UN Chronicle | World Wildlife Fund Partnership to Save Tropical Forests in the Amazon River Basin

World Wildlife Fund Partnership to Save Tropical Forests in the Amazon River Basin
By Nuchhi R. Currier for the Chronicle

Web Article

The Amazon River Basin, a vast expanse of green covering eight countries and two million square miles in South America, encompasses various types of environments and is home to thousands of species. It supplies one-third of the world's tropical woods (2,500 tree species), 20 per cent of the world's fresh water and has the highest diversity of freshwater fish, birds, butterflies, and countless endangered species of wildlife. This ecologically rich area is being slowly depleted due to deforestation, logging, overfishing, large-scale development projects, agriculture and other human activities.

Promote concrete international support and partnership for the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity, including in ecosystems, at World Heritage sites and for the protection of endangered species, in particular through the channeling of financial resources and technology to developing countries and countries with economies in transition.

World Summit on Sustainable Development
United Nations Plan of Implementation - Johannesburg

A new partnership between the World Wildlife Fund, the Government of Brazil, the World Bank, the Global Environment Facility and other partners has been formed to preserve 193,000 square miles of Amazonian forest in parks and reserves. This ambitious five-year project called "Saving the Heart of the Amazon" will be underwritten by $400 million, including a conservation trust fund, and create a system of parks in the Brazilian Amazon, with the ultimate goal of tripling the amount of forest under conservation protection.

In August 2002 former President of Brazil Fernando Henrique Cardoso, announced the creation of the project's first protected area, Tumucumaque National Park, in the Brazilian state of Amapa. Covering 15,000 square miles of forest, it will be the world's largest tropical forest, home to jaguars, pumas, harpy eagles and an estimated 12 per cent of the world's known primates. Governor Jorge Viana of the Brazilian state of Acre made his own contribution, with an ambitious project of bringing 25 per cent of it's forests — 12 million acres — under sustainable forest management to enable the inhabitants to make a sustainable living for themselves.

Jau National Park in Brazil has already been declared a World Heritage site by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). The Global Environment Facility (GEF), working with the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the World Bank, who manage and implement its projects, is an active member of this project. According to Guillermo Castilleja, Vice President of the World Wildlife Fund's Latin American programmes, two fifths of the world's original rain forests have already been lost, along with countless species of wildlife "World Wildlife Fund is determined to counter that tide of destruction and preserve the immense natural wealth that tropical forests provide", he said.

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