Protect the Amazon rainforest and its biodiversity

The project and its challenges

The Amazon is the world’s largest tropical rainforest, home to almost half of the planet’s biodiversity, and it plays an essential role in the water cycle and climate regulation. And yet deforestation continues at breakneck speed, largely due to land-use changes for agriculture and livestock.

The forest in Peru, which is home to 10% of the entire Amazon, is particularly threatened by slash-and-burn deforestation to expand agricultural areas along with the introduction of intensive monocultures that deplete the soil. This deforestation is a manifestation of the precarious position of local populations who transform the rainforest floor for agricultural exports (such as coffee or cocoa) or for subsistence agriculture, which gradually nibbles away at the rainforest as it expands. The destruction of the rainforest is thus a vicious circle, with economic, social and ecological crises all fuelling each other.

In its efforts to halt this complex process of deforestation, Envol Vert is launching a regional-scale project across the entire Amazon biome that aims to assist civil society organisations (agricultural cooperatives and conservation teams) in developing practices for the sustainable management of natural resources. This project—being developed in three regions in Peru—hinges on four key objectives, each with its role to play in mitigating the demands on rainforest resources and protecting existing forests:

• Protect the endemic biodiversity of the rainforest in areas of intervention, including the 40,000-ha Yanayacu-Maquia conservation area;
• Establish diversified and productive agroforestry systems (350 ha) with local communities;
• Improve food security and sources of income for the community by creating economic alternatives;
• Build the collective skills of civil society stakeholders and support good practices by creating a network to promote agroforestry and rainforest products.

Key figures of the projec after two years of partnership (2021-2022) :

• Reintroduction of the 5 endangered tree species on restoration plots ;
• Maintenance of 22 community nurseries for reforestation plots ;
• Conversion of 300 hectares of agricultural plots into agroforestry systems ;
• Training of 275 beneficiaries to develop their own agroforestry systems and promote good practices for sustainable agriculture ;
• Development of 4 economic alternatives (honey, aguaje, açai, fruits) ;
• Organisation of a seminar on the responsible coffee and cocoa sector ;
• Carrying out training on gender and collectivism.

The objectives of the partnership renewal are as follows for 2023-2025 :

• Conversion of farmers’ plots into agroforestry systems or reforestation ;
• Training and empowerment of participants in harvesting, processing and marketing of products ;
• Promote the preservation of the Peruvian Amazon through capacity building of civil society and the constitution of an agroforestry network ;
• Monitoring and protecting 38,699 hectares by park rangers ;
• Formulation of community action plans for the conservation of threatened species.