Brazilian government protects new tracts of Amazon

9 June 2008

WWF-UK welcomes the Brazilian government's creation of three new protected areas in the Amazon to mark World Environment Day.

Rio Negro forest reserve, Amazonas, Brazil © WWF-Canon / Michel Roggo

The announcement comes just a month after the government's creation of four more protected areas in the Amazon; together these will cover a total of 5.8 million hectares of the Amazon.

The WWF Network supports the creation of protected areas for forests around the world because they have an important role in both conserving biodiversity and reducing greenhouse gas emissions (it is estimated that deforestation and degradation are responsible for up to 20% of global greenhouse gas emissions).

Saving precious forests
Brazil's Amazon Region Protected Areas Programme (ARPA) has been instrumental in the formation of these protected areas. It is the world's largest tropical forest conservation programme and aims to protect 60 million hectares in the Amazon by 2013 – an area equivalent to the size of Spain and Portugal.

"ARPA has been a major conservation success story and remains core to the WWF Network's overall strategy and vision for the Amazon," said WWF International's director general, James Leape.

ARPA currently stores 4.6 billion tons of carbon, which represents one-tenth of the carbon stored in the remaining forests of the Brazilian Amazon. This is nearly 20 times the annual CO2 emissions of Germany.

A recent study by WWF found that the 31 million hectares of the Amazon currently protected under ARPA has the potential to reduce total carbon emissions from deforestation and forest degradation by 1.1 billion tons by 2050.

"The Amazon plays a key role in regulating global climate and ARPA is a strong instrument for reducing carbon emissions from deforestation," explained WWF-Brazil's chief executive officer, Denise Hamú.

ARPA is a Brazilian government initiative in partnership with WWF-Brazil, the Brazilian Fund for Biodiversity and donors. It was set up in 2003 to save significant areas of the Amazon over a period of 10 years.