Brazil’s $120 million arpa program shifts focus to supporting amazon communities who protect the forest

A groundbreaking conservation initiative in the Brazilian Amazon is placing indigenous and traditional communities at the center of forest protection efforts. The Amazon Region Protected Areas (ARPA) program, which safeguards an area roughly the size of New Zealand, has launched a new phase called ARPA Comunidades that prioritizes supporting the people who have sustainably lived in and protected these forests for generations.

Originally established in 2002 by the Brazilian government and later expanded with support from WWF and private donors, ARPA protects 120 conservation areas covering more than 27 million hectares of Amazon rainforest. The program initially focused on creating new protected areas and developing funding mechanisms. Now, with a $120 million fund managed by Brazilian organization FUNBIO, the initiative is turning its attention to the traditional communities whose livelihoods depend on the forest’s health.

Half of ARPA’s conservation areas are sustainable-use units like the Chico Mendes Extractive Reserve, where local families have tapped rubber and harvested Brazil nuts for generations. Named after the murdered environmental activist Chico Mendes, who died defending this way of life in 1988, the reserve exemplifies how traditional practices can coexist with conservation goals.

“We were missing closer attention to the communities living in these sustainable-use conservation units, who were contributing to conservation,” explained Fernanda Marques, a project development consultant at FUNBIO. This community-centered approach represents a significant shift toward recognizing that effective forest protection requires supporting the people who call these ecosystems home.