calculated by INPE for the period (August 2007 to July 2008), the measures resulted in a 7% reduction in deforestation in the municipalities found to be in a critical situation the previous year (for further information, see the chapter “New measures crack down on environmental offenders”, page 19).



process satellite images, using contrast en-hancements to highlight evidence of degrada-tion. Degraded areas are individually mapped out and highlighted in the images, showing different patterns of forest degradation: a) moderately intense, area under regeneration after logging, with yards still evident, b) high-ly intense, active logging, large proportion of soil exposed, c) light degradation, evidence of opening of access roads. Degrad’s data can be accessed at the Prodes website (www.obt.inpe.br/prodes).

• The Detex SystemTo complement the services provided by

Prodes, Deter and Degrad, INPE developed the Selective Logging Detection System (Detex), originally designed to monitor public forest ar-eas aimed at timber production under sustain-able stewardship through concessions. The Detex System maps out areas with evidence of timber extraction activities by selective logging, such as opening of tracks and yards for the stor-age of logs. To this end, the Detex system was

Illegal deforestation in the Amazon is often associated with other criminal activities, such as appropriation of public land, invasion of pro-tected areas, corruption, drug trafficking and violence against local populations.

One of the great achievements brought about by the Action Plan for Prevention and Control of Deforestation in the Amazon was the integration

of forest cover monitoring activities with inspec-tion and enforcement operations on a perma-nent basis - and no longer on an ad hoc basis, as in the past. This new policy required investments in IBAMA, the federal environmental agency, for the creation of new structures, improvement of technical and human resources, and implemen-tation of planning and execution methods, which

3.2. Permanent inspection and control of environmental offenses

A combination of monitoring and enforcement has led to greater effectiveness of State initiatives in critical areas in the Amazon, contributing to reduce defo-restation-related crime

extended to monitor selective logging over the whole Amazon forest, so as to assist environ-mental agencies operating in the region to in-spect compliance with approved management plans and control illegal logging.

“Brazil’s monitoring system is the envy of the world”

The development of reliable systems for monitoring and verification of emission reductions is one of the key issues to advance the debate on the adoption of a REDD policy, under UNFCCC, that remunerates the efforts of tropical countries. Basically, one needs reliable mechanisms to quantify and report reductions resulting from the REDD initiatives.

With Prodes, Deter, Degrad, and Detex, Brazil is at the forefront of the implementation of remote sensing monitoring systems, and has even been featured in an article by Science Magazine (April 2007), which stated that “today, Brazil’s monitoring system is the envy of the world”.



Illegal prospection activity found in 2006 during an operation against environmental crime

resulted in greater presence in critical areas and

greater effectiveness of inspection operations.In order to improve effectiveness of enforce-

ment initiatives, the following measures were taken:

• Adoption of a new planning model for enforcement actions, which crosses data generated by satellite monitoring systems, field information, and intelligence services, with a focus on Federal Police actions;

• Reorganization of existing networks of operation bases in the areas where the highest yearly deforestation rates are registered.

• Creation of the Environmental Monitoring Center (CEMAM) in 2004, in the headquarters of the environmental inspection agency (IBAMA). CEMAM receives shapefiles generated by the Prodes and Deter and systems, refines the analysis on deforestation areas, and, in up to 48 hours, issues alerts to the operational bases in the region;

• Increased number of inspectors and training of inspection teams to fight environmental crime in the Amazon. An environmental inspection training program was created, with a special focus on the specificities of the Amazon;

• Fines were increased to U.S. $ 2.5 thousand per illegally deforested hectare.

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In order to fight the network of illegal activities associated with deforestation, the operations of the Brazilian Action Plan entails the participation of the Federal Police, the Federal Highway Police, state level police forces, and in critical situations, the Brazilian Army, in addition to IBAMA inspectors.Between the launching of the PPCDAm and November 2009, 851 enforcement operations were carried out. These operations resulted in seizure of large volumes of timber and in the arrest of more than 600 people, including officials, involved in crimes against the environment and the public order.New mobile facilities for deforestation

monitoring are underway to support this concentrated effort to punish environmental crime, in addition to the creation of the Environmental Operations Group under the National Force - an elite police force of the federal government - with 200 military police officers at the ready.

