The French Development Agency (AFD) will invest 9.5 million euros over four years in the Amazon Territories Project – TerrAmaz, which is aimed at supporting Amazonian territories in implementing their policies to combat deforestation and transition to a model that allows combining low-carbon economic development with ecosystem conservation. The initiative will be implemented by a consortium integrated by the Centre for International Cooperation in Agricultural Research for Development (CIRAD) in partnership with ONF International and the organization Agronomists and Veterinarians Without Borders (AVSF). The activities will be developed in four countries: Brazil, Ecuador, Peru, and Colombia. The municipalities targeted in Brazil are Cotriguaçu, in Mato Grosso and Paragominas, in Pará.
During the online event to launch TerrAmaz in Mato Grosso, the regional director from AFD Brazil Southern Cone, Philippe Orliange, underscored the importance of having an integrated action of local players, with a landscape vision, in line with the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). “This search for an integrated approach to the SDGs becomes even stronger when it is associated with a territorial and global vision. An approach that Mato Grosso, through the PCI initiative, has been developing since COP 2021, in Paris, in 2015”, he stressed.
In Cotriguaçu, the activities of the project will be implemented by ONF Brazil in partnership with the Instituto Centro de Vida (ICV) and their most specific goals will be: the participatory development of a tool for planning, management, and territorial monitoring in the form of an online platform including maps, data, and indicators; the promotion of sustainable practices with field activities, training, exchanges and setting up of low carbon coffee and livestock agroforestry system demonstration units; and the structuring of an agricultural industry for Brazil nuts, with support for business management, marketing and certification.
The director of ONF Brazil, Estelle Dugachard, further noted that Mato Grosso is currently at an appropriate stage with major actions and investments for the promotion of low carbon development, embodied in the PCI Strategy. “The municipality of Cotriguaçu was one of the first in the state to start a territorial compact dynamic, having signed its own goals for the territory, aligned with the state goals that are in line with the global objectives”, she added.
Cotriguaçu was chosen for it is a territory with great potential for transformation, which already has local governance instruments and productive assessments that will provide support for land use planning activities, combating deforestation and agroecological development for family farmers and indigenous people. IDH was part of the consultation process conducted by AFD to build this program throughout 2019, during which investments in the territorial governance models of Juruena and Paragominas were considered to be important factors for the choice of these regions.
TerrAmaz supports the Inclusion goals of the Juruena Valley Regional PCI Compact, by complementing investments already made by the REM Program in Cotriguaçu, by supporting the Brazil Nut Collectors Association of PA Juruena (ACCPAJ) in the process of setting up and operating an agribusiness to benefit the product. “The REM enables the purchase of the equipment and our work involves creating capacity and providing support for ACCPAJ to manage and administer the agroindustry,” explained Camila Horiye Rodrigues, social business coordinator at Instituto Centro de Vida (ICV), an NGO that is leading this activity.
On the relevance of a territorial policy as a development point, Camila points out that the regionalization of the PCI, specifically the Inclusion axis, requires aligning with public policies, in this case, the State Plan for Family Agriculture, a plan that includes Cotriguaçu as one of the pilot municipalities for implementation.