The Brazilian REDD strategy
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
Copenhagen, December 2009
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 indigenous lands; uses new technology and satellite
images to analyze, prevent and control illegal forest cutting; invests in intelligence and in joint inspection and enforcement operations with state
governments; encourages sustainable management 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 fruitful cooperation between state and local governments, 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 Action Plan for Prevention and Control of Deforestation in the Amazon - the PPCDAm, which provides for a consistent and integrated arrangement. 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. According 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 occupied, creation of sustainable jobs, biotechnology, 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 municipalities with the highest deforestation rates, or
through sector agreements between the Ministry of Environment and soybean and timber
exporters, or through the Amazon Fund, whose
first projects are being approved.
This publication provides an overview of government 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 Brazil’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 engagement of Brazilian society. However, we need further international support for reduced emissions
to translate into improved quality of life of Amazon 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 Silva
President
José Alencar Gomes da Silva
Vice-president
Ministry of Environment
Carlos Minc
Minister
Izabella Teixeira
Executive Secretary
Mauro Oliveira Pires
Director of the Department for Policies Against Deforestation
Nazaré Soares
Project 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 Mello
President of the Chico Mendes Institute for Biodiversity Conservation (ICMBio)
Antônio Carlos Hummel
Director of the Brazilian Forest Service (SFB)
Research and writing: Marco Antonio Gonçalves
Coordination: Mauro Oliveira Pires (Ministry of Environment) and Johannes Scholl (GTZ)
Maps: Walda Veloso (Ministry of Environment)
Translation: Cristiane Feitosa e Patricia Ozorio
Graphic project: Milena Hernández
Printing: Semear Editora Gráfica
Collaborators: 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
The Brazilian policy to reduce
deforestation and forest degradation in
the Amazon
1.
6
The Brazilian Amazon today
2.
9
3.
11
Control and prevention of deforestation
in the Amazon
The National Plan on Climate Change
4.
27
The Amazon Fund: facility to finance
deforestation reduction
5.
29
The Brazilian REDD strategy
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
Between 2004 and 2009, the Brazilian government 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 measures, Brazil has created a fund to raise resources
to finance forest conservation initiatives and has
established a voluntary target of 80% deforestation reduction by 2020.
Brazil is an emerging economy, with a significant share of its energy deriving from renewable
sources (hydroelectricity and biomass). According 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 deforestation and forest degradation (REDD) is structured on three pillars, managed in an integrated
manner, and described below.
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.
• 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 develop8 | 15th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change
GTZ Archive
The Brazilian REDD strategy
ment, education, training and communication,
and outlines the implementation of tools needed 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 (20062010) should be achieved quite easily, since in the
last five years, deforestation rates in the region
declined steadily until reaching, in 2009, the lowest 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 deforestation control and prevention
The backbone of the Brazilian REDD policy,
described in detail in this publication, is the Action Plan for Prevention and Control of Deforestation 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 Amazon 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 status 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 deforestation, issuing regular warnings to agencies in charge of enforcement operations on the
ground (Deter System), and on the other, to provide yearly deforestation data (Prodes System).
Monitoring of the region is complemented by
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The Brazilian REDD strategy
the Degrad System, which keeps track of forest
degradation processes and indicates clear felling trends, and the Detex System, developed to
monitor the impact of timber activities on public
forests operated under concession schemes.
These monitoring systems are internationally 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 monitoring 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 deforestation in the Amazon (page 11).
• The Amazon Fund: facility to finance deforestation reduction
GTZ Archive
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 August 2008 to support projects aimed at preventing, monitoring and fighting deforestation and
at conservation and sustainable use of the Amazon forest, in line with the PPCDAm.
The aim of the Amazon Fund is to use national and international donations to finance
initiatives that complement national efforts to
reduce deforestation in the Amazon. The Fund
has a steering committee composed of government agencies and civil society, responsible for
defining guidelines and criteria for resource allocation, and a technical committee, comprising
highly reputable experts with outstanding technical 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 finance the reduction of deforestation (page 29).
10 | 15th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change
The Brazilian REDD strategy
2.
The Brazilian Amazon today
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 ecosystems, 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 communities, 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 cities 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 Amazon forest cover had been removed.
