Cotriguaçu Sempre Verde (CSV)1 is an initiative to promote social and economic development in the municipality of Cotriguaçu in northwestern Mato Grosso, Brazil, through conservation and sustainable management of natural resources. The initiative is led by the Instituto Centro de Vida (ICV), which has focused initially on helping landowners come into compliance with environmental regulations and encouraging them to adopt more sustainable production practices. These activities are expected to simultaneously reduce deforestation and forest degradation in the municipality and promote local development.

By engaging multiple stakeholders from many different sectors, ICV is taking a revolutionary approach to the environmental governance of a subnational jurisdiction. CSV is organized into five components: (i) structuring municipal environmental management; (ii) support for sustainable forest management; (iii) promotion of best agricultural practices; (iv) support for natural resource governance in land reform settlements; and (v) integration of the Rikbaktsa indigenous group (ICV 2011). ICV is seeking to develop local ownership of the initiative by engaging with and building confidence among indigenous groups, cattle ranchers, loggers, small farmers and the municipal government of Cotriguaçu. Thus, the initiative offers important lessons for other initiatives pursuing a multisectorial and multistakeholder approach (ICV 2011).

4.1 Basic facts: Where, who, why and when

4.1.1 Geography

Cotriguaçu municipality covers 9123 km2 in northwestern Mato Grosso (Figure 4.1) in the Brazilian Legal Amazon. Several rivers pass through the municipality, including the Juruena, which has the largest volume of all rivers in Mato Grosso. Around 25% of the municipality has level terrain, 60% is irregular and 15% is mountainous, with an average elevation of 240 m (IBGE 2014a). The climate is equatorial, hot and humid, and the predominant vegetation is dense rain forest. The average annual temperature is 24°C, and the average annual rainfall is 2750 mm. The dry season occurs from May to September, and the wet season occurs from October to April with the greatest rainfall intensity in January through March (IBGE 2014a).

Cotriguaçu was traditionally occupied by indigenous peoples, particularly the Rikbaktsa group who speak the Tupi language. In the mid-1980s, the Cooperativa Central Regional Iguaçu Ltda., a company from Paraná in southern Brazil, bought one million ha of land in northwest Mato Grosso. They planned to sell land to small producers from southern Brazil where agricultural land was scarce, due partly to the creation of the reservoir for the Iguaçu Dam. The first immigrants began arriving in Cotriguaçu in 1984, and in 1988, Juruena municipality – which included Cotriguaçu – was created (Guerra in press). In 1991, Cotriguaçu became an independent municipality. In the mid-1990s, INCRA launched a second phase of colonization in the municipality, attracting families from other parts of Mato Grosso and nearby states including Mato Grosso do Sul and Rondônia. This colonization has meant continued rapid population growth in the region (Guerra in press).

In addition to small farmers and the Rikbaktsa indigenous group, there are large private landholders in Cotriguaçu, including cattle ranchers and loggers. Privately owned lands occupy 54% of the municipality. In addition, the municipality has a conservation unit, the Parque Nacional do Juruena (14% of the total area); an indigenous territory, Terra Indigena Escondido (18% of the total area); and three land reform settlements (Projetos de Assentamento or PAs) – Juruena, Nova Cotriguaçu and CEDERES II (14% of the total area).

The most important economic sectors are forestry, cattle ranching (beef and dairy), timber, agroindustry and small-scale agriculture (production of food for consumption in the municipality). Logging was the main source of employment in Cotriguaçu in the 1990s, but is currently in decline due to improved control of illegal logging and conversion of forest to agricultural fields and pasture. As of 2014, the most important drivers of deforestation are cattle ranching and small-scale agriculture.

Cotriguaçu’s population grew from 4379 inhabitants in 1996 to 14,983 in 2010 (IBGE 2014a). The Human Development Index (HDI) of Cotriguaçu was 0.721 in 2005, slightly lower than the national HDI of 0.76 (UNDP 2005). Small farmers in the land reform settlements (representing about 80% of the municipal population) are generally considered the most disadvantaged people in the municipality. In this chapter, we report results from a survey of 122 households in four communities in the three land reform settlements included in the CSV intervention area.

