In the region known as Middle Land, located at the confluence of two important rivers of the Brazilian Amazon, the Xingu and the Iriri, which is noted for its high biological and cultural diversity, but also for having some of the highest rates of deforestation and degradation in the Brazilian Amazon, an ecological restoration project is being carried out on the banks of rivers, springs and other bodies of water, supported by a collective economic incentive mechanism aimed at structuring the forest seed chain.
Carried out by the Socio-Environmental Institute (ISA) and coordinated by Brazil’s National Water and Sanitation Agency (ANA), with the support of the Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization (ACTO), this national intervention aims to ensure the provision of forest ecosystem services through socio-environmental contributions made by indigenous, riparian and agro-extractive families, based on their traditional knowledge and through income generation.
In the project’s target area there are two extractive reserves, Resex Iriri and Resex Xingu, and one indigenous land, TI Cachoeira Seca, which together total 1.5 million hectares and make up the Middle Land. Located in the municipality of Altamira, in the state of Pará, Middle Land is a mosaic of approximately eight million hectares of protected areas.
The Middle Land Network
The families participating in the intervention project are part of a network for the production and sale of non-timber forest products, directly benefiting more than 3,200 people. The Middle Land Network, which has 20 associations of indigenous peoples and extractivist communities and an infrastructure with 23 storerooms for storing products, 12 canteens and six mini-processing plants, brings to the project experience and expertise in generating sustainable income, strengthening the autonomy of communities, defending territories and accessing the market through partnerships that value regional flora and the traditional knowledge associated with it.
The Network’s groups of seed collectors will soon begin planting forests in priority areas already identified by the project. With training and technical assistance from the Socio-Environmental Institute (ISA), they are taking advantage of the dry season to prepare the soil, which aims to reduce the biomass of grass and invasive plants.
From November, when the rains begin, the collectors will sow directly with muvuca, a mixture of native species and green manure, selected and ecologically calculated to create a stratified and dense vegetation that mimics the forest and costs significantly less than planting with seedlings.
In this first phase of the project, in addition to establishing management agreements with the families interested in participating in the restoration of the areas, the first seeds have already been delivered and stored. The process of prospecting, identifying, characterizing and selecting the areas to be worked on in the first year of the intervention has been completed, including the signing of management and maintenance agreements with local associations.
Monitoring and measuring ecosystem services
In one year, 25 of the 50 hectares of degraded areas planned for the intervention will be restored. The methodology for monitoring restoration areas, developed by ISA, will be put into practice within 30 days of planting, when a programmed sequence of periodic assessments and adaptive management actions begins. The aim is to guide maintenance actions and assess the development of the vegetation in order to ensure that the native cover progresses over time, avoiding the proliferation of invasive species.
The ecosystem services produced by the restoration of the 50 hectares of degraded areas over the two years of the project will be estimated based on the evapotranspiration of the trees and the stock and sequestration of carbon. Taking as a reference the evaporation data collected by NASA in the Amazon, according to which the forest releases 3.6 liters of water per m2 into the atmosphere every day, ISA will be able to estimate the magnitude of the volume of water released into the atmosphere by the trees planted by the intervention project.
In order to calculate the volume of carbon sequestered in the recovered areas, ISA will use the methodology developed by the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation (MCTI) of Brazil, which consists of calculating the removal of CO2 by vegetation growth in Indigenous Lands and in areas protected by the National System of Nature Conservation Units (SNUC).
The carbon stock will be calculated based on the Global Map of Aboveground Forest Biomass and the parameters suggested by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) for estimating belowground carbon.
Strategic Actions Program (SAP)
The intervention called Forest Seed Chain: ecological restoration and payments for socio-environmental services in the Xingu basin is developed in the context of the actions of the Strategic Actions Program (SAP), within the framework of the Amazon Basin Project (ACTO/UNEP/GEF).
Adopted in 2017 by the ACTO member countries (Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Guyana, Suriname and Venezuela), the SAP was developed based on three guiding objectives: 1. strengthening Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM), 2. institutional adaptation to climate variability and change and 3. knowledge management.
Its 19 strategic actions are key to promoting collective responses to the rapid degradation of water resources, land and biodiversity, reinforcing the population’s resilience to the impacts and threats of climate variability and strengthening countries’technical capacity for integrated and sustainable water management.
With the SAP as a guiding instrument for regional cooperation, the eight ACTO countries seek to benefit the population and ecosystems of the Amazon Basin based on equitable social, economic and environmental considerations.