In the following decades, government investments in the region substantially altered the region’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 required major infrastructure works. The Amazon
Dipro/ Ibama Archive
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 expansion of livestock-raising has become the
main driver of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon in
the last two decades
also began to supply timber to the domestic market, and in the last 10 years it has become the fastest 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
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The Brazilian REDD strategy
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 estimates 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 thousand km2), and in 2004, the second highest yearly
rate ever (27.4 thousand km2) was registered.
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.
12 | 15th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change
Cyro Soares/PPG7 - GTZ Archive
The region has lost 18%
of its forests
The Brazilian REDD strategy
3.
Control and prevention of
deforestation in the Amazon
In 2004, the Brazilian government launched a new policy to reduce deforestation in the Amazon, based on the implementation of integrated monitoring, enforcement, environmental control and land use planning, involving joint initiatives carried out across several agencies. In just five years, the yearly deforestation
rate in the region declined by 75%
Increased deforestation rates in the Amazon
between 2000 and 2003 led the Brazilian government to change its strategy for tackling the
issue. After eight months devoted to identifying
the causes of increased forest cutting in the region, in March 2004, the Action Plan for Prevention and Control of Deforestation in the Amazon
(PPCDAm) was launched.
With the PPCDAm, the fight against deforestation 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 coordination was taken on by the Office of the
Chief of Staff of the Presidency of the Republic,
which conferred to the Program greater prominence in the government’s policy agenda. At
the same time, it envisages integrated initiatives targeting the different causes of economic pressure over the forest, which also represents 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 deforestation 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;
Yearly Deforestation in the Legal Amazon
35000
Deforested area (km2)
30000
25000
20000
15000
10000
5000
0
1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009
Estimated
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The Brazilian REDD strategy
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.
• poor procedures to verify the legitimacy of
existing land titles;
• incipient sustainable economic activities.
The Plan’s initiatives and activities are organized around three main themes: i) land
and territorial planning; ii) environmental
monitoring and control; and iii) promotion of
sustainable productive activities. Its main objectives 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;
14 | 15th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change
The Brazilian REDD strategy
• 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;
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 estimates. This is the lowest yearly rate registered since
1988 (see graph). Thus, Brazilian policies have prevented the emission of about 2661 million tCO2e
between 2005 and 2009, if one considers the average of 100 tC per hectare of intact forest.
The following chapters summarize the actions that enabled the country to achieve
these results.
• 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 region - in absolute numbers, a reduction from 27.7
3.1. Improving forest monitoring
systems
Since 1988, official yearly estimates on
deforestation in the Amazon have been prepared by INPE, an institution internationally
renowned for its scientific expertise in the areas of climate monitoring and analysis. Yearly
deforestation rates are calculated by the Project 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 commercially valuable species – occurring in areas of
primary forest.
Prodes carries out digital analyses on color images at a 1:250,000 scale, which enable
identification of deforestation areas larger
than 6.25 hectares (0.0625 km2). It provides
Dipro/Ibama Archive
In recent years, Brazil has invested in the development of systems to monitor deforestation at different scales. They are internationally renowned and are able to
provide reliable and measurable data on reduced emissions from forest clearing
Illegal deforestation of the clearcutting type registered in
2006 within a protected area in the Brazilian Amazon
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The Brazilian REDD strategy
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 deforestation rate for the current period by every December, 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. Recently, the Center for Environmental Monitoring of
IBAMA - the federal environmental agency - presented the first data on monitoring of forest cover
in the Cerrado biome, which has undergone an accelerated deforestation process in the last 20 years.
This results from the efforts by the Ministry of Environment 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 dynamics of deforestation in the Amazon, Prodes
has methodological limitations that hinder the
use of the data generated to anticipate deforestation 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 images from sensors installed on Terra, Aqua and
CBERS-2 satellites, able to detect forest degradation processes and clear felling-type deforestation 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 published on the Internet (www.obt.inpe.br/deter)
for unrestricted viewing and downloading.
Recent progress
by Prodes
• 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/.
16 | 15th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change
The Brazilian REDD strategy
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).