4.1.2 Stakeholders and funding

ICV, the lead proponent of the CSV initiative and a Brazilian NGO, has been working in Mato Grosso since 1991 and in Cotriguaçu since 2001. ICV has conducted numerous studies on regional deforestation dynamics, and therefore has a good understanding of deforestation issues in Cotriguaçu. To implement the CSV, ICV initially received USD 500,000 in start-up funds from the David and Lucile Packard Foundation (ICV 2009) and later received funding from Fundo Vale para o Desenvolvimento Sustentável (Fundo Vale) for implementation. Fundo Vale is a civil society public interest organization created in 2009 by the Vale Company; it seeks to strengthen the connection between institutions and initiatives for sustainable development.2

To implement CSV, ICV initially partnered with the Mato Grosso SEMA and TNC. SEMA supported the first component of CSV, which focuses on municipal environmental management. TNC initially played a key role in bringing landowners into compliance with environmental regulations, specifically by helping them register in CAR. Registration in CAR has been required by the Brazilian Forest Code since 2012, and is widely considered to be a necessary first step for REDD+. Since the launch of CSV, other partners that have joined the initiative include the International department of Office National des Forêts (ONF-I), the Instituto Floresta Tropical (IFT) and EMBRAPA (the Brazilian federal agency for agricultural research). ONF-I was invited due to its previous experience with reforestation and carbon sequestration in the municipality, and IFT was invited due to its vast expertise in promoting sustainable forest management throughout the Amazon. In addition to sustainable forest management, ONF-I is supporting activities related to agroforestry, Brazil nut production, environmental education and technical training for small producers. EMBRAPA is collaborating with ICV to promote best practices among cattle ranchers in the municipality.

ICV supported the formation of Cotriguaçu’s Municipal Council of Environment (CMMA), which has held regular meetings since 2012 to debate various issues related to public management and the environment (not limited to forests). Since 2013, CMMA has sought to reduce forest fires in the municipality by developing materials on fire prevention and disseminating them in places where fire outbreaks are common.

4.1.3 Motivation

Mato Grosso has historically been one of the states in the Brazilian Amazon with the highest deforestation rates (Governo do Estado do Mato Grosso, ICV, TNC 2009), and as of 2008, it included 20 of the 43 municipalities ‘blacklisted’ by the Ministry of Environment for their high deforestation rates. By 2008, about 38% of the area originally under forest cover in the state had been deforested. With 80% of its tropical forest intact, northwestern Mato Grosso is the last forest frontier in the state, located in the ‘arc of deforestation’ of the Amazon. For this reason, the region has been a top priority in recent efforts to curb deforestation (Governo do Estado do Mato Grosso, ICV, TNC 2009).

In 2008, the state government of Mato Grosso decided to take action to address the state’s reputation as one of the leaders of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon (Governo do Estado do Mato Grosso, ICV, TNC 2009). Specifically, in 2009, the state developed the Mato Grosso Action Plan for the Control of Deforestation and Fires (PPCDQ MT) with the goal of reducing deforestation in the state by 80% by 2020 (as compared to the average deforestation rate in 1996 – 2005). ICV, TNC and SEMA began discussing a potential state REDD+ proposal as a way to capture funding for the implementation of the PPCDQ MT. In April 2011, the REDD+ technical working group from Mato Grosso designed the REDD+ State Law (9878/2013), which was approved in January 2013. This law could eventually strengthen the CSV initiative. The working group is seeking to make the process as participatory as possible, reflecting the positions of all societal sectors.

Originally, ICV planned to implement a REDD+ initiative in the entire northwest portion of Mato Grosso, with a total area of 108,000 km2 and a population of 120,000 people (Governo do Estado do Mato Grosso, ICV, TNC 2009). The high costs and other challenges associated with implementing such a broad initiative, however, led ICV and partners to start with a pilot in a smaller area. After spending several months (in 2009–2010) analyzing potential pilot sites based on deforestation rates, the land tenure situation and other key factors, they finally selected the municipality of Cotriguaçu.

