PCAB supports course to improve management for community-based forest management

The first module of a management course aimed at improving organizational skills of six community associations and two cooperatives of the Extractive Reserve Verde para Sempre, in Pará state, was carried out in March with 40 participants.

The “Formar Gestão” course (Creating Managers) was designed by the International Institute of Education of Brazil (IEB) in partnership with the Federal Institute of Education, Science and Technology of Pará (IFPA). It has four modules and will last for a year, improving the management capacity of the organizations involved with community and family forest management in the Reserve.  

Sustainable socio-biodiversity production in the Amazon has historically been done for family consumption, with the excess being traded with low aggregated cost and being heavily dependent on a network of middlemen. With the increasing importance of the sustainable forest management as a sustainable development alternative, with potential for greater commercialization and market-led processes, that will also functions as a way to conserve and defend their territories, the need to improve management and governance of those territories have also grown.  

“Formar Gestão” is carried out in partnership with the Sustainable Development Committee (CDS) of Porto de Moz and the Good Management Project  2 from Tropical Forest Institute (IFT) and Embrapa – the agricultural science government company. The partnership also includes the U.S. Forest Service, the Chico Mendes Institute of Biodiversity (ICMBio), the Conexsus Institute, the Forest Council Stewardship (FSC) and IMAFLORA. PCAB’s support is shared with the Climate and Land Use Alliance (CLUA) and the International Tropical Timber Organization (ITTO).

According to Katiuscia Miranda, project manager of IEB, “we expect that at the end of the course the six community organizations with management plans in the Reserve will be better prepared to manage their enterprises and to close better contracts selling their produce”.

This first module, in Porto de Moz city, served to diagnose the management maturity of each business and the next three will focus on capacity building, governance and sustainable business.