Extractive Reserves

An Initiative of Great Social and Environmental Importance

Posted: 01-Jun-1999; Updated: 28-May-2009

by Paulo Nogueira Neto
biologist, creator, in 1973, and first Secretary of Brazil's Special Secretariat for Environment (SEMA), the founder of modern official environmental protection in Brazil, and of a plethora of protected areas

The extractive reserve concept, pioneered by Chico Mendes and Mary Helena Allegretti was a new and very creative idea for protecting the Amazon forest and at the same time resolving a serious social problem. In the 1980s, conflicts between cattle ranchers, who wanted to cut down the forest to create pasture and the populations who live from the forests and collect their products became acute. The empates (rubber tappers? direct actions against deforestation) that non-violently halted the clear cutting won the support of public opinion. The courageous leadership of Chico Mendes and the persistence of his companions of the forest, constituted a new and unique initiative in the panorama of environmental movements.

It was however necessary to create and implement a definitive, institutional solution to the problem. The empates were victories of the greatest importance, but it was necessary to definitively occupy the terrain. In this context, Mary Allegretti and the National Council of Rubber Tappers proposed a new category of ecologically protected area, the Extractive Reserves. I was pleased to support the initiative. I had, as President of the Special Secretariat for the Environment (SEMA), already created the new categories "Ecological Stations" and "Environmentally Protected Areas". The extractive reserves were a brilliant idea in the context of the other conservation units, since they explicitly made the peoples of the forest the guardians of the extremely valuable ecological patrimony of the areas they inhabit, with the support of non-governmental organizations and the Environmental Ministry.

What I could not have imagined in the 1980s, was that I would become a direct participant in this initiative. Today I own a house and raise indigenous bees in Xapuri. I have, with the support of the Brazilian Environmental Institute (IBAMA) and the Ministry of the Environment, sought the creation and implementation of the Nova Esperança Extractive Reserve at the highest levels of government.

It is a work in progress. But the seeds planted by Chico Mendes and Mary Allegretti, associations of rubber tappers, and those who, in the forests, in government and in environmental organizations, seek to make a better world, with great biodiversity and without poverty, continue to grow.