Instituto Juruá is a grassroots non-profit organization formed by conservationists and researchers in close partnership with community leaders and local associations.
We provide financial and technical support for community-based initiatives of natural resource management and offer capacity building opportunities for local communities to help them sustainably manage their natural resources and protect their territory.
The Instituto Juruá’s mission is to develop and support positive initiatives for the use of natural resources in the Amazon, promoting biodiversity conservation, food sovereignty, income generation and improvement in the quality of life of indigenous and non-indigenous communities, based on the integration between scientific research, traditional knowledge and local protagonism.
The Instituto Juruá’s mission is to develop and support positive initiatives for the use of natural resources in the Amazon, promoting biodiversity conservation, food sovereignty, income generation and improvement in the quality of life of indigenous and non-indigenous communities, based on the integration between scientific research, traditional knowledge and local protagonism.
The Instituto Juruá aims to be a reference in generating knowledge and implementing collaborative solutions that ensure an environmentally healthy and socially fair future for Amazonia.
The Instituto Juruá aims to be a reference in generating knowledge and implementing collaborative solutions that ensure an environmentally healthy and socially fair future for Amazonia.
The main areas of activity of the Instituto Juruá are two conservation units of sustainable use located in the region of the mid Juruá River in the municipality of Carauari, in the state of Amazonas, Brazil:
The Reserva Extrativista of the Mid Juruá (RESEX Médio Juruá) is a federal conservation unit created in 1997, it has an area of 286,933 hectares and is occupied by approximately 2,000 people distributed in 13 communities.
The Reserva de Desenvolvimento Sustentável Uacari (RDS Uacari) is a state conservation unit created in 2005, covering an area of 632,949 hectares and occupied by approximately 1,200 residents in 32 communities.
Besides these conservation units, the Instituto Juruá also operates in adjacent areas that include the municipalities of Itamarati, Eirunepé and Juruá. Our goal is to expand our activities to the entire Juruá river basin and in the future to other hydrographics basins, generating fruits for the entire Amazon.
Instituto Juruá was born from a history of more than 10 years of collaboration between researchers and local leaderships from Mid-Juruá that have been working in partnership to ensure biodiversity conservation, sustainable management of natural resources and improvement of the quality of life of river communities in the Amazon Region.
This history began in 2007, when a group of scientists started an applied research project: Projeto Médio Juruá (PMJ). Led by Dr. Carlos Peres, the main objective of PMJ was to conduct scientific researches about sustainable management of community-based forest resources in Reserva Extrativista do Médio Juruá and in Reserva de Desenvolvimento Sustentável Uacari, in the State of Amazonas. In 2011, the first phase of the PMJ ended and in 2013, the project was renewed, but at that point, focusing on the management of aquatic resources. The second-phase research focused on the sustainable management of freshwater fishing.
It was in the context of this project that Dr. João Vitor Campos-Silva developed his PhD thesis, in which the ecological and socio-economic benefits of the Arapaima community-based management were analysed. This research showed the huge ecological benefits of community-based management, both related to the population growth of Arapaima, and to the abundance of species into protected lagoons and beaches, besides the positive impacts on the income generation and the improvement of the quality of life of the communities.
The researchers who took part in PMJ recognized, then, the huge importance of the involvement of local communities in the sustainable management of natural resources and the need to expand its activities in the region, further than specific scientific research projects. Consequently, a strong partnership established between the researchers and the local people has created an atmosphere of trust and partnership and has shown that for conservation models to work efficiently, scientific and traditional knowledge must be together.
So, since the completion of the second PMJ phase, in 2016, the researchers in the region got organized to create an applied research institute, where it was possible to develop scientific excellence to finance the sustainable management of natural resources and support local communities into the implementation of conservation tools and area protection. In 2018, this dream came true with the foundation of the Association of Applied Research, Conservation and Development of the Juruá River, known as INSTITUTO JURUÁ.
The Instituto enhanced itself when Dr. João Vitor Campos-Silva received the Rolex Awards for Enterprise Prize, in 2019. This prize was the recognition of collective work and the result of the partnership between science and local leadership. It has improved Instituto Juruá, which keeps acting together with the associations and leaderships of Mid-Juruá.
