Project information document (pid) concept stage
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- Project ID P114810 GEF Focal Area
- Implementing Agency
- Environment Category [ ] A [X] B [ ] C [ ] FI [ ] TBD (to be determined) Date PID Prepared
- Estimated Date of Appraisal Authorization August 24,2010 Estimated Date of Board Approval
- Safeguard Policies Triggered by the Project Yes No
| PROJECT INFORMATION DOCUMENT (PID)
CONCEPT STAGE Report No.: AB5519
This project will provide US$ 15.9 million in GEF grant funding to build on the successful implementation of the Amazon Region Protected Areas Program (ARPA) Phase 1 and its many lessons learned. This grant will leverage an additional $25 million from the Brazilian Government and $ 45 million from other donors. Background. Biodiversity loss in the Brazilian Amazon is caused mainly by habitat loss due to deforestation. This is driven by a complex set of causes. In general terms, after access to a previously undisturbed area is facilitated – for instance, the construction of new roads – logging is usually the first damaging activity to take place. The commercialization of timber provides capital for further logging, which only serves to accelerate the deforestation. Those attempting to seize public land for cattle ranching and land speculation usually follow clearing and burning the forest to create pasture, which quickly becomes the most significant land use in deforested areas (over 70%). Lucrative agricultural monocultures, such as soybeans, have often followed (those less so recently) as they benefit from cheap and available land (through often usurped and untitled) in the region. Ambiguous settlement policies, undefined and insecure land tenure, and the government's limited enforcement capacity in remote areas provide further incentives for this environmentally damaging pattern of land occupation. In addition to its environmental importance, the Amazon region is also home to several Indigenous Peoples and traditional populations organized in communities with livelihoods strongly dependent on natural resources. These communities’ traditional land use practices have relatively little negative impact on the forest compared to other land uses. Biodiversity stewardship has long included mechanisms through which these communities can benefit from the sustainable use of forest resources. Protected Areas (PA) are important to secure land tenure for traditional communities and eliminates or greatly reduces the risk of these communities being expelled or losing access to natural resources for their livelihoods. Protected from eventual land-grabbers, these groups can plan land use and natural resources allocation aiming at income generation through the continuation of their traditional practices, while averting deforestation. Considering the importance of the creation and consolidation of protected areas in the Amazon, in 2002 the Brazilian Government, with support from the World Bank and financing from GEF, the WWF (World Wide Fund for Nature) Network and the KfW Entwicklungsbank, launched the three-phased Amazon Region Protected Areas Program (ARPA). ARPA’s overall objective is to support the expansion and consolidation of a protected areas sub-system in the Brazilian Amazon, with a total goal of adding 50 million hectares of protected areas to this system. The ARPA Program is one of the main components of Brazilian efforts to fight deforestation and conserve the ecological processes and biological diversity in the Amazon, but is by no means an isolated action. The proposed project is consistent with other governmental strategies and actions, such as the Sustainable Amazon Plan, Amazon’s Positive Agenda, and the National Strategic Plan of Protected Areas. It represents an important share of Brazil’s contribution to the global effort aimed at the implementation of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), particularly the Program of Work on Protected Areas. This project also contributes to the principles of The National Policy on Biodiversity, following the general guidelines established in Decree no. 4,339, and falls within the 2010 National Goals for Biodiversity, established in Resolution n. 3 of December 2006. ARPA’s first phase defined a clear set of quantitative objective goals and a results based framework and created 24 million hectares of new iprotected areas (approximately 13.2 million hectares of strict preservation areas and 10.8 million hectares of sustainable use reserves) in the Brazil’s Amazon Region. The project also consolidated activities in more than 8 million hectares of strict protection areas and established the ARPA Endowment Fund (Fundo de Áreas Protegidas - FAP), currently capitalized at US$ 23.9 million. In addition to these quantitative advances, during phase 1 innovative implementation mechanisms and protected areas management tools were developed and applied. The project has developed a guidebook for the creation of protected areas, which is currently being applied throughout the Brazilian system of protected areas (SNUC). The project has also developed financing standards and criteria for creation and maintenance of protected areas, which is being used as a tool for measuring management effectiveness by the national protected areas institute (ICMBio). In addition, as the world looks to help to protect the Amazon as a globally essential carbon sink, ARPA has been an important showcase of types of mechanisms needed for successful action. A recent model developed for the Brazilian Amazon indicated that by 2050, expansion of protected areas during 2003-07 will have reduced deforestation by 272,000 Km2 (27.2 million ha), thereby avoiding 3.3 gigatons2 of carbon (GT C) emissions, of which 0.4 GT CC is attributable to 13 protected areas established with ARPA’s support. Including an additional 127,000 Km2 (12.7 million ha) of new ARPA protected areas through 2008, the ARPA program would reduce a total of 1.4 GT C (or 5.1 GT CO2) in emissions by 2050. Additional emission reductions are likely to be triggered by the creation of the proposed new 13.5 million hectares of PAs during the second phase. However, precise estimates of such emissions reduction will be attainable only after