The “Green Grant” and “Conserving Jointly” initiatives

The governments of Brazil and Peru established programs to financially compensate rural communities that are conserving the forest. The Brazilian “Green Grant” (“Bolsa Verde” in Portuguese) was released in October this year. The Peruvian “Conserving Jointly” (“Conservando Juntos” in Spanish), was born a year earlier. The intention of both initiatives goes in the right direction. However they open the door to unpredictable consequences.

The Green Grant is oriented to benefit families that live in protected areas categories that allow sustainable exploitation (extractive reserves and sustainable use reserves, national forests) and to those living in rural settlements. The government of Brazil is hoping that 18,000 families across the country will be included in the program by the end of 2011. This is expected to be expanded to 73,000 families by 2014. The benefit is a quarterly grant of 300 Reais (about US$176) for a period of two years renewable. The conditions for qualify for this grant are very simple: to be “very poor” (an income below 70 Reais per month per person included in the family) and, to sign a commitment to adhere to an undefined forest conservation program. This last point is the weakest aspect of this program that is not attached to any specific or clear goal of deforestation reduction. Additionally, the program can grossly be considered as open to all rural poor in Brazil. It is very strange to discover that the program is not providing any priority for the indigenous people who are the poorest among the poor and the best, so far, at conserving the forest.

In Peru, the previous government established an incentive program for formally titled indigenous communities in its Amazon region that agree to protect their natural forests. The offered compensation is 10 Soles per hectare per year (about US$4/ha). The goal of this program is to gradually achieve the participation of around one thousand communities in the next 10 years. Although the amount paid per hectare is arbitrary, is ideologically linked to ongoing discussions on avoided deforestation and forest degradation to tackle climate change. Communities that do not meet the goal of forest coverage protection do not receive the money and can be excluded from the program. This idea has been criticized because the fixed compensation value does not respond to any serious technical or economic criteria and, especially, because it implies the risk of being considered a permanent right of the beneficiaries, even when not complying with the conditions.

In both cases the cost will be substantial. If the projection of the Brazilian program is fulfilled, it will cost the government more than US$51 million per year (in current dollars), not considering its administration cost. If this cost does not return in real environmental benefit, this will be very sad especially considering that the protected areas system of Brazil is almost abandoned, with a yearly budget that is only a small fraction of this amount. In the Peruvian case, the cost will also be very high as when fully developed it may reach 11 million hectares. But, as it is clearly directed to indigenous communities and because it is pointing to one single and easier to check purpose - avoided deforestation – it is much more likely to achieve its objective.

It is therefore, quite obvious, that while "Conserving Jointly" is motivated by the conservation of the forest in the Amazon, the motivation of “Green Grant” is essentially the redistribution of incomes. The law establishing this last program does not say what are the means and objectives of the "Program to support the environmental conservation" to which the beneficiaries must adhere. On the other hand, knowing the institutional weakness of the state, especially in the Amazon, to provide any kind of technical support and, worse, even to take care of protected areas, one can imagine that its environmental objectives will be only on paper. The definitions and demonstrations to support that the “Green Grant” is something beyond another welfare program are missing.

If, as it seems, the grant will be delivered to the families of protected areas without requiring anything concrete in return, the only expectable result is an acceleration of deforestation and forest degradation, as it has been going on in most of the extractive reserves in Brazil. Worse, this benefit can attract more people inside protected areas, accelerating deforestation, hunting and fishing, as well as logging and other forest resources exploitation. If so, the “Green Grant” will be another vector of ecosystems destruction.

Instead, if well planned and executed, the “Green Grant” program could become a source of an improved management of protected areas. The categories of protected areas that allow direct use of resources are currently poorly managed in Brazil. A monthly payment of four hundred Reais can be transformed in several days of effective work for conservation (i.e. maintaining infrastructure, control, visitors’ guiding, fire-fighting, participation in wildlife census, etc.) including their own awareness or training. The result, in each protected area, may be expressed in deforestation avoidance. Otherwise, this program will be another form of using the name and the concept of nature conservation just to practice the opposite, deceiving once more the citizenship.