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Brazil

Amazon Rainforest Clashes Highlight
New Urgency of USAID Biodiversity Programs

The recent murder of Sister Dorothy Stang, an American nun, environmental activist and USAID partner in the Amazon, has shocked Brazil and the world, and drawn attention to the high stakes frequently involved in USAID biodiversity conservation and community development.

“Environmental and biodiversity programs are usually perceived as saving a species or cleaning up a river,” said Adolfo Franco, assistant administrator of USAID in charge of the Latin America and Caribbean (LAC) region. “More often than not, today’s biodiversity programs in the Americas and the Caribbean not only do this but also make significant, long-term changes in human behavior as well.”

He added, “Many of our natural resources and biodiversity programs effect change at local levels, especially among indigenous and traditional communities. Sister Dorothy Stang’s tragic and untimely death brings home the risks that can occur when local and indigenous communities step up to manage and sustain their own natural resources.”

Sister Dorothy was a 73-year-old American nun who moved to the Amazon 23 years ago to help local communities protect the rainforest by promoting long term, responsible timber and agricultural practices. While battles over land on the Brazilian frontier go back more than a century, they have recently escalated, as roads have made the rainforest more accessible to commercial exploitation.

Sister Dorothy was killed at a settlement along the Trans-Amazon Highway where loggers and ranchers are encroaching on land set aside for local communities.

The photo reflects one of USAID's forestry projects in which the local community (Paragua, Bolivia) participates on equal footing with large forest timber and non-timber products manufacturers. (Photo by USAID-Bolivia)

USAID biodiversity programs in the Latin America and Caribbean region are diverse and include the following:

• Control of forest fires (Mexico, Guatemala, Brazil)
• Protection of coral reefs (Yucatan, Caribbean)
• Protection of ecosystems and species (eagle in Panama, jaguar habitat in Belize, Mexico, and Guatemala)
• Conservation of forests (Brazil, Bolivia, Ecuador, Guatemala, Honduras, Haiti, Jamaica, Paraguay, Peru).

Franco said that USAID will build on these programs and later this year launch a $50 million, five-year initiative that will fund biodiversity projects in several countries in the Amazon Basin, including Brazil, Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru. The program will place a premium on improving the skills of indigenous groups as well as local and regional non-governmental organizations.

“Conservation doesn’t stop at borders. Rivers flow, birds fly, the animal kingdom runs without boundaries,” Franco said. “Together with other regional partners, USAID will serve as a catalyst to bring together conservationists and decision-makers from the Amazonian countries to help solve their own as well as mutual conservation challenges. At the same time, we’re building skills and encouraging open, inclusive discussions to proactively resolve conflicts over the use of forests and other valuable natural resources.”

He said that biodiversity projects frequently take USAID to remote locations and depend upon the empowering of remote populations, whose livelihoods frequently depend on natural resources such as forests, fisheries and wildlife. “The tragedy of Sister Dorothy’s death underscores how critical many of these projects are to changing more than landscapes,” Franco added.

In response to the murder, the Brazilian Government has declared that it will intensify the process of creating reserves and other conservation areas. The government also committed to continue defining a development model for the Amazon region based on sustainability, human rights and peace.

The Latin America and Caribbean region is home to about 27 percent of the world’s mammals, 34 percent of its plants, 37 percent of its reptiles, 43 percent of its birds and nearly half of the world’s amphibians.

A Sample of LAC Biodiversity Case Studies

Creating Eco-tourism in Bolivia -- Working with several partners including the Wildlife Conservation Society, USAID mobilized and trained 23 indigenous communities to manage and create Bolivia’s Kaa Iya del Gran Chaco National Park. The project ultimately reached an estimated 8,000 people and established what is now the world’s largest protected dry tropical forest and the largest national park in the Americas, co-created and co-managed by an indigenous group.

Restoring Forestry to Haiti’s Barrens Hillsides – In response to widespread devastation from illegal logging as well the flooding and uprooting of trees from last summer’s Tropical Storm Jeanne, USAID has organized an agro-forestry strategy to reverse soil erosion and to plant or graft 160,000 coffee, mango and cocoa trees to benefit an estimated 69,000 farmers. In addition, USAID supports the production of wasps to manage the pink mealy bug hibiscus populations which are a dire threat to most of Haiti’s fruit trees.

Generating Water in Panama’s Chagres National Park – USAID is working with partner The Nature Conservancy to preserve the diversity of the ecosystem in the Chagres National Park so that it will generate and store quality water for human and industrial consumption, including Panama Canal operations

Eco-tourism Parks in Jamaica – Ranking fifth among the islands of the world with respect to endemic species, USAID has brought together a series of conservation projects to reforest huge areas as well as to help local communities to develop management plans to conserve and market marine and coral reef ecosystems that were formerly in peril.

Protecting Maya’s Jaguars – Few tropical forests remain due to slash-and-burn practices along with extensive cattle ranching in the Maya region in southeast Mexico, Belize and northern Guatemala. This has severely reduced the jaguar’s habitat and threatened its survival. USAID has brought together NGO’s research institutions, the agencies of three governments and sophisticated high quality satellite imagery to create biological corridors to protect the jaguars and other species in the region.

Saving the World’s Second Largest Coral Reef – The unparalleled beauty of Meso-American reef -- the world’s second largest coral reef on the Mexican-Belize coast of the Caribbean -- has been threatened by pollution, especially sewage and landfill contamination. Creative marketing (creation of a Green Globe Award for hotels that earn an environmental certification) as well as an integrated municipal/private sector waste containment program are components of a strategy to reduce pollution, protect the Caribbean coast and encourage eco-tourism.

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