BRAZIL RAIN FOREST PILOT PROGRAM
                                        SUCCESS STORY 6

          PRESERVING THE WORLD'S LARGEST AREA OF BIODIVERSITY:
             ECOLOGICAL CORRIDORS ­ FROM CONCEPT TO REALITY1


The Innovation

Using regional corridors as planning units to accomplish what planning at the scale
of individual parks and buffer zones cannot: the optimum allocation of resources to
conserve biodiversity at the least cost to society.

The Impacts

There is an emerging scientific consensus that using the landscape scale for con-
servation planning, can significantly improve the chances for long-term survival of
biodiversity. An "ecological corridor" involving a mosaic of different land uses repre-
sents one of the most promising approaches for biodiversity conservation planning.
The Ecological Corridors Project is building economic, social and political support in
Brazil to conserve biodiversity across large landscapes in the country's main rainfor-
est areas. in . The corridors are dimensioned and managed to guarantee that plant
and animal species can survive and continue their normal biological processes un-
disturbed.

Background

The Ecological Corridors Project aims to contribute to the effective conservation of
Brazil's biodiversity by testing an innovative approach in two of Brazil's most impor-
tant forested areas. The project's overall objective is to demonstrate the viability of
ecological corridors in conserving biodiversity in the Brazilian Amazon and Atlantic
rain forests.

An ecological or biodiversity corridor is a mosaic of different land uses connecting
fragments of natural vegetation across a landscape. It is a regional planning unit,
rather than a zoning mechanism. Corridors include both existing and new protected
areas, private reserves, "nuclei" of corridor management, priority zones for land-
owner incentives, demonstration sites and other areas of intensive economic use.
The priority zones of the corridors indicate which nonpublic lands will be favored to
receive financial incentives for biodiversity conservation.                    This is not a zoning
mechanism because it does not involve the creation of new involuntary land use re-
strictions. (See map on page 3.)

From a biological perspective, the principal goal of corridor planning is to maintain or
restore connectivity of existing forest fragments across the landscape. This involves


1This note is part of an occasional series produced by the Bank's Rain Forest Pilot Program highlighting
success stories and best practice examples from projects funded by the Pilot Program to Conserve the Bra-
zilian Rain Forest.

the creation of additional protected areas, the introduction of more benign land use
strategies, and the restoration of degraded lands in key sites.

From an institutional perspective, the corridor strategy seeks to improve protected
area management, build management capacity in the region, and promote biological
and socioeconomic research that can reveal possible tools to reduce the threat of
species extinction. The needs of local communities and other stakeholders must
also be included to ensure the long-term sustainability of parks and reserves.

The Ecological Corridors Project is based on the premise that today's multiple and
growing threats to biodiversity protection require more than establishing discrete,
government-run protected areas surrounded by landscapes in which development
activities proceed unchecked. In many regions of the world ­ notably the Atlantic
rain forest ­ this approach has led to a scattered archipelago of isolated parks and
reserves, which are frequently besieged on all sides and inadequate to guarantee
long-term protection of the plant and animal species they contain. Other shortcom-
ings of this approach are especially evident in the Amazon, where 116 federal and
state parks and reserves -- covering 416,000 km2, or about 8.4% of the region ­ are
widely scattered in remote locations and severely understaffed, with an average of
one park ranger per 15,000 km2.

During project preparation, a team of prominent Brazilian scientists defined five prior-
ity corridors in the Amazon and two in the Atlantic Forest regions based on "state-of-
the-art" studies of key plant and animal distributions commissioned by the Ministry of
Environment (MMA) and the environmental protection agency (IBAMA), as well as
the results of priority setting workshops. Broad areas were mapped and ranked ac-
cording to biological value, degree of threat, and social and institutional factors bear-
ing upon the likely success of an intervention. The specific biological criteria utilized
for selection of the seven corridors included: (i) species richness, considering the
absolute and relative number of species present in the corridor area in relation to the
regional biodiversity; (ii) community and ecosystem diversity; (iii) degree of connec-
tivity; (iv) integrity/size of supporting areas; and (v) endemic species.