Synergy to fight environmental crime

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Decades of weak policies for land occupation and use in the vast territory of the Brazilian Ama-zon contributed to the expansion of conflicts in-volving access to land and natural resources. One of the outcomes is precisely deforestation, since in the process of illegal appropriation of public land, conversion of land to other uses is one of the strategies used to characterize land tenure or property by private parties with a view to future legalization.

The main measure adopted to fight fraud in-volving public land was the creation of the Nation-al Registry of Rural Real Estate by Law n. 10.267 in

2001, allowing the unification of rural real estate records, previously scattered throughout different public agencies. The registry is a database fed and shared by public institutions. By crossing the in-formation available, it is possible to identify incon-sistencies related to the land assets of registered parties, thus uncovering fraud. Moreover, the new registry requires every party interested in making transactions with rural properties to submit a geo-referenced plan and description of the land.

In 2004, complementing the implementa-tion of the National Registry, an administrative rule was issued determining that holders of ar-

3.3. Territorial planningThe planning of land use in the region - through the establishment of new pro-tected areas, actions against speculation over public land, and land titling - is pointed out by experts as one of the major reasons for ongoing deforestation decline in the previous five years

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The Piagaçu-Purus Reserve, established to protect natural resources and the livelihood of extractivist communities



eas with more than 100 hectares in the Amazon with a land status considered critical should re-register their property within 120 days. Re-regis-tration was also adopted in cases of requests for inclusion or alteration of records of rural proper-ties. Failure to submit the required documenta-tion results in “freezing” of the property – that is, the land is included in a list of plots that cannot be negotiated, and the holder has no access to credit from public banks until the property is regular. In this process, 70 thousand irregular registrations were “frozen”.

Other measures to restrain illegal appropria-tion of public land are set out below:

• suspension of issuance of new tenure documents for holders of properties above 100 hectares; even though these documents do not constitute legal evidence of domain of the property, they were used as such;

• identification, registration and georeferencing of rural properties located in areas of intense land conflicts and speculation;

• authorization of land titling of occupations with up to 1,500 hectares in federal public lands, provided the interested party proves the legality of the holding and lives and produces on the said land;

• dismantling of criminal groups specialized in defrauding documents to regularize illegal public land occupations in the Amazon.

• New measures crack down on en-vironmental offenders

In mid-2007, the Deter system alerted to a growing deforestation trend during the rainy season in the Amazon, a period when defores-tation-related activities traditionally recede. This increase was the result of opening of new areas, driven by a raise of commodity prices in the do-mestic and international markets.

Faced with this fact, the Brazilian government adopted strong measures to contain the spread of deforestation. From the legal, administrative

and political standpoints, liabilities were ex-panded beyond the agents directly responsible for illegal cutting to reach state and local govern-ments and, in an unprecedented manner, to also reach the economic sectors that benefit from de-forestation. This led some of the major compa-nies in the country to take responsibility for the legality of their suppliers in the region.

The measures were quickly implemented and proved effective: along 2008, illegal forest cut-ting fell 7% in priority municipalities, in spite of a 4% increase in the Amazon as whole, i.e. slightly above the previous year.

Main measures implemented as of

February 2008

• publication of the list of municipalities with the highest deforestation rates, which became the primary focus of stricter environmental and land prevention and control, requiring greater attention on the part of local authorities;

• integration of environmental and land regularization, with the re-registration of rural properties located in the critical municipalities, so as to enable georeferenced monitoring of occupation and land use in these areas;

• ban on new deforestation permits for properties located in critical municipalities;

• restriction on credit access for rural producers with any environmental or land non-compliance, so as to prevent public bank resources from continuing to finance activities related to illegal deforestation;

• application of economic embargo on illegally deforested areas; products derived from such areas cannot be marketed, their georeferencing is mandatory to improve monitoring over them, and heavy penalties are imposed on owners who disobey the embargo;

• accountability of players along the production chain, who purchase, broker, transport or market products derived from illegal cutting in embargoed areas.



The role of protected areas

The establishment of protected areas is one of the main instruments used by the Brazilian REDD strategy to organize economic occupation of the Amazon region. In addition to protecting biological resources, protected areas contribute to the mitigation of conflicts involving local communities and prevent public land speculation in the region. Between 2004 and 2009, approximately 53 million hectares of federal and state protected areas were established in the region, most of them in areas threatened by the expansion of the economic frontier (see the map). Moreover, around 10 million hectares of indigenous land were demarcated during the same period.According to a survey by the World Database on Protected Areas, a joint UNEP and IUCN project, 74% of the protected areas created in the world between 2003 and 2009 are located in Brazil. The

Amazon Region Protected Areas Program (Arpa) has played a key role in this effort, providing technical and financial resources for the studies and surveys required for the institution and implementation of new protected areas.

