Meeting of ARCA Researchers Strengthens Integration and Defines Strategies for Future Actions

December, 2024 (*) – In order to promote greater team integration and, above all, to deepen research strategies and actions, the Science Working Group (WG) of the Agricultura Regenerativa para a Conservação da Amazônia (ARCA - Regenerative Agriculture for the Conservation of the Amazon) Program held the first meeting of researchers from the organizations involved in the initiative. The event took place in the municipality of Bacabal, 250 km from the capital São Luís, in the state of Maranhão. 

Organized by the Center for International Forestry Research and World Agroforestry (CIFOR-ICRAF), which is responsible for coordinating ARCA in Brazil, the meeting involved the Institute for Society, Population and Nature (ISPN), the Socio-Environmental Institute (ISA), The Nature Conservancy Brazil (TNC) and the Ouro Verde Institute (IOV).  The program is supported by USAID.

Over the course of three days, between December 2-4, representatives of the organizations debated the core research issues of the projects, detailed actions, exchanged experiences and questions, and worked on approaches and tools. 

One of ARCA's aims is to enable the development and implementation of innovations; to scale up Biodiverse Agroforestry Systems, ecological restoration and sustainable management of socio-biodiversity products for indigenous peoples, traditional peoples and communities and family farmers. According to Henrique Marques, environmental engineer and Research and Development Manager at CIFOR-ICRAF, the aim of the WG is to understand how research can have an impact on the lives of these groups. 

"The proposal is to discuss, analyze, understand and propose mechanisms to improve livelihoods and enhance sustainable income generation for families. We need data and we want to understand how development is approached in the countryside. The aim of the WG is to integrate the approaches that each institution promotes in its territories of operation. Each context and situation call for different approaches, and we need these different forms of research for each social group and their biophysical contexts," explains Henrique Marques. 

There are five lines of research being worked on from ARCA's perspective:

• Nature-Based Solutions Practices (SbN);
• Governance and Territorial Dynamics;
• Gender and Youth Inclusion;
• Agroecological Transition;
• Economy of Sociobiodiversity.

The different expertise that each of the organizations possesses is a factor that favors interdisciplinary collaboration and the creation of more comprehensive and innovative solutions to the issues that the WG sets out to work on, since each organization has different approaches, experiences and competencies. 

This distinction can be seen in the territories where the ARCA Program operates directly, which are the northeast and southeast of Pará; the Portal da Amazônia and Alto Xingu, in Mato Grosso; and the Gurupi Mosaic, Médio Mearim and Vale do Itapecuru, in Maranhão. All are located in the eastern part of the Arc of Deforestation in the Amazon. 

The coordinator of ARCA in Maranhão for ISPN, anthropologist Ana Tereza Ferreira, comments that the integration between the different organizations helps to visualize each potentiality for the development of the program, based on the lines of research that the WG fosters. "ISPN focuses on the practical implementation of direct actions in the communities and the integration promoted through the dialogue that we establish as part of the WG makes the construction of our Science Plan more incremental, it's a shared and robust task," says the coordinator about the immersion days. 

As part of this joint construction of the ARCA Science Plan, the person responsible for managing the program at ISA, biologist Beatriz Moraes Murer, highlights the importance of the meeting for the discussion that guides the research actions based on reflection on the individual strengths and points of convergence of the organizations. "Research is essential in the context of gathering information and making assessments, but always thinking about how to implement this in the routine of working in the field to socially transform communities, as is our real goal," she adds. 

Thaciane Silva, an environmental engineer and geoprocessing specialist at TNC, emphasized that the most important result of the meeting was the alignment between the researchers involved in implementing ARCA in the territories. "At the end of our event, the alignment made it very clear how we can apply the research questions in the development of our activities and how we can contribute together with other organizations. We are all working together for a cause and carrying out similar actions, and alignment is essential to improve collaboration," she concludes. 

On the last day of the meeting, the group of researchers made a field visit to one of the Demonstration Units implemented by ARCA in Maranhão, through ISPN. 

(*) Article produced by CIFOR-ICRAF e ISPN