On the afternoon of the 16th, ISPN's technical advisor, Juliana Napolitano, presented the organization's work and results with the PPP-ECOS projects in the Cerrado region to be discussed among employees of the National Institute for Colonization and Agrarian Reform (INCRA) from 18 Brazilian states. This Working Group (WG) meeting, promoted by INCRA itself, aimed to exchange experiences to support and guide the development of the Environmental Regularization Program (PRA) in agrarian reform settlements.
Napolitano highlighted the community focus of the Program, in which the productive methods of the beneficiaries – farming families and traditional peoples and communities – are aligned with environmental conservation. The progress achieved, such as product diversification and food sovereignty, demonstrates the importance of community leadership in all stages of project development. “I was impressed by the fact that the community created and executed the project. This confidence in community potential is important,” said Hulda Silva, an environmental analyst from INCRA in Maranhão.
According to Juliana, turning this focus to the community ensures the development of actions geared towards its real needs. “It’s necessary to show that, in the Cerrado region for example, when we talk about family farming, we are addressing the use of technologies for sustainable production in the face of the effects of climate change on communities. Therefore, we need alternatives to optimize these possibilities and ensure that, along with environmental regularization, comes an improvement in the quality of life of these agents,” she pointed out.
The horizontal resource allocation model developed by ISPN was also discussed and served as inspiration for the actions. According to the ICRAF coordinator in Brazil, Andrew Micolis, the way funding is made available provides access opportunities for different types of communities. “This allocation model that PPP-ECOS had at ISPN was innovative. The project form is designed in a way that an association with a low level of education can access; it's an inspiration. That's the difference: governance focused on the grassroots community,” he commented.
The PRA (Environmental Regularization Program) will focus on Brazil's six biomes and will seek environmental compliance inspired by the experiences of those already working in this area, such as ISPN. According to André Freddo, an analyst in Agrarian Reform and Agrarian Development at INCRA in Brasília, the next stage of the program's development is scheduled for the beginning of the second semester. "Each state can have its own specific regularization process, so we gathered representatives from each state to present different perspectives and, also based on already established experiences, build a proposal for environmental regulation for INCRA," he commented.