Altogether, 533 springs in Minas Gerais and Espirito Santo were selected by the Renova Foundation program
About 250 rural properties will receive assistance in the protection of 533 springs, of which 375 in Minas Gerais and 158 in Espirito Santo, in the second year of actions of the Springs and other PPAs Recovery Program of the Renova Foundation. The zones to be protected were selected by the Basin Committees (CBH) of Suacui, Pontoes and Lagoons of the Doce and Piranga rivers, who, this year, choose to focus on the towns of Coimbra, Sao Vitor (district of Governador Valadares), Galileia and Periquito, in Minas Gerais, and Marilandia, Pancas and Colatina, in Espirito Santo. Together with community leaders and public authorities, the CBHs have also participated in the mobilization of farmers in these areas.
Several meetings, both collective and individual, resulted in the Consent Meetings in January 2018. In these meetings, technicians and educators were able to clarify the last doubts and inform the rural producers about the timing, activities and mutual responsibilities involved in the process.
The next step of the program is conducting social cartography. This phase aims to understand in depth the history of the place, property and owners, as well as their productive and cultural practices, such as celebrations and food. The objective is to integrate the farmers’ and neighborhoods’ culture and values into land use planning. With this information in hand, an individualized project will be created for each property. The project details the farming and conservation practices to be implemented in the locality, with the focus on water production through the recovery of springs.
One of the main premises of the program is to make the recovery process go beyond the forest restoration in PPAS and to make it a source of social, economic and environmental balance of the properties. Therefore, it is essential to implement complementary actions that are integrated with other programs implemented by the Foundation.
“Our proposal goes from the mobilization to the training and monitoring of these properties. In doing so, we will be able to identify leaders, local referrals and people who, regardless of age, have the potential to positively influence this and other educational processes for the revitalization. The idea is for them to be able to continue the process and, at the same time, to incorporate into their day-to-day activities the best environmental practices for agriculture, forestry and livestock,” says Antonio Sergio Cardoso Filho, an analyst of the sustainable soil use program of the Renova Foundation.
After defining and accepting the project for each area, the rural producer, in addition to receiving the inputs for the recovery works, can make use of