the exact localization of these areas is defined, and once the model mentioned above can be updated. Contributions from experts from different institutional organizations have been the driver for the success of the ARPA program. From the strong role of nonprofit organizations (especially the Brazilian Biodiversity Fund, FUNBIO) to the programmatic leadership of the Ministry of the Environment, to active engagement from international donors, civil society, scientific advisors, state government agencies, and international and national technical assistance providers, ARPA has engaged the strengths and commitment of many organizations. While there are clearly numerous day-to-day tensions in communicating and managing a large program among so many partners, the successes could not have been achieved by any one of these institutions operating independently. Lessons Learned from Phase 1. This proposed project will be build up on lessons learned from ARPA’s Phase 1 and will pursue in continuing to protect the Amazon’s rich forest biodiversity through the creation, establishment, consolidation and long-term maintenance of Protected Areas (PAs). The creation and consolidation of PAs has proved to be a viable strategy to reduce biodiversity loss and deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon. PAs are valuable tools for the protection of long-term ecological integrity of biodiversity-rich areas, the containment of anthropogenic pressures and the promotion of the sustainable use of natural resources. At the same time, the creation of protected areas alone is not enough. The establishment, consolidation and long-term maintenance of protected areas, in collaboration with local and sub-regional stakeholders, are indispensable for the sustainability of biodiversity objectives. Phase 1 generated various recommendations for Phase 2 of the ARPA Program. Recommendations for the creation of new protected areas include: (i) increasing the importance of mosaics to reduce the risk of isolated islands of biodiversity in future Amazon scenarios; (ii) incorporating revised eco-regional representation - a more sophisticated breakdown that couples eco-regions with vegetation overlays - will help to further steer ARPA Phase 2 to protect types of vegetative coverage that are not adequately represented in today’s PA system; (iii) marrying the science components to a Scientific Panel that will ensure greater integration between the components as well as guarantee efficiency and easy access to the best research data to update databases and priority-setting and improve monitoring; (iv) keeping PA sizes as large as possible, with a minimum 10,000 hectares no-take core zone in each to ensure protection of genetically viable populations; (v) sequencing steps in PA creation should follow lessons learned from Phase 1 for a smoother process; and (vi) fostering creation and strengthening of mechanisms for conflict mediation within the institutions for managing land conflicts. Lessons learned from Phase 1 will be used to scale-up consolidation of the protected areas created under the Program. The envisioned activities include: (i) devising new solutions to ensure more permanent staffing of PAs, and of the Ministry of Environment (MMA) and state agencies responsible for PA oversight and regulation if possible; (ii) streamlining management planning processes to obtain plans within a shorter period of time; (iii) developing cost-effective infrastructure plans for PAs that promote benefits to the local economy, such as creation of jobs; (iv) engaging local communities in conservation by investing in community-led subprojects; and (v) improving administrative procedures to deal with a large-scale project across remote and relatively inaccessible places. Recommendations for the long-term financial sustainability of protected areas include: (i) implementing plans to further capitalize the Trust Fund effectively established during Phase 1; and (ii) focusing other revenue-generating mechanisms for PA sustainability (including, for example, compensation, green lottery, carbon funds, etc.) on generating funding for the system of PAs rather than applying them to individual PAs. Rationale for Bank Involvement. ARPA is in line with the priorities established in the 2008-2011 Country Partnership Strategy (CPS), particularly in terms of supporting protected areas as one of the areas in which the Bank aims to do more to strengthen the “Sustainable Brazil” pillar of the CPS. Additionally, ARPA falls under the umbrella of the Amazon Partnership Framework (APF, part of the CPS) and is in line with its objectives at the national, global and local levels, by (1) contributing to stabilize Amazonia’s contribution to nature conservation and global environmental services; and, (2) improving participatory processes in planning and implementation of large programs. ARPA’s Phase 2 will build on lessons from the Amazon Regional Programmatic Study. This study has examined key institutional bottlenecks to improved natural resource management in the Brazilian Amazon and identified public policies, incentives, and investment initiatives to relieve these bottlenecks. ARPA’s Phase 2 will be developed and implemented in close coordination with other similar projects in the Amazon region. The project is expected to coordinate with the GEF-funded Integrated Management of Aquatic Resources in the Amazon (AQUABIO), which is currently under implementation in three Amazonian river sub-basins (Xingu, Tocantins and Negro). The project will also liaise with the Bank’s regular investment operations in the area, including the Pará Integrated Rural Development Project, the Acre Social and Economic Inclusion Project and the Alto Solimões Basic Services and Sustainable Development Project. The project will also coordinate with the PPG7 Amazon Cartographic Base, which will provide an important enabling element for effective management of natural resources in the Amazon. Furthermore, the project will also benefit from the actions implemented by the GEF-funded National Biodiversity Mainstreaming and Institutional Consolidation Project (PROBIO II), which aims to strengthen biodiversity awareness in several government agencies and in the private sector.