ALAP: new tool to prevent illegal deforestationTo keep ahead of public land speculators and forest cutters in areas located along roads expected to be paved, the Ministry of Environment created in 2005 a new instrument in the Brazilian legislation: the Area of Temporary Administrative Limitation (ALAP). It was conceived in the scope of the Action Plan, and restricts “the exercise of activities and ventures that effectively or potentially cause environmental degradation”. It was used to contain the spread of the areas surrounding the BR-163 and BR-319 highways.

ARPA is a federal program coordinated by the Brazilian Ministry of Environment and implemented in partnership with the Chico Mendes Institute for the Conservation of Biodiversity (ICMBio), state governments of the Amazon Region, and the Brazilian Biodiversity Fund (Funbio). ARPA is supported by the Global Environment Facility (GEF), through the World Bank; the Federal Republic of Germany, through the German Development Bank (KfW) and the German Technical Cooperation Agency (GTZ); the WWF conservation network; and two private institutions – O Boticário and Natura.

Despite sheltering the largest tropical rain-forest in the planet and being one of the largest timber consumers in the world, Brazil’s policy on timber production in public areas was not launched until 2006. After a year-long debate with society, in February 2005 the federal gov-

ernment forwarded a bill to the Brazilian Parlia-ment to regulate access and economic exploita-tion of public forests. Passed in early 2006, the text was sanctioned by the president in March of that year and Law 11.284 became known as the Public Forest Management Act.

3.4. New legal framework for the exploitation of public forests

By setting the rules for the use of forests in the Amazon, the law passed in 2006 helps to promote sustainable productive activities and inhibits illegal cutting of public forests in the region



The new legal framework faces the challenge of contributing to the end of illegal exploitation in the Amazon by strengthening public control over public forests, to ensure that their use comply with principles and guidelines that promote sustain-able development in the sector. The new law aims to support the structuring of productive chains to generate local and regional economies linked to good forest management and conservation.

With the new Act, the exploitation of public forests can only occur through concessions and the implementation of sustainable management techniques, rights protection, and generation of social and environmental benefits for local com-munities. The new law rules that the exploitation or clearing of public forest land without authori-zation is a crime.

To manage this new policy, the act created the Brazilian Forest Service (SFB), under the Ministry of Environment, an agency mandated to manage and inspect the forest concession process and manage the National Fund for For-estry Development (FNDF) to “foster the devel-opment of sustainable forestry activities in Bra-zil and to promote technological innovation in the sector.“

Forests under concessions are monitored by the Detex System developed by INPE to monitor

The exploitation of public forests can only occur through concessions and the implementation of sustainable

management techniques



the environmental impact of timber activities in the Amazon forest.

The first area to be granted a forest conces-sion by means of public bidding and payment for the use of forest resources was announced in September 2007. It is located within the Ja-mari National Forest, in a region of intense il-legal deforestation. Of the 220 thousand hect-

ares covered by the protected area, 90 thou-sand hectares (around 40%) will be allocated to be used under a sustainable management scheme.

The second area to be granted concession, in a few months, is in the Saracá-Taquara National Forest, which is part of a mosaic of protected ar-eas to the north of the Amazon River.

A survey by the Brazilian Forest Service (SFB) points out that the area of public forests in the Amazon region covers around 178.5 million hectares, of which 85% have already been specifically assigned as protected areas - while 15% have not yet been assigned for a specific type of use. Of this total, the SFB estimates that 13.5 million hectares – over three times the territory of Denmark - will be assigned to forest concessions.

13.5 million hectares available for forest concession in the region

Satellite image of the Jamari National Forest, the first area allocated to a forest concession according to the new rules of the Brazilian government



In the 2004-2008 period, the initiatives aimed at deforestation prevention and control achieved their ultimate goal, namely, a marked reduction in the pace of deforestation in the region. This resulted in a change in deforestation character-istics: from the deforestation of large areas, of up to 300 acres (3 km2), to smaller areas, dispersed over a larger part of the region. However, only few of the initiatives planned to promote sustain-able productive activities were implemented.

