Instituto Juruá has become increasingly concerned with land acquisitions in the Amazon region, mainly by companies focused on the carbon credits market and the commercialization of bioeconomy products. These companies have involved local communities in projects that present significant economic gains for them, but offer questionable benefits for these local communities.
In this sense, Instituto Juruá contributed to strengthen the concept and practice of socio-bioeconomy, which has as one of its pillars the fairer distribution of the benefits of the production chains with local communities that are not only guaranteeing the conservation of biodiversity, while at the same time they are holding traditional knowledge for a sustainable use of natural resources.
Additionally, we seek to strengthen the narrative of recognizing traditional populations as the primary actors ensuring the maintenance of ecosystem services. One of the economic alternatives for this recognition is payment for the socio-environmental services they perform.
In 2022, the Instituto Juruá acquired an area of approximately 12,000 hectares in the Lower-Mid Juruá region. The area is located within a Fisheries Agreement area managed by a local association called Association of Agroextrativists Residents of the Lower Mid-Juruá (AMAB). The acquisition of this property aims to co-build, with local communities and public authorities, a conceptual model of a Community-Based Private Protected Area.
This program aims to build the conceptual model of a Community-Based Private Protected Area through practical experience in a model area in the Baixo Médio Juruá region. In this sense, the program intends, based on the study of pre-existing models and co-construction with AMAB and 10 local communities, to build a management plan to operate in this area. This plan aims both to guarantee the conservation of biodiversity, as well as to enable the implementation of socio-biodiversity production chains, payment projects for environmental services, and educational and ecological tourism activities that allow for a fairer sharing of both economic and social benefits for all the communities involved.