The proposed Project Development Objective is to expand and consolidate the protected areas system in the Brazilian Amazon region and implement mechanisms for their financial sustainability. The Global Environment Objective is to assure the long-term conservation and sustainable use of the Brazilian Amazon’s biodiversity of global importance. The specific objectives of the project are: (i) to create 13.5 million hectares of additional new protected areas in the Brazilian Amazon; (ii) to consolidate 32 million hectares of protected areas (including 6.5 million hectares of pre-existing areas not previously supported by the project); (iii) to further capitalize the ARPA Endowment Fund (FAP), with a goal of raising US$ 100 million by the end of Phase 2; (iv) to test and operationalize additional mechanisms and procedures for financial sustainability of PAs; and (vi) expand the use of the environmental monitoring system for protected areas.
Financing. ARPA Phase 2 has a budget of US$85.9 million, supported by several donors, including this proposed GEF grant, KfW grant, and in-kind contributions by WWF, and in-kind counterpart funds from the Brazilian Government. A significant share of these funds (US$35 million) will be allocated to FAP. Project Design. As most of the targets of ARPA’s Phase 1 have been met, the present proposal for the project’s Phase 2 will scale-up on the work carried out during Phase 1, building on its achievements, innovations and lessons learned. ARPA Phase 2 will retain the structure of Phase 1, and include the following components: Component 1 – Creation of new protected areas. This component will support the creation of new PAs in priority areas of high biodiversity importance with important ecological services in the Brazilian Amazon Biome. It will also assess priorities for the creation of these new PAs to assure the ecological representativeness of biodiversity, the maintenance of ecological processes and the protection of Indigenous Peoples’ livelihoods. This component will target the creation of 13.5 million hectares of new PAs (including parks, biological reserves, ecological stations, extractive reserves and sustainable development reserves) over the next four years. PAs under those five categories may be created at federal, state or municipal levels. This component will benefit from the protected area creation guidebook developed under Phase 1, which is based on lessons learned from different parts of the process, such as land tenure regularization, community involvement, and boundary-setting. The selection of sites for PA creation will be based on the Map of Priority Areas for the Conservation, Sustainable Use and Benefit-Sharing of the Brazilian Biodiversity, the updating process of which, carried out from 2005 to 2007, was supported by ARPA Phase 1. This process will involve broad public consultation. The preparation of environmental, socioeconomic and land tenure diagnoses of the selected priority areas will also be required for the creation of Protected Areas. Finally, due to the characteristics of land tenure in the Amazon region, a significant portion of the forest areas indicated by the Map of Priority Areas comprises unclaimed public lands, a condition that minimizes the necessity of land acquisition by the project. This approach was successful in Phase 1 and is expected to be replicated in Phase 2. Component 2 – Consolidation of protected areas. The main objective of this component will be to promote the management of existing and recently created protected areas in the Amazon region. It will target the consolidation of 32 million hectares of PAs (this area includes 6.5 million hectares of pre-existing PAs not previously supported by the project). The component will focus on consolidation activities and their associated benchmarks, such as land demarcation of protected areas; outfitting protected areas with basic infrastructure, equipment, and core staff (this will be funded in whole by Brazilian government resources) to secure basic actions of protection and community outreach; the elaboration and implementation of management plans for new and existing protected areas including climate-resilience measures and focus on threatened species; supporting community participation and collaborative management of the protected areas through the creation and strengthening of local Advisory Councils, as well as strengthening the capacity of local associations and committees; and building capacities of staff allocated to the protected areas. Phase 1 placed greater emphasis on the creation of PAs rather than their consolidation, given the urgency to secure land regularization. This second phase will increase focus on this component, since there is now a larger number of areas to consolidate – those that were already created and the increased goal for Phase 2. Phase 1 was initially aimed at fully consolidating Strict Protection PAs. However, due to the growing recognition of the role of Sustainable Use PAs’ in biodiversity conservation and in securing sustainable livelihoods for local and indigenous communities, the