• The Degrad System
Deforestation monitoring in the Amazon carried 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 processes, INPE developed specific techniques to
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The Brazilian REDD strategy
process satellite images, using contrast enhancements to highlight evidence of degradation. 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) highly 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 System
To complement the services provided by
Prodes, Deter and Degrad, INPE developed the
Selective Logging Detection System (Detex),
originally designed to monitor public forest areas aimed at timber production under sustainable 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 storage of logs. To this end, the Detex system was
extended to monitor selective logging over the
whole Amazon forest, so as to assist environmental agencies operating in the region to inspect 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”.
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 deforestation-related crime
Illegal deforestation in the Amazon is often
associated with other criminal activities, such
as appropriation of public land, invasion of protected 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 inspection and enforcement operations on a permanent 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 implementation of planning and execution methods, which
18 | 15th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change
resulted in greater presence in critical areas and
greater effectiveness of inspection operations.
In order to improve effectiveness of enforcement initiatives, the following measures were
taken:
Dipro/Ibama Archive
The Brazilian REDD strategy
• 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.
Illegal prospection activity found in 2006 during an
operation against environmental crime
• 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.
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
Dipro/Ibama Archive
Synergy to fight environmental crime
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.
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The Brazilian REDD strategy
3.3. Territorial planning
The planning of land use in the region - through the establishment of new protected 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
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 information available, it is possible to identify inconsistencies 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 georeferenced plan and description of the land.
In 2004, complementing the implementation of the National Registry, an administrative
rule was issued determining that holders of ar-
Arpa Program/ MMA
Decades of weak policies for land occupation
and use in the vast territory of the Brazilian Amazon contributed to the expansion of conflicts involving 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 involving public land was the creation of the National Registry of Rural Real Estate by Law n. 10.267 in
The Piagaçu-Purus Reserve, established to protect natural resources and the livelihood of extractivist communities
20 | 15th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change
The Brazilian REDD strategy
eas with more than 100 hectares in the Amazon
with a land status considered critical should reregister their property within 120 days. Re-registration was also adopted in cases of requests for
inclusion or alteration of records of rural properties. Failure to submit the required documentation 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 appropriation 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 environmental offenders
In mid-2007, the Deter system alerted to a
growing deforestation trend during the rainy
season in the Amazon, a period when deforestation-related activities traditionally recede. This
increase was the result of opening of new areas,
driven by a raise of commodity prices in the domestic 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 expanded beyond the agents directly responsible
for illegal cutting to reach state and local governments and, in an unprecedented manner, to also
reach the economic sectors that benefit from deforestation. This led some of the major companies 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 cutting 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 noncompliance, 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.
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The Brazilian REDD strategy
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 deforestation
To 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.
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
Despite sheltering the largest tropical rainforest 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 Parliament to regulate access and economic exploitation 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.
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The Brazilian REDD strategy
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 sustainable 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 communities. The new law rules that the exploitation
or clearing of public forest land without authorization is a crime.
The exploitation of public forests can
only occur through concessions and
the implementation of sustainable
management techniques
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 Forestry Development (FNDF) to “foster the development of sustainable forestry activities in Brazil and to promote technological innovation in
the sector.“
Forests under concessions are monitored by
the Detex System developed by INPE to monitor
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The Brazilian REDD strategy
the environmental impact of timber activities in
the Amazon forest.
The first area to be granted a forest concession by means of public bidding and payment
for the use of forest resources was announced
in September 2007. It is located within the Jamari National Forest, in a region of intense illegal deforestation. Of the 220 thousand hect-
ares covered by the protected area, 90 thousand 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 areas to the north of the Amazon River.
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
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.
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The Brazilian REDD strategy
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
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 organizations 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 coming from illegally deforested areas. By October
2009, 31 companies had signed agreements on
timber, 18 on livestock and 13 on soybean.
Embrapa
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 characteristics: 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 sustainable 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 activities that would consolidate the occupation in
deforested and productive areas, thus preventing 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 forest cutting in new areas.
Based on this assessment, the plan was fully
reviewed, incorporating new initiatives and implementation strategies scheduled for the 20092011 period, for which the PPCDAm’s planning
allocated 1.2 billion reals.