To address this new context, it was necessary to scale up land use planning and enforcement measures, as well as to improve investments in an agenda to promote sustainable economic ac-tivities that would consolidate the occupation in deforested and productive areas, thus prevent-ing the advancement of economic pressures over forests.

Evaluations by the Ministry of Environment demonstrated that the way forward would be to strengthen the participation of state and local governments in the effort to fight deforestation, concentrating actions in municipalities with high deforestation rates. At the same time, it would be necessary to monitor and contain any “leaks” to well-preserved areas, in order to prevent for-est cutting in new areas.

Based on this assessment, the plan was fully reviewed, incorporating new initiatives and im-plementation strategies scheduled for the 2009-2011 period, for which the PPCDAm’s planning allocated 1.2 billion reals.

Two key measures adopted in this new phase of the program are: to increase the presence of public authorities, with the establishment of government agencies in these municipalities, and the signing of agreements with organiza-tions representing productive sectors that use raw materials from the Amazon, such as the supply chains of soybeans, beef and timber. The purpose of the agreements is for sectors to pledge not to purchase raw materials com-ing from illegally deforested areas. By October 2009, 31 companies had signed agreements on timber, 18 on livestock and 13 on soybean.

3.5. The new stage of the plan to prevent and control deforestation in the Amazon

Program planning for 2009-2011 emphasizes the participation of states and municipalities in fighting the causes of deforestation and new efforts to foster sustainable production in regions with high illegal deforestation rates

Arco Verde Operation brings farmers and government staff together to implement initiatives aimed at sustainable productive activities

Embr

apa



• Engaging state governments in the fight against deforestation

State governments in the Amazon region have gradually become more engaged in the fight against the causes that lead to deforesta-tion, through the adoption of standards that encouraged them to take over the management of their forests and prepare their own plans for deforestation prevention and control.

This partnership started with the Public For-est Management Act (see chapter 3.4. New legal framework for the exploitation of public forests), which allowed states to take on the concession to operate their forests under sustainable man-agement rules, and the issuance of clear cutting permits for private properties.

The interest of states in the conservation of the Amazon rainforest was strengthened with the creation of the Amazon Fund. According to the Fund’s rules, governments in the region can hold seats at COFA, the committee in charge of defining the fund’s guidelines and invest-ments. To that effect, they need to develop state plans and policies for deforestation con-trol and prevention, in consonance with federal policy guidelines. By November 2009, seven of the nine states in the region had prepared their plans, some of which containing periodic re-duction targets.

Shared responsibility over deforestation con-trol has led federal and state governments to es-tablish a task force to define a joint REDD propos-al, including the conditions for the participation of states, to be presented at COP 15 in Copenhagen.

The proposal emphasizes that Brazil should advocate the adoption of a market compen-sation mechanism for REDD, so as to expand funding opportunities for actions to keep the rainforest standing, such as the Amazon Fund.

• Initiatives in municipalities with high yearly deforestation rates

In late 2007, the indication of a growing defor-estation trend signaled by the Deter System (see page 14) led the Brazilian government to take a series of steps, including command and control actions concentrated in municipalities showing intense illegal deforestation in three of the five preceding years. Properties located in these mu-nicipalities were not allowed to receive deforesta-tion authorizations for areas larger than five hect-ares, had to re-register at the georeferenced land registry, and are subject to inspection operations.

The first survey by the Ministry of Environment indicated 36 municipalities to be the primary focus of the program’s actions. The survey is reviewed on a yearly basis. In early 2009, the list was updated, increasing to 43 the number of priority municipali-

2.000

4.000

6.000

8.000

10.000

12.000

14.000

16.000

18.000

2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 (estimated)

km2

Yearly deforestation in the 43 priority municipalities

Government initiatives have helped reduce the yearly deforestation rate by 65% in 43 priority municipalities, as estimated by INPE between August 2008 and July 2009.



Focus on municipalities with greater deforestation rates in the Amazon One of the strategies adopted to contain forest felling is to focus command and control actions and initiatives that promote sustainable productive activities in municipalities with high deforestation rates. Currently, 43 municipalities in the Amazon constitute priority areas for federal government action; they account for 55% of 2008 deforestation rate.

ties. Together, they account for 55% of the yearly deforestation recorded in the last three years.