project will replicate consolidation activities in these PAs as well under Phase 2. Component 3 - Long-term sustainability of protected areas. The objective of this component is to consolidate mechanisms for the long-term financial sustainability of protected areas consolidated under ARPA. One of the main achievements of Phase 1 was the establishment and initial capitalization of the Fundo de Áreas Protegidas (FAP), ARPA’s endowment fund, which reached US$ 23.9 million at the end of Phase 1. FAP was capitalized with resources from ARPA’s donors (GEF, KfW, and WWF) and with over US$ 3 million from other donors, such as O Boticário and Natura (two Brazilian cosmetics companies). The diversity of donors demonstrates ARPA’s high-profile as a major project in the Amazon. This component will work to further capitalize FAP, with a goal of increasing the endowment fund to US$100 million by the end of Phase 2. It will also support institutional capacity building to develop effective and transparent mechanisms for the disbursement of FAP resources to ensure the proper post-consolidation management of protected areas. Other options, in addition to the endowment, will be explored under this component to assure the necessary financial sustainability of the protected areas system. This will include advancing the search for and testing of appropriate revenue-generating mechanisms for PA sustainability and income-generating activities for communities in buffer zone areas to complement existing government mechanisms and fully meet all protected areas management needs. Component 4 – Project Coordination, Monitoring and Management. The institutional arrangements for Phase 2 will replicate and build on the structures of the original arrangements, which were considered innovative and found successful by the Bank and by the Government. This component will support the improved operation of the established Project Coordination Unit (UCP) within the Ministry of Environment (MMA), as well as the operation of FUNBIO. It will also support the strengthening and coordination of the project’s advisory board (namely the Technical Forum, Scientific Advisory Panel, and Project Commissions). During Phase 1, MMA and FUNBIO developed several innovative coordination and management systems, such as: (1) the Contas Vinculadas that allow for more autonomy of PA administrators to spend small amounts of their budgets; (2) the Cérebro system used by FUNBIO and PA administrators to plan and monitor PA budgets; (3) the Conservation and Investment Strategy, which is the project’s budget planning framework; and (4) ARPA’s Integrated System of Coordination and Management (SiSARPA), an IT tool that coordinates the Cérebro system with the National Registry of Protected Areas, facilitating communication among project participants at all levels. These innovations will be maintained and improved during Phase 2. The MMA unit will be responsible for the overall coordination of the four components, and will be specifically responsible for: (a) preparation of annual operating plans; (b) preparation of supervisory reports or any request for information by donors or the Bank; (c) monitoring and evaluation of project activities; (d) assurance that subsidiary agreements and financial execution are effectively carried out; (e) implementation and compliance monitoring of the safeguards in collaborations with ICMBio and State Environment Agencies and (f) communication and dissemination activities of ARPA. FUNBIO will be responsible for procurement and financial management, for both the project and for FAP. The specific objectives of this component are that: (i) the strengthened PCU is effectively coordinating the project; (ii) the Environmental Monitoring System is implemented and operational, and generating useful information on the biodiversity, socio-environmental, landscape and climate issues related to protected areas; (iii) ARPA’s information system (SiSARPA) is fully developed and integrated with the financial management system of PAs to support decision-making; and (iv) the Conservation and Investment Strategy is updated.
Contact: Adriana Moreira Title: Sr Environmental Spec. Tel: 5761+1062 / 55-61-3329-1062 Fax: 5761+1010 Email: amoreira@worldbank.org Location: Brasilia, Brazil (IBRD) Directory: curated curated -> Concept stage curated -> Concept stage curated -> Republic of Côte d'Ivoire Urbanization Review curated -> Report No: aus11011 Central America curated -> Report No. 94474-pk fiscal Disaster Risk Assessment Options for Consideration curated -> Environmental and Social Management Framework for the Costa Rica Telecommunications Sector Modernization Project curated -> Environment Impact Assessment For Jiangxi Shangrao Sanqingshan Airport Beijing Guohuantiandi Environmental Technology Development Center. Ltd. Oct. 2012 Content curated -> Growth through Innovation An Industrial Strategy for Shanghai By Shahid Yusuf Kaoru Nabeshima April 22nd, 2009 curated -> Report No: 70178. People's Republic of China Download 44.74 Kb. Share with your friends:
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