Editor’s Note: A new study on a program called Bolsa Floresta (which translates to “forest allowance”) pays families and small farmers to participate in conservation programming, and its positive results point to opportunities to expand similar financing programs. This post was originally published on ForestsNews, the blog of The Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR).
Dawn on the border of the Juma Reserve, Amazon – Brazil, 2011 © Neil Palmer/CIFOR
LIMA, Peru (28 March 2014) — A Brazilian program that compensates families for conserving forests shows promise for reducing deforestation and helping small farmers improve their livelihoods, a new study co-sponsored by the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) shows.
Launched in the Brazilian state of Amazonas in 2007, the Bolsa Floresta — “forest allowance” — program provides direct payments to families in exchange for conservation, community development, public services, and support for local associations. The program targets families living in Brazil’s Sustainable Development Reserves, which were established to enable residents to combine sustainable land and forest uses based on a management plan. By 2012, Bolsa Floresta benefited more than 30,000 people in and around 15 forest reserves covering more than 10 million hectares.
The study, which focused on the impact in two reserves, Juma and Uatumã, found that most of the participants — mainly small farmers who depend heavily on forest resources — reported that they were better off than before Bolsa Floresta began. Deforestation rates, although low from the outset in the remote forests where the program is implemented, were also slightly lower in those areas than surrounding regions.
“The cash transfer helped many families to cover basic expenses for food and clothing,” said Jan Börner of CIFOR, who co-authored the study. “Many residents also reported that the reserves are better protected from people from outside who used to fish or log illegally in the reserves.”
Those results point to possibilities for conservation incentives in other parts of the Amazon that also face deforestation pressure from logging and ranching, the researchers said. They warned, however, that programs and the provided incentives must be tailored to the particular situation in each place.
The Juma and Uatumã reserves were chosen for the impact study because they were among the first to implement Bolsa Floresta and had shown higher deforestation rates than other reserves when the program began.
The Juma reserve was established along the lower Aripuanã River in 2006, in southeastern Amazonas, a year before the Bolsa Floresta program began. Some 380 families live in the 5,900 square-kilometer reserve, about 70 percent of which is tropical forest. The reserve is also the site of one of the first certified REDD+ (reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation) projects in the Brazilian Amazon. The Uatumã reserve, established in northeastern Amazonas in 2004, spans 4,200 square kilometers and is home to more than 360 families.
In each reserve, zoning regulations specify which areas can be used for farming, limit the clearing of mature forest and strictly control the use of fire.
The Bolsa Floresta program reinforces conservation through a combination of community development, payment for environmental services, provision of public services and support for community organizations, said Sven Wunder, senior economist at CIFOR’s Brazil office and a co-author of the study. Families agree to comply with the reserve’s management plan and limit the amount of forested lands converted for farming. They must also participate in a local association and send their children to school, if there is one nearby.
“The program requires that people adhere to the rules and do a little bit more, and compensates them for that additional effort,” Wunder said.
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For more information about this study, contact Sven Wunder at s.wunder@cgiar.org.
This study is part of CIFOR’s Global Comparative Study on REDD+.
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