Among the seven proposed corridors, the Central Amazon Corridor (CAC) in the
state of Amazonas, and the Central Atlantic Forest Corridor (CAFC) in the states of
Bahia and Espírito Santo were selected as the pilots to be financed during the first
phase of the project by the Pilot Program. The selection of the priority corridors in-
volved different criteria for each region. Of the five corridors identified in the Amazon
region, the Central Amazon Corridor (CAC), together with the Extreme Northern
Amazon Corridor presented the highest degree of connectivity between protected
areas and the highest integrity of natural ecosystems The decisive factor for selec-
tion was the existing institutional base, which is stronger in the CAC, which has a fa-
vorable composition of government and non-government organizations, research in-
stitutes and private enterprises more likely to contribute to the success of the project.
In the two Atlantic Forests corridors, the main selection criterion was the level of
threat, given the higly-fragmented nature of the remaining Atlantic Forest areas.

The Central Atlantic Forest Corridor (CAFC) is more vulnerable and fragmented
when compared to the southern corridor in the region. From 1985 to 1990, the data
on forest cover indicated a loss of 70,000 hectares of forest in the State of Bahia and
20,000 hectares in Espírito Santo. The lack of connectivity of extremely important
ecosystems and the opportunity to illustrate how these isolated remaining "islands"
could be preserved and potentially expanded was a major consideration. Another
aspect taken into account was the existence of several ongoing projects, including
bilateral Pilot Program projects funded by the German Government, to protect the
Southern Corridors and the relative lack of projects in the CAFC. Hence, the CAC
and CAFC were chosen to serve as pilots for testing new corridor models.

Initial Results and Potential Impact

Initial results of the project during its first phase include:

· Popularizing the concept of the ecological corridor approach to biodiversity
     conservation and land management in Brazil at the federal and state levels;

· Improved coordination of different agencies and levels of government in plan-
     ning and implementing environmental policies;

· Further decentralization of environmental protection responsibilities to state and
     local levels, improving management performance;

· New regulations and economic incentives to encourage environmentally re-
     sponsible behavior as opposed to reliance upon command and control measures;

     · Involvement of stakeholders, including the private sector, local communities
          and NGOs, in designing/delivering environmental programs;

     · Increased enforcement of environmental policies, particularly in remote ar-
          eas where government institutions are most fragile.

Taken together, the potential impact of the seven corridors, including government-
run protected areas (known as conservation units in Brazil), private reserves, indige-
nous lands, and interconnecting areas, are impressive in scale. The five Amazonian
corridors encompass nearly 1.5 million km2 -- or an area equivalent to France, Ger-
many, Spain, and Portugal combined. They contain 73 conservation units, 116 in-
digenous lands and key zones known to harbor exceptional concentrations of biodi-
versity. The two Atlantic Forest corridors are estimated to contain at least two thirds
of the original biodiversity of this biome. They cover an area of over 20 million hec-
tares, sheltering the highest recorded diversity of vascular plants in the world, with
large numbers of endemic species of plants and animals.

Next Steps

The first phase of the Ecological Corridors Project is funded by the Rain Forest Trust
Fund (US$5.0 million) with federal and state support. There is agreement among
donors that once the first 18-month start-up phase is successfully completed and
trigger conditions are met, they will participate in a larger, second-phase project
totaling about US$28 million to fund the implementation of activities developed dur-
ing the first phase in the two pilot ecological corridors. The second phase will last an
estimated 42 months and will focus on the consolidation of corridor monitoring and
protection systems, implementation of corridor management plans and implementa-
tion of subprojects in interconnecting areas.


For more information on the Pilot Program to Conserve the Brazilian Rain Forest or to receive copies of the
previously published Success Stories, please visit our website at www.worldbank.org/rfpp, or contact our
staff in Brasília, (55-61) 329-1015, and Washington, D.C., (202) 458-8012.

Success Story No. 1:
New Environmental Control System Helps Reduce Deforestation by One-Third in Mato Grosso

Success Story No. 2:
Innovative Project Contributes to Regularizing 20% of Amazon as Indigenous Lands

Success Story No. 3:
Fostering "Sustainable" Cosmetics from the Amazon ­ A Private Sector Partnership to Conserve the Rain
Forest

Success Story No. 4:
Lessons from the Rain Forest: Ten Years of Civil Society Participation in the Pilot Program

Success Story No. 5:
Revitalizing Scientific Research in the Amazon: the Science and Technology Subprogram