Comment: How Brazil invented a model to save nature

Protecting nature is not a new thing. There is evidence that, since the first human groups thousands of years ago, people have tried to preserve what guarantees shelter, food, energy, health, and so many other essential resources for their own survival and existence.

However, the science dedicated to understanding how to do this – studying, testing and replicating effective tools to protect nature – only emerged in the 1980s, coming to be called conservation biology.

Initially, this new discipline was conceived as a crisis science. Just as medicine or epidemiology deal with emergencies, conservation biology was born to address the accelerating loss of biodiversity. In other words, its goal was to develop evidence-based strategies to save the species that exist on our planet from extinction.

But, like any great idea, it also brought some problems. Conservation biology was based on the intrinsic value of nature. Therefore, he defended saving species and landscapes at any cost, which almost always meant the expulsion of traditional communities and indigenous peoples from their territories.

Basic ecclesial communities in the Amazon

The main way to put this idea into action was through the so-called National Parks. A model created at the end of the nineteenth century in the United States of America and exported to different parts of the world. For many years, conservation biology has embodied this idea and model of action as its most important tool. However, from the mid-1980s, this logic began to be questioned. And Brazil played a key role in this great turning point.

In the 1970s and 1980s, with the advance of infrastructure works in the interior of the Amazon, social movements began to organize to protect their livelihoods. The basic ecclesial communities, for example, played a fundamental role in supporting indigenous, riverside and quilombola communities in the defense of their rights and in the protection of their territories.

Another example is the rubber tappers, workers in the Amazon rainforest who extract the latex from the rubber tree (Hevea brasiliensis) to produce rubber. They organized themselves with the objective of preventing the deforestation of rubber collection areas. What started as a social movement has become a socio-environmental movement.

The struggle of Chico Mendes

The main symbol of this struggle was Chico Mendes, who together with anthropologist Mari Allegretti, took the conflicts in the Amazon to a global agenda. After Chico's assassination in 1988, international commotion – involving environmental NGOs, foreign press and diplomatic pressure – led the Brazilian government to create an area for the exclusive use of rubber tappers.

The initial proposal was an area of agrarian reform. However, to adapt to the characteristics of the Amazon and the growing concern with sustainability, a new conservation model has emerged: a protected area aimed at sustainable use. Similar to the National Park of the American model, but which allowed local groups to continue their traditional practices of resource use.

The first was created in 1990, the Alto Juruá Extractive Reserve (RESEX). Then, other innovative models were born, such as the Mamirauá Sustainable Development Reserve. In a co-creation between local communities and the Mamirauá Institute, the participatory management of the pirarucu (Arapaima gigas) was developed, for example, recognized as one of the most successful cases of sustainable community management in the world.

Chico Mendes' struggle has become a model of conservation for Brazil and the world. Today, about 40% of the world's protected areas follow this model originally inspired by the rubber tapper movement.

Also in the 1990s, another innovative model emerged in the Atlantic Forest. IPÊ - Institute for Ecological Research, founded in 1992, settled in Pontal do Paranapanema, in the west of the state of São Paulo, to save an endangered species of black lion tamarin. At the same time, a large Movement of Landless Rural Workers (MST) was also beginning in the region.

Brazil, a world reference

What could have been a dispute of agendas, turned into cooperation: together, they built one of the largest biodiversity restoration programs in the world. More than 5.1 thousand hectares have already been recovered – about 10 million trees planted – and, today, hundreds of families live from forest restoration, through community nurseries and local forest plantation enterprises. The black lion tamarin had its threat status reduced, going from "critically endangered" to "endangered" on the red list of endangered species in Brazil. This model is also replicated in different parts of the country.

These are just a few examples of a broader movement, which began in different parts of Brazil in the 1990s, which sought to unite biodiversity conservation and social participation. Today, dozens of projects have spread all over the world, making this "new" conservation model also bring social justice and local development.

It was to reinforce this Brazilian importance that we organized a special issue of the scientific journal Conservation Biology, entitled "The Evolution of People Centred Conservation in Brazil". The journal is a pioneer and the most influential scientific journal dedicated to conservation biology. This volume brings together 13 articles showing, through scientific evidence, case studies that show how Brazil is a world reference in nature conservation solutions with a focus on people.

Thus, it fills us with pride to say that Brazil, which created and shared samba and bossa nova with the world, also made an equally valuable contribution: community-based conservation programs.