4.1.4 Timeline

ICV began working in Cotriguaçu in 2002. The CSV initiative began in December 2009, when ICV submitted a proposal to the Packard Foundation and diagnostic activities began on the ground (Figure 4.2). There had been other forest conservation efforts in Cotriguaçu prior to the CSV project. In 1995, the Pilot Program to Protect Tropical Forests developed activities in northwestern Mato Grosso, and in 2000, the United Nations Development Programme started a rural development project. These projects sought to improve both forest and non-forest livelihoods, and they engaged local political stakeholders such as SEMA, the Rural Development Association of Juruena, the Juruena Municipal Secretariat of Agriculture and the Instituto Pró-Natura.

4.2 Strategy for the initiative

CSV intends to reduce deforestation and forest degradation and hence GHG emissions, while reducing poverty as a co-benefit. Benefit-sharing mechanisms do not include direct cash payments, but rather are focused on the promotion of sustainable production activities among various stakeholder groups, as described below.

ICV and partners were initially interested in implementing a REDD+ pilot project, as reflected in their 2009 proposal to the Packard Foundation entitled “Developing the Northwest Mato Grosso REDD Pilot Project.” An REL for the intervention area was developed in 2010 through linear projection of pre-initiative deforestation rates from 2000 to 2008 using data from PRODES (2008). The reference level is 14,000 ha of deforestation per year, which corresponds to approximately 7.1 million tCO2e emitted annually. It has not been updated since 2010. In 2011, the initiative was granted funding by Fundo Vale for implementation of CSV. As of 2014, CSV is no longer considered a REDD+ initiative by its proponents, mostly due to the uncertainties and differing perspectives on REDD+. If (and when) the funding and rules for REDD+ become clearer, then the municipality of Cotriguaçu could be well positioned to launch a REDD+ initiative based on CSV.

In terms of (i) structuring municipal environmental management, ICV’s principal approach has been to provide support for CMMA, the municipal environmental council, and to back CAR implementation on private properties and in land reform settlements. Support for CMMA includes establishment of a geotechnology laboratory for environmental monitoring and a regular meeting process (both started in July 2011). Since 2011, the Government of Mato Grosso has required implementation of CAR to promote compliance with the Brazilian Forest Code. While large landowners bear the costs of registering their properties in the CAR system, the municipal government of Cotriguaçu subsidizes the costs for small properties (up to 400 ha).

To provide (ii) support for sustainable forest management, ICV partnered with IFT and ONF-I to implement the Programa de Desenvolvimento do Bom Manejo Florestal no Estado do Mato Grosso (PRODEMFLOR) program, which began in 2011. PRODEMFLOR seeks to increase the number and improve the quality of sustainable forest management plans by offering technical training in skills needed to develop these plans. It is a voluntary membership program in which forest entrepreneurs submit their management plans to an independent monitoring group and commit to improving their practices. In return, producers receive advice and technical training. PRODEMFLOR has been less successful than expected in Cotriguaçu due to the difficulty of establishing a formal agreement between the various organizations involved and an overall lack of efficiency in approving sustainable forest management plans. There is still ongoing dialogue with some timber producers, however, and PRODEMFLOR’s annual monitoring still occurs.

The (iii) best agricultural practices component focuses on improving cattle ranching practices. Specifically, this component promotes: (1) implementation of technology developed by the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation (EMBRAPA; Guide for Good Agro-pastoral Practices); (2) access to subsidized credit to finance large-scale investment in pasture recovery and recuperation of Permanent Protection Areas (APPs); and (3) involvement of production chain stakeholders in debates about improving cattle production systems. Considering the current situation of animal husbandry in the region and the lack of good examples for landowners, the first step of the program is to develop innovative and replicable models of sustainable production systems for beef and milk.

The (iv) support for natural resource governance in rural settlements is the component that is most directly related to the communities sampled by CIFOR-GCS. It is operationalized through the Rural Development Initiative, which seeks to support traditional rural communities (family farmers and indigenous groups) in their organization and planning, collaborative management of territories, and development of low-impact production technologies following the principles of agroecology.