Arco Verde Operation brings farmers and government
staff together to implement initiatives aimed at
sustainable productive activities
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The Brazilian REDD strategy
• Engaging state governments in
the fight against deforestation
km2
State governments in the Amazon region
have gradually become more engaged in the
fight against the causes that lead to deforestation, 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 Forest 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 management 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 investments. To that effect, they need to develop
state plans and policies for deforestation control 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 reduction targets.
Shared responsibility over deforestation control has led federal and state governments to establish a task force to define a joint REDD proposal, 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 compensation 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 deforestation 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 municipalities were not allowed to receive deforestation authorizations for areas larger than five hectares, 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-
Yearly deforestation in the 43 priority municipalities
18.000
16.000
14.000
12.000
10.000
8.000
6.000
4.000
2.000
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009
(estimated)
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.
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The Brazilian REDD strategy
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 environmental registry, except for protected areas and
indigenous lands, and maintain yearly deforestation rates below a limit set by the Ministry of Environment. 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 deforestation-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 municipalities’ transition from predatory to sustainable
production models. Arco Verde Operations
are complementary to environmental inspection and control, and are aimed at, on the one
hand, land titling and environmental compliance of productive land and, on the other, implementing measures that lead to production
models based on social and environmental
sustainability.
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The Brazilian REDD strategy
Other relevant actions of Arco Verde Operation are:
• support to the preparation of local ecologicaleconomic 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 properties were registered for land titling and 300
land titles were delivered by the Terra Legal Program. 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 deforestation to Brazilian savannas
As an outcome of the progress made by the
PPCDAM in the second half of 2009, the Ministry of Environment established the Action Plan
for Prevention and Control of Fires and Deforestation 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 - monitoring 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 region 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 deforestation 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.
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The Brazilian REDD strategy
4.
The National Plan on Climate
Change
As part of its REDD policy, Brazil voluntarily established a 38.9% emission reduction target to be reached by 2020. Most of this reduction will derive from a substantial drop in deforestation rates in the Amazon
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 reduction is equivalent to between 975 million and
1.052 billion tCO2e of avoided emissions. The establishment of objective and measurable targets
to reduce greenhouse emissions signals to Brazilian society and the international community
the serious commitment of the Brazilian initiative, allowing them to monitor and demand the
implementation of this voluntary commitment.
GTZ Archive
Even though Brazil has not quantified emission 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, adaptation, research and development, education,
training and communication measures, as well
as the implementation tools required to address
the issue at the national level.
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The Brazilian REDD strategy
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 agricultural 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 deforestation, both in the Amazon and in the Brazilian Cerrado.
For emissions from deforestation in the Amazon to be reduced to such an extent, the target
of 80% reduction in the region’s deforestation
rate by 2020 was established, through successive five-year reductions of 42% (see chart be-
low). The baseline for calculation of the 80% reduction 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 established 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 implementation of such targets, including those raised by
the Amazon Fund (see following chapter).
Source: Ministry of Environment
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The Brazilian REDD strategy
5.
The Amazon Fund: facility to
finance deforestation reduction
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
Inspired by the Brazilian proposal taken to
Bali in 2007 for the establishment of positive incentives 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 interested in supporting national efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions derived from changes in land
use. The resources of the Amazon Fund are managed by the Brazilian Development Bank (BNDES),
under a non-reimbursable financing modality.
The Fund’s resources can be used in the following types of initiatives: (i) management of
public forests and protected areas, (ii) environmental 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 criteria for the use of resources. State governments
in the Amazon can participate in COFA, provided
they have their own deforestation control plans,
in line with the federal plan. A technical committee (CTFA), composed of highly reputable
experts with renowned technical and scientific
knowledge, is responsible for demonstrating the
effective reduction of carbon emissions from deforestation, calculated with data provided by the
Ministry of Environment.
The Amazon Fund is ready to receive donations from governments, multilateral institutions, non-governmental organizations
and companies, and is being structured to receive 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 million Norwegian kroner (around US$130 million),
and Germany, which donated 22 million euros
(US$ 33 million), mostly through financial cooperation (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
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Ministry of Environment