Community environmental defense is an essential pillar for forest conservation, and is consolidating itself as a successful experience for territorial protection in the RESEX of the Cautário River, in Rondônia, where seven traditional communities develop a nature conservation project in partnership with Permian Brazil. Local teams of Community Environmental Defenders trained and empowered, with deep knowledge of the territory, operate with superior efficiency.
With strengthened governance and access to cutting-edge technologies and equipment, this equipment is essential for rapid response to fire outbreaks and continuous area monitoring. The work of these defenders also includes the prevention of fires and illegal deforestation, ensuring the integrity of two ecosystems and the conservation of biodiversity.
The participatory management model developed in RESEX Rio Cautário has been shown to be highly effective, combining territorial protection with socioeconomic development, through professional training and strengthening of the territorial governance of local communities. Based on this experience, we can mention several strategic reasons to support initiatives like this in nature conservation projects, supporting community environmental defense agents:
1. Operational Efficiency : We are often the first to reach fire sources in the territory, allowing a rapid response that minimizes damage and reduces potential CO² emissions.
2. Local Knowledge: we have a deep understanding of the territory, facilitating continuous monitoring and early identification of diseases, enabling effective preventive actions.
3. Ecosystem Protection: Our preventive work protects entire ecosystems, maintaining the integrity of natural carbon resources and preserving essential natural services.
4. Community Governance: promote the active participation of local communities in the conservation of local nature, strengthening territorial governance and project sustainability.
5. Biodiversity Protection: its preventive action preserves natural habitats essential to the maintenance of species and environmental balance.
6. Protection of Environmental Assets: we work in the preservation of forested areas that are fundamental for carbon projects, guaranteeing the permanence of the stock and the credibility of the credits generated.
7. Risk Management: Constant monitoring by community environmental defenders significantly reduces reputational risks in forest carbon projects.
8. Social Development: The hiring of community environmental defense agents generates direct social benefits, including professional training and income management for local communities.
9. Integration with Public Policies: its work complements the actions of two governing bodies, strengthening the implementation of environmental and climate policies on a local scale.
10. Continuous Monitoring: its permanent presence in the territory allows consistent monitoring of protected areas, essential for the verification and validation of carbon projects.
The hiring and training of community members as environmental defense agents is part of the territorial protection plan of the Nature Conservation Project developed in partnership with the traditional communities of the RESEX Rio Cautário . Check the details here (in Portuguese).
This logic also explains the long-term collaborations and partnerships that Permian Brazil has established with public authorities, environmental NGOs and companies to generate greater dissemination of data in real time and sharing of information, based on power monitoring technology, to improve regional responses to fires and other forest threats.
The RESEX Rio Cautário Environmental Protection Observatory is a monitoring and alarm system that shares data and alerts about fire outbreaks by remote sensing in quasi real time through a communication network between two participating groups. Find out about this initiative here .
Expert knowledge of the achievements of the team of environmental defense agents at RESEX do Rio Cautário. Please watch the video as a tribute to the results obtained in 2024, a year marked by one of the worst droughts in the Amazon:
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