With the funding of Climate and Land Use Alliance (CLUA), an international collaboration of foundations that believe that forests and the sustainable use of land are an essential part of the global response to climate change, the Interelos Institute has been developing a study on community-based production chains in the economic matrix of Resex Verde Para Always, the largest extractive reserve in Brazil, with an area of 1,289,362.78 hectares, located at the mouth of the Xingu River and occupying about 75% of the territory of the Municipality of Porto de Moz, in the State of Pará.
Its creation in 2004 was the result of various social struggles to preserve the integrity of community territories, as well as their economic activities and natural resources. Therefore, one of the basic objectives of the project is to protect the livelihoods and culture of an estimated population of between 10 and 11 thousand inhabitants, collectively and participatively building business plans for up to two production chains, chosen and prioritized by local actors in the reserve, with a focus on income generation, social protection and forest conservation.
The study being developed by Interelos is divided into 4 main phases:
- Strategic articulation with local actors for the convergence of purposes in order to understand which value chains have the potential for the development of business plans;
- In-depth study of organizational, production, marketing and marketing needs for products derived from prioritized value chains;
- Understanding of the educational model (Rural Family House) and identification of opportunities for improvement and integration with prioritized value chains;
- Elaboration of two business plans for prioritized chains in a participatory way with local actors and definition of a financing strategy for structuring and implementing attractive and viable value chains.
At the same time, the Instituto Interelos team has been collecting territorial data from the municipality of Porto de Moz (PA) at the IBGE, with information regarding the topic of rural education, in order to prepare material that consolidates the historical context of the institutions that enable the interaction between formal education and the local reality in the pedagogical curriculum, such as the educational model Rural Family House. This analysis aims to identify opportunities for improvement and integration of prioritized production chains.
In addition, the Interelos team recently presented a Preliminary Technical Report referring to the first phase of the study, containing methodology, preliminary results, regional historical aspects, strategic information on production chains and rural schools. Above all, the study identified some of the main opportunities and challenges in the region and pointed out the next steps of the work, always seeking to prioritize the construction of a more inclusive economic vision of the Resex Verde para Sempre and strengthen its regional context.