The final component, (v) integration of the Rikbáktsa indigenous group, focuses on the creation of a management plan for the Escondido Indigenous Land, which comprises the largest forested area in the municipality of Cotriguaçu. ICV’s move away from REDD+ in CSV was particularly important in relation to this stakeholder group. In 2011, the National Indian Foundation (FUNAI) declared that some REDD+ initiatives had fraudulent practices, citing as an example community leaders signing documents without the effective support of their communities. ICV engaged in dialogue with the Rikbaktsa tribe and slowly built confidence through a focus on the participatory design of the Escondido Indigenous Land management plan. The Rikbaktsa tribe showed interest if community members could participate as co-managers of the initiative, and as a result various ethnographic studies and activities were carried out and the indigenous management plan was elaborated. The current goal is to incorporate this management plan into the municipal environmental management plan of Cotriguaçu.

Along with CSV, there are also other development and conservation initiatives taking place in Cotriguaçu. First, Coopercotri is a cooperative that opened in Cotriguaçu in 2012 to support the commercialization of rural agricultural products. It initially worked with the dairy sector, but ended up seeking to address needs related to the processing of coffee; the wholesale trade of agricultural pesticides, fertilizers and soil correctives as well as the wholesale trade of fruits, vegetables, roots and tubers. Second, the Balde Cheio (Full Bucket) project is a partnership between EMBRAPA, SEBRAE (Serviço de Apoio às Micro e Pequenas Empresas, an agency that supports small business) and local partners to provide technical support to improve milk production and commercialization, and to try to ensure that local producers have guaranteed outlets for their products. Third, Luz para Todos (Light for All) is a national program of rural electrification, which has reached all of the communities included in the CIFOR-GCS sample (COT1 and COT2 more than a year before the other two). Fourth, since 2013, improvements to the unpaved highway connecting the municipalities of Cotriguaçu and Juruena have benefited the inhabitants of Cotriguaçu. Finally, Bolsa Família, which is a federal government program of conditional cash transfers, has been actively enrolling and making payments to families in Cotriguaçu since 2009.

4.3 Smallholders in the initiative

Through the 1980s, the strategy of the military government in Brazil was to occupy lands in the Amazon in order to protect it from foreign invaders as well as to provide land to landless people. Only in the 1990s were these settlements established in Cotriguaçu and, even today, none of the settlers in these settlements have obtained land titles (Guerra in press).

Our sample includes smallholders in four communities among the three different land reform settlements in Cotriguaçu. Cotriguaçu has many roads, and households are normally distributed along narrow, unpaved, straight-line secondary roads. Communities are organized socially, often along religious lines. In our sample, each community has a church, and people who frequent the same church are associated with the same community. In most cases, people who attend the same church live along the same road.

Between March and April 2011, we interviewed 122 randomly selected households (approximately 30 in each of the four communities). To attain a random sample, we obtained a complete list of households living in each community from the local health agent and/or other local leaders. After verifying that the list was complete, we wrote the names of all households on slips of paper, put them in a box, and randomly selected 30.3

Each community has its own internal political organization, which allows households to lodge complaints with government officials or request goods and services for the community. In all the political associations (except for religious organizations), representatives are elected by members of the association. Female participation is not common in these political organizations, but women are becoming conscious that they need to organize themselves to be able to fight for their interests. This awareness is already visible in COT2, where there is a women’s organization focused on improving access to markets. Table 4.1 lists the institutions in each sample community.

Table 4.2 presents some basic characteristics of the communities studied. The oldest community was founded in 1992, whereas the newest community was founded in 2006. In terms of infrastructure, all communities are accessible by road, but without exception, they all face transportation problems during the rainy season, when roads can become impassable. COT4 is the only community with a full set of basic infrastructure, including a primary and secondary school and a health center. This is because the community is located in the largest land reform settlement area in the municipality, which has a large block of voters and is represented by a small-producers association that has actively and effectively pressured the government to provide these services.

In all communities, rice was unanimously reported as the main dietary staple. More maize than rice was produced, but it was primarily used to feed small livestock. Many small farmers turned to urban markets to buy rice, often imported from southern Brazil at substantial cost. The specific reasons given for limited local production of rice varied by community, but many people blamed the difficulty of transporting rice to market due to the poor condition of the roads, as well as damage by wild pigs (Pecari tacaju) and by diseases.

