ECOMAPUA Amazon REDD+ Project
Sustainable forest management to protect valuable ecosystems
Marajó Island, Pará State, Brazil*
The Ecomapuá Amazon REDD project is located on the Marajó island, Pará State, in the Brazilian Amazona region.
The Marajó várzea is a valuable and threatened ecosystem at the same time.
The primary aim of the project is to avoid the deforestation of an area of 86,269 hectares on a property acquired by Ecomapuá Conservação Ltda.
This project will generate reductions of 1,432,278 CO2e over a 30-year project period (from 01/01/2003 to 12/31/2032) on a subarea of 4,253 hectares.
In addition to forest protection, a part of the revenue from the emission certificates is used to improve the social and ecological conditions of the local population.
The Marajó island is an extremely high priority within the Brazilian Ministry of Environment, the Ecomapuá Amazon REDD project contributes to the national nature conservation targets and encourages at the same time further protection efforts in this valuable ecosystem.
*Brazil
Paradigm in climate protection
For many years, environmentalists like the WWF have praised Brazil as the real world champion in climate protection. The Brazilians are permanently fighting against deforestation and have meanwhile developed into a model for climate protection. Over the last years, Brazil has reduced its greenhouse gas emissions by about one third, saving more than 750 million tons of carbon dioxide annually. This is equivalent to a value of about 2 percent of the global carbon emissions. The major success is mainly due to the drastic ban on the logging of the Amazon jungle. Since 2013, 70 percent fewer square kilometers of the forest are cleared as compared to 2005. (David Nepsted. Earth Innovation Institute, San Francisco)
The government declares land areas as protected areas, and thus contributes to the improvement of the recording of rural areas. In addition, the responsibility for environmental protection measures was shifted to the rural districts, which meant that farmers were no more allowed to be granted credits in the regions with a particularly high forest loss.
Another reason for the success of Brazil is due to the pressure from environmental organizations and large food companies such as Nestlé or McDonald on the country, driven by global trends and fear that their image could be damaged. Since 2006 for example, different campaigns of Greenpeace for instance led to the result that less than 1 percent of the soya and corn cultivation areas was deforested.
Germany also supports Brazil’s efforts in climate protection. In 2015, Angela Merkel provided 550 million Euros, according to a climate protection agreement between Germany and Brazil. The funds will be used specificallyto promote renewable energies and to protect the tropical forest.
This assistance mainly aims at reducing the clearing of the tropical forest to zero by 2020. A large part of these financial resources are development loans of the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development.
During the signing ceremony in situ, the Chancellor emphasized the great importance of the protection of the rainforest: “We are very pleased that there are ambitious developments regarding the halt and the reduction of deforestation”.