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ARPA is considered the biggest conservation program of its kind, successfully leveraging cross-sector support through a financing model that has inspired similar projects around the world, and delivered tangible outcomes on the Amazon forest conservation. The fund guarantees donations over the long term with a clearly defined scope, offering more stability to the implementation of the program.

“Investments indeed translated into a reduction of deforestation and reduction in CO2 emissions resulting from deforestation,” said Britaldo Soares, an associate researcher at the Center for Technology and Innovation at the Federal University of Minas Gerais, and lead author of a paper that analyzes ARPA‘s impact on forest conservation.

Soares and researchers from WWF and FUNBIO found that deforestation between 2008 and 2020 was between 9% and 39% lower in Amazonian protected areas benefiting from ARPA support, and that this helped avoid 104 million metric tons of CO2 emissions.

For Júlio Barbosa, a resident of the Chico Mendes Extractive Reserve, ARPA has been important not just for creating conservation areas and infrastructure to support them, but also for strengthening local organizations, like cooperatives and deliberative councils.

ARPA focuses on traditional communities living within sustainable-use reserves, rather than Indigenous populations on Indigenous land, which are protected under different legislation. But the program also supports Indigenous populations who may live within the protected areas it targets and could even bring indirect benefits to other conservation areas, including Indigenous territories, as it helps maintain forest cover across the Amazon.