RAS IMPACT ON PUBLIC POLICIES

2020

Policy to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions in Pará. The government of Pará instituted the ‘Plano Estadual Amazônia Agora’ (Amazon Now State Plan: PEAA) which aims to “take the state of Pará to a state of zero net emissions, or carbon neutrality, through land-use and forest change by the year 2036”, and which was issued through State Decree no. 941/2020. This legislation envisages achieving this objective through the reduction of illegal deforestation and an annual increase in secondary forest cover. RAS contributed to the PEAA with data to generate estimates of CO2 removal rates performed by secondary forests in Pará.

2019

Review of federal bills. RAS has been contributing with recommendations and suggestions in bills (PL) in the Brazilian legislature. An important example is the Política Nacional de Manejo Integrado do Fogo (the integrated national fire management policy), which aimed to promote regulations on integrated fire management, reduce the incidence and damage of forest fires, and restore the socio-ecological and cultural role of fire. Along with other researchers, RAS participated in the review of this PL, synthesising decades of scientific evidence on ecological and social aspects of fire management in the Amazon region.

2015

Revision of regulations for the protection of secondary vegetation. RAS collaborated in the elaboration of Normative Instruction No. 7 of 2015 which replaced Normative Instruction No. 2 of 2014. In this new legislation, new rules were defined for the suppression of secondary vegetation in Pará, depending on the level of forest cover in each municipality in the state. Those municipalities with less forest cover, now have a lower threshold for suppression of secondary vegetation as they have a greater need to restore their forests.

2014

Establishment of regulations for the protection of secondary vegetation. RAS contributed by providing a scientifically sound set of simple and practical parameters to classify the stage of secondary vegetation in the state of Pará, the first for any Brazilian Amazon state. Using the new method, secondary forests were classified in initial, intermediate or advanced stages, which reflects the ecological importance of the evaluated forests. This analysis served as the basis for Normative Instruction No. 2 of 2014 that established rules for the preservation of secondary forest areas in the state of Pará. The effort was the result of a collaboration between several researchers and regional institutions, such as Museu Paraense Emílio Goeldi, TNC and Federation of Industries of the State of Pará (Fiepa), among others.