Table 4.3 presents basic socioeconomic characteristics of sampled households. In terms of years of education, adults (≥16 years old) had studied for approximately five years on average in all communities. In terms of health, adults were unable to work on average 7–17 days in the 12-month period prior to the interview (2010–2011) due to health problems. In all communities except for COT4, more than 50% of households had private toilets. There was high variation in total household income among communities. In COT2 and COT4 (highest income), total annual income was nearly 50% higher than in the community with the lowest income (COT3). In the community with the highest average household income (COT2), the average land holding was the smallest and there were significant conflicts over land tenure.

At the time of our baseline fieldwork, COT3 and COT4 barely had access to electricity, whereas COT1 and COT2 were almost fully served by electricity. This difference was due to the government Luz para Todos Program, which was present in COT1 and COT2 and about to arrive in the other two communities. Phone communication is another limitation in Cotriguaçu. Cell phone reception was rare in the four communities, but many households had a cell phone, which they would use when they traveled to areas with cell phone reception. Finally, household transportation choices seemed to depend on distance to the nearest city. COT1, COT2 and COT3 are not far from the city and are therefore served by regular collective transport. Households in these communities had therefore invested an average of only USD 3000 in transportation assets. On the other hand, COT4 is much farther from the city, with highly irregular collective transport, and households had invested much more in motorcycles and other private transportation assets.

Figure 4.3 shows that cattle ranching generated more than a third (34%) of the total income reported by households in the four communities studied, followed by wage labor, other and crops (16% each). Households in all of the communities except for COT3 are highly reliant on agriculture, including both cattle and crops (Figure 4.4). Except in community COT4, income from the forest and the environment was negligible. The importance of “other income” highlights the role of government transfers (e.g. Bolsa Família and pensions) in the local economy. Finally, wage labor is also a significant source of income, especially in COT1, COT2 and COT3. This is due to medium and large landholders around the land reform settlements hiring smallholders to maintain their farms. One large producer stated that small producers play an important role in sustaining the livelihoods of large landholders and expressed concern that this labor force is being lost due to outmigration from the settlements, although other evidence suggests that outmigration has decreased due to improved conditions (such as electricity) in the settlements.

Table 4.4 presents the relationship between people and the forest in the four communities. Although the average time needed to walk to the forest was less than an hour in all communities, only a few household members reported having occupations related to forests. The highest percentage was 4.4% in COT3, but nonetheless, households in that community reported that only 2% of their income came from forest products.

In general, households in the sample communities in Cotriguaçu show minimal reliance on forest products. The most important forest product is charcoal, which many households use for cooking. However, there is now increasing interest in products derived from babaçu (Orbignya phalerata), a palm that locals had considered a pest because it invades pastures. ICV considers babaçu to have great economic potential for small producers since it can be transformed into many different commercial products such as oil (from the fruits), charcoal (from the coconut cover) and handicrafts (from the palm leaf).

Rather than harvesting forest products, households in these communities are seeking to construct livelihoods around cattle ranching for milk or beef production. In fact, households are also reducing their reliance on cultivation of crops as they shift into cattle ranching. As a result, producers reported that they sometimes were obliged to buy maize from neighboring municipalities in order to feed their animals. Even though it is not legal, some small producers have consolidated large areas of pasture by buying out settlers who have abandoned their settlement areas. In Cotriguaçu, many small producers dream of becoming large cattle ranchers, no longer dependent on crops, and certainly not on forests.

4.4 Challenges facing the initiative

CSV faces many challenges. Mato Grosso is a difficult state for NGOs to work in due to the ongoing duel between environmentalists and defenders of BAU development. These opposite visions are considered the first obstacle for the CSV initiative. Given its multistakeholder nature, CSV must be seen as something beneficial for all groups involved or its success will be compromised. Since CSV is not currently linked to the sale of carbon credits, but rather to articulation among several sectors to reduce deforestation and forest degradation, local governance is a major challenge. As mentioned initially, the different local stakeholders involved in CSV have notably different goals due to their divergent views on land use. This creates a challenge for institutionalizing the program locally and meeting the demands of these different sectors while maintaining a holistic vision for sustainable development in the municipality.