To exit the priority list, municipalities need to include at least 80% of their territories in the envi-ronmental registry, except for protected areas and indigenous lands, and maintain yearly deforesta-tion rates below a limit set by the Ministry of Envi-ronment. According to INPE’s estimate, between August 2008 and July 2009 deforestation in the 43 priority municipalities dropped by 65%.

Arco Verde Operation: transition to sustainable production

The focus of actions taken between 2008 and 2009 reduced illegal deforestation in priority mu-

nicipalities. However, since a large share of these municipalities’ economies depended on defor-estation-related activities, most of them have experienced economic downturn and emerging social challenges for local governments.

Given this scenario, the federal government created - within the PPCDAM - the Arco Verde Operation, to promote priority municipali-ties’ transition from predatory to sustainable production models. Arco Verde Operations are complementary to environmental inspec-tion and control, and are aimed at, on the one hand, land titling and environmental compli-ance of productive land and, on the other, im-plementing measures that lead to production models based on social and environmental sustainability.



Other relevant actions of Arco Verde Opera-tion are:

• support to the preparation of local ecological-economic zoning, for the planning and organization of land occupation and use of natural resources;

• legalization of peaceful squatters in federal public lands by the Terra Legal Program, allowing public authorities to monitor the use of already occupied land according to environmental regulations;

• financial support to landowners interested in reclaiming illegally deforested areas, through a new credit line with special repayment conditions;

• introduction of the Rural Environmental Registry, a georeferenced environmental licensing system for rural properties, which allows environmental state agencies to monitor the legality of land use in registered properties via remote sensing;

• implementation of environmental licensing and support to sustainable production in agrarian reform project settlements, designed according to the region’s ecological specificities;

• inclusion of extractive products in the federal government’s minimum price guarantee policy, which ensures a minimum income to producers.

In the second half of 2009, the Operation was performed by joint task forces involving about 500 civil servants. A survey of the Ministry of Environment indicates that approximately 200 thousand people received civil registrations, gained access to the banking credit system, and were given guidance on production systems and technical assistance.

At the same time, around 7.5 thousand prop-erties were registered for land titling and 300 land titles were delivered by the Terra Legal Pro-gram. To ensure the operation’s continuity, two

thousand permanent initiatives were defined, through an agreement between the Federal Government, the states of the region, and the 43 priority municipalities.

• Expanding the fight against defor-estation to Brazilian savannas

As an outcome of the progress made by the PPCDAM in the second half of 2009, the Minis-try of Environment established the Action Plan for Prevention and Control of Fires and Defor-estation in the Cerrado (PPCerrado), designed to fight illegal deforestation in the Cerrado - the central Brazilian savanna, which has lost around 48% of its primary cover, mainly to single culture crops and pastures.

As for the PPCDAm, actions in PPCerrado are organized around three major concerns - moni-toring and control, protected areas and territorial planning, and promotion of productive activities.

As part of monitoring activities, in early 2009 the Ministry of Environment released the results of systematic monitoring of forest cover in the re-gion and will establish a system for deforestation alerts similar to the Deter System (see page 14). Studies are underway to increase the percentage of protected areas in the biome from the current 7.4% to 10%, in addition to inspection operations to curb charcoal transport, a major cause of defor-estation in the region, among other actions.

Payments for environmental services

One of the differences of the PPCDAm’s new stage (2009-2011) is the emphasis on policies that encourage the maintenance of standing forests, conserving the irreplaceable services they provide. Thus, alongside measures to strengthen productive deforested areas, the federal government forwarded a bill to Congress for the establishment of the National Program for the Payment of Environmental Services, to remunerate the efforts of local peoples, small landowners and farmers to reclaim and conserve forests, soils and water resources in the areas they economically exploit.



Even though Brazil has not quantified emis-sion reduction obligations under the UNFCCC, in the last couple of years the country has decided to prepare a national program with guidelines, targets and actions to address climate change. Formulated by a committee created specifically for this purpose, the National Plan on Climate Change (PNMC) summarizes the mitigation, ad-aptation, research and development, education, training and communication measures, as well as the implementation tools required to address the issue at the national level.

