Last week, Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva signed a decree establishing a new Community and Family-based Forest Management Programme. The event was held in Caravelas (state of Bahia) on Friday (5). The programme will benefit small farmers and traditional populations who depend on Brazilian forests for survival. Together, Brazilian Ministries of the Environment and of Agrarian Development are going to coordinate the ellaboration of actions plans for the 2009/2010 biennium.
"This is the first time the government signals clear support for community-based forest management, this time involving budget resources", said the general director of the Brazilian Forest Service (SFB), Antônio Carlos Hummel. Local communities to benefit from the programme presently handle approximately 60% of the 210 million hectares of public forests managed by the SFB.
The plan will allow indians, quilombolas (who live in settlements called quilombos and descend from 19th century escaped slaves in Brazil), riverbank residents, small farmers and other settlers to have greater access to funds, training and technical support. As a result, they will be able to handle the forest in a sustainable way, based on community-based management plans. These plans help communities organize the extraction of timber and non-timber forest products (NTFPs) - such as oils, barks, rubber and fruit, for example - without ever exhausting forest reserves.
The new programme was established due to popular demand. In 2007, various traditional communities got together and organized an international congress in the state of Acre, in Brazil, to demand a policy for the sector. "This is above all a victory for those who manage and handle forests: from now on, they can count on this specific programme for support", said the manager of SFBs Community Forests department, Márcia Muchagata.
The decree draft was discussed in two consulting councils - the National Commission for Forests (Conaflor) and the Public Forest Management Commission (CGFlop) - which include civil society.
Programme actions, deadlines and activities will be periodically defined in annual community and family-based forest management plans. The SFB is already working on the first of these plans.
New scenario - The potential public to be attended by the policy is significant: as mentioned above, almost 60% os the 210 million hectares of Brazilian public forests are of community use - that is, they harbour communities who have priority of access to their resources. The area also harbours small farmers, 512 thousand indians occupying 105 million hectares of land and 3.524 quilombola communities identified by Fundação Cultural Palmares, as well as 545 thousand families of settlers in Legal Amazon.
Benefited communities have long faced obstacles such as the difficulty in approving obligatory management plans for this type of economic activity and the lack of social articulation and credit. Through government intervention, this scenario should certainly change. "Programme implementation will bring about new work and development opportunities in Brazilian forests, allying conservation of natural resources to income generation", said Márcia.
Frans Pareyn, a forest engineer from the Plants of the Northeast Association who works with settlers in the Caatinga, said that - during the drought period, when agricultural production drops - community-based forest management and handling will complement the income of those who live in that exclusively Brazilian biome. "Through management, a family can gain two to three minimum wages a year on average. Although this doesnt sound like much, it is significant", declared Pareyn.
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