CSF-Brazil Director, Pedro Gasparinetti, CSF-Brazil consultant, Rodrigo Ozorio, and leaders from the Wazare indigenous village.

Conservação Estratégica (CSF-Brazil) is pleased to announce the launch of a new publication "Guide for the Participatory Development of Sustainable Business Plans” (in Portuguese). Women of the Paiter Suruí people collecting the babassu fruit in the Sete de Setembro IL, in Rondônia state.

Workshop participants doing group work. Conservação Estratégica (CSF-Brasil) led a workshop on sustainable business plans for products from the Amazon. The aim was to create an open-space for dialogue on possible ways to support the development of sustainable businesses and the strengthening of their value chains in the Brazilian Amazon.

CSF-Brazil is pleased to announce the launch of a new publication: "Cost Benefit Analysis of the Construction of the Castanheira Dam" (in Portuguese). The Arinos River, located in the Juruena sub-basin – an important tributary of the Tapajós River – in the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso, is known for its aquatic biodiversity. Currently, however, there are more than 100 dams proposed in this sub-basin, which may threaten the biodiversity and local community’s way of life. One of these is the Castanheira Dam.

CSF-Brazil is pleased to announce the launch of a new publication (in Portuguese): "The values of ecosystem services of the Brazilian mangroves, economic instruments for its conservation and the Salgado Paraense case study". Roughly 90% of mangroves in Brazil are located in protected areas (PA). However, there are important deficiencies in financial sustainability and resource management that affect natural capital stocks, biodiversity and thus, local communities.

Aerial view of a road through the Amazon forest in Ecuador. Photo credit: Dr. Morley ReadInfrastructure investments in the Amazon can support economic and social development, and bring services to remote populations. However, if poorly planned, they can also result in irreversible, destructive change to the environment and ecosystem services on which communities depend, and lead to inefficient use of economic resources.

A rural area near São Paulo, Brazil. Photo credit: Filipe Frazão

CSF-Brazil recently hosted the seminar "Implementation of Environmental Reserve Quotas (CRA) in Brazilian states" to help promote more economically efficient and environmentally sound forest conservation, in partnership with the Federal University of Minas Gerais state (UFMG), the Forest Code Observatory (OCF) and the Environmentalist Parliamentary Front, on December 7th at the House of Representatives in Brasília, Brazil. More than forty people attended the event, representing the Ministry of the Environment, the Environment Secretariats of thirteen states, non-governmental organizations, research institutions, national and international universities, as well as the organizing institutions.

CSF staff conducted a field visit to villages of the Munduruku people in the Brazilian Amazon. These communities have been adversely affected for several years by the construction of the Teles Pires and São Manoel hydropower plants. Scenic beauty of the Teles Pires river.

Tropical savannah (Cerrado) area in Brazil. Photo credit: Pedro Gasparinetti.