In November 2009, the Brazilian government announced a voluntary target of 36.1% to 38.9% reduction of total greenhouse gas emissions in the country, to be reached by 2020. This reduc-tion is equivalent to between 975 million and 1.052 billion tCO2e of avoided emissions. The es-tablishment of objective and measurable targets to reduce greenhouse emissions signals to Bra-zilian society and the international community the serious commitment of the Brazilian initia-tive, allowing them to monitor and demand the implementation of this voluntary commitment.

4. As part of its REDD policy, Brazil voluntarily established a 38.9% emission reduc-tion target to be reached by 2020. Most of this reduction will derive from a subs-tantial drop in deforestation rates in the Amazon

The National Plan on Climate Change

GTZ

Arc

hive



Main challenge: to reduce deforestation in the

Amazon by 80%Due to the profile of Brazilian emissions,

mainly from land use change - specifically, from the conversion of natural areas into areas for ag-ricultural production - the PNMC attaches great importance to actions related to the clearing of forests, especially in the Brazilian Amazon. Therefore, most of the overall reduction target proposed (24.7%) will come from restraining de-forestation, both in the Amazon and in the Bra-zilian Cerrado.

For emissions from deforestation in the Ama-zon to be reduced to such an extent, the target of 80% reduction in the region’s deforestation rate by 2020 was established, through succes-sive five-year reductions of 42% (see chart be-

low). The baseline for calculation of the 80% re-duction is the official average deforestation rate provided by Prodes between 1996 and 2005, i.e., 19.6 thousand km2.

Although such a reduction of deforestation in the Amazon represents an ambitious target, in recent years the country has demonstrated its ability to reach it. With successive decreases in yearly deforestation rates of the Amazon forest achieved by REDD policies between 2005 and 2009, Brazil is close to meeting the target estab-lished for the first five years (2006-2010).

However, the PNMC acknowledges that, in view of the region’s size and the complexity of factors that lead to deforestation, the country will need additional resources from national and international sources to enable the implementa-tion of such targets, including those raised by the Amazon Fund (see following chapter).

Source: Ministry of Environment



Inspired by the Brazilian proposal taken to Bali in 2007 for the establishment of positive in-centives for climate change mitigation initiatives by developing countries, the Fund was created in August 2008 to finance actions that strengthen federal government deforestation control and prevention measures in the Amazon.

The Fund consists of donations of those interest-ed in supporting national efforts to reduce green-house gas emissions derived from changes in land use. The resources of the Amazon Fund are man-aged by the Brazilian Development Bank (BNDES), under a non-reimbursable financing modality.

The Fund’s resources can be used in the fol-lowing types of initiatives: (i) management of public forests and protected areas, (ii) environ-mental control, monitoring and inspection, (iii) sustainable forest stewardship, (iv) sustainable economic activities; (v) ecological and economic zoning, land use planning and land titling, (vi) conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity, and (g) reclaiming of deforested areas.

The Amazon Fund has a steering committee (COFA), composed of government agencies and civil society, which defines guidelines and crite-ria for the use of resources. State governments

5. Created to raise funds for Brazilian REDD efforts, the fund plays a key role for the country to achieve the 80% reduction target by 2020

The Amazon Fund: facility to finance deforestation reduction

in the Amazon can participate in COFA, provided they have their own deforestation control plans, in line with the federal plan. A technical com-mittee (CTFA), composed of highly reputable experts with renowned technical and scientific knowledge, is responsible for demonstrating the effective reduction of carbon emissions from de-forestation, calculated with data provided by the Ministry of Environment.

The Amazon Fund is ready to receive do-nations from governments, multilateral in-stitutions, non-governmental organizations and companies, and is being structured to re-ceive donations from individuals in the future. BNDES will issue a certificate recognizing the contribution of donors, showing the amount donated, the equivalent in tonnes of carbon, and the year.

The first donation commitments to the Fund were signed by Norway, which donated 700 mil-lion Norwegian kroner (around US$130 million), and Germany, which donated 22 million euros (US$ 33 million), mostly through financial coop-eration (see table). For further information on the operation of the Amazon Fund, visit: http://www.fundoamazonia.gov.br.

Donations to the Amazon Fund

Donor Amount donated (US$) Date Contract signature

Norway 140 million August 2008 March 2009

Germany 27 million* December 2008 Underway

Germany 6 million** September 2009 Underway

Total 173 million

* Financial Cooperation ** Technical Cooperation

Ministry of Environment

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