There is also a temporal component related to the governance challenge. In Brazil, as in many other countries, there is the culture of discontinuity of policy initiatives from opposing parties. A political party will rarely continue an initiative from the opposition party – even if the initiative is beneficial for local people – simply because it represents a different political position. Thus, there is a risk that the municipal government in Cotriguaçu might not support CSV in the future if there are big changes in leadership resulting from electoral politics. This is another reason that ICV has promoted strong local autonomy for CSV in order to promote its continuity.

Interestingly, the focus on multiple stakeholders in CSV has not been free of criticism within local civil society groups. For instance, some members of local NGOs have expressed concern about the potential side effects of including owners of medium and large cattle ranches in CSV. The argument is that incentives for cattle ranching activities in a heavily forested municipality, even if under the best practices program, could stimulate the opening of more areas for cattle raising through producers envisaging higher profits. Even within the proponent organization, ICV had to work on its own internal ‘multistakeholder’ process, since the staff who worked with indigenous people had a different vision than those who worked with cattle ranchers. This initial internal organizational work was key to being able to work subsequently with a diversity of external actors (personal communication from R Farias, 27 March 2013).

Finally, even though there have been improvements in the highway connecting Cotriguaçu and Juruena, local road infrastructure still represents a large barrier to any conservation and development initiative. In general, the roads in Cotriguaçu are of poor quality, and many areas remain isolated during the rainy season. This limited access represents a substantial obstacle for marketing of products. This presents a barrier to CSV’s efforts to promote sustainable production, due to the difficulty of accessing markets.

4.5 Lessons from the initiative

The evolution of CSV reflects a common trend among subnational REDD+ initiatives in the Brazilian Amazon. The initial idea of the REDD+ Pilot Program in Northwestern Mato Grosso was to compensate people for avoided deforestation, which was in line with the international discussions at that time. Interestingly, local producers in Cotriguaçu caught wind of this, and there were stories of people planting trees on their properties with the goal of receiving direct economic benefits. However, like other subnational REDD+ initiatives in Brazil, CSV took a direction that did not include direct cash payments and stopped being identified as REDD+, mostly due to the lack of progress on REDD+ at the international level. While proponent organizations needed to mend some initial expectations regarding the receipt of immediate cash benefits, CSV evolved to incorporate a broader vision of promoting green development in the municipality through responding to local demands and building confidence with multiple stakeholders.

CSV is not the only multistakeholder initiative of this scope in the Brazilian Amazon, but it provides some important lessons for this kind of approach. First, it offers an innovative example of creating a multistakeholder team within the proponent organization itself, and internally working through conflicts associated with different values and visions, in order to work effectively with the diverse actors in Cotriguaçu. Second, it demonstrates the challenges and importance of promoting local autonomy for an initiative, and truly listening to the demands of different stakeholder groups when formulating intervention strategies, even if they conflict with the proponent’s ideas. For instance, even though ICV views biodiversity conservation through the strengthening of protected areas as important, it is not currently a priority issue for local stakeholders. Therefore, while ICV can bring the issue into local discussions, it is not included as a key CSV strategy. Finally, CSV highlights the importance of linking to broader initiatives. For CSV to be successful in the future, Cotriguaçu still requires more infrastructure and greater political maturity to accommodate it. There is a need to find a way to internalize these practices, not only among local producers, but also into the political agenda of the municipality so that they will not be forgotten after the next election. Demonstration of the early positive effects of CSV could be one way to strengthen the initiative and keep it on the political agenda of the municipality over the longer term.

4.6 Acknowledgments

This study would not have been possible without the support of people from Cotriguaçu, who were kind and helpful to our research team, and without the support of team members: Cássia Santos, Jaqueline Pysklevitz, Ícaro Cookie Vieira, José Robério Rodrigues, João Covolan, Sr. Andretta and Sr. Araújo. We would also like to express our special gratitude to Renato Farias, Laurent Micol, João Andrade, Veridiana, ‘Seu’ Oriel, Luizão e ‘Dona’ Maria, Elaine Castanha, Agostinho Castanha, Jacqueline Pysklevitz, Márcia Andretta and the people of the communities in our sample. We also thank Renato Farias and Erin Sills for their comments on earlier drafts.