The month of April brought with it several reasons for IDH to celebrate its achievements. Exactly one year ago, IDH signed strategic partnerships to support the sustainable landscape development of Mato Grosso.
The first of these, in April 2019, was signing a Letter of Intent for setting up the PCI Regional Compact (Produce, Conserve and Include) in the town of Barra do Garças, which was followed by signing the Memorandum of Understanding among 35 institutions, both public and private, and civil society, in June 2019. In just one year, what had been mere desire had become solid action, by setting up a model of land governance for implementing the PCI Regional Compact of Barra do Garças, by the signatories. The second stage of the structuring was the publication, in December 2019, of Municipal Law nº 4.156 that formalized the setting up of the program, the Counsel and the PCI Fund. As a result of this, Barra do Garças, a significant town in the Araguaia Valley, is on its way to becoming a reference in sustainable landscape development, and can rely upon support from strategic partners who are active in setting up structures that enable investments in a long-term vision model to be received and managed.
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A similar initiative was developed by IDH and partners in Sorriso, in the northern region of Mato Grosso. In Abril 2019, 25 representatives from the public and private sectors and civil society and farmers signed the Memorandum of Understanding for setting up the Sorriso PCI Regional Compact, the goals of which were voluntarily agreed at the Production, Conservation and Inclusion hubs. Even before one year was up, in March 2020, the Compact received its first direct investment, through the Cultivating Sustainable Life Program, which is an IDH partnership with the Friends of the Earth Club (CAT). The aim of these activities is to make responsible production of soybean more valuable, promote the restoration of degraded areas and offer technical assistance to small farmers. The investment expected by the end of 2021 is 680 thousand euros in resources from IDH with a potential increase of up to 1.1 million euros as a counterpart in training and investment from private initiative (CAT and local farmers).
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In April 2019, IDH also signed an important partnership for conserving the native forests in Mato Grosso, by improving the production chain of sustainable forestry management. In order to do this, a Memorandum of Understanding was established with the Centre for Producing Industries and Wood Exporters of Mato Grosso (Cipem). After one year, a wide and innovative study was presented that analysed and compared the System for Selling and Transporting Forestry Products (Sisflora–MT), together with the main protocols and international certificates for wood. The result is a plan of action for improving the reputation and access to native wood in Mato Grosso on the European Market. The actions support the PCI State Strategy, one of whose goals is to reach 6 million hectares in area of sustainable forestry management in Mato Grosso. The state currently has about 3.7 million hectares of managed private forests.
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IDH will be investing 9 million euros in the period from 2016 to 2021 in Mato Grosso, which covers the PCI Strategy, the PCI Institute, support for the State, PCI Regional Compacts and co-financing projects with the private sector.
“Mato Grosso is an environment that offers innumerable opportunities for our type of work, whose aim is to try to cause large-scale impact involving diverse social participants, consumer markets, farmers, companies and governments. Seeing these results taking place in practice motivates us even further”, says IDH’s executive director in Brazil, Daniela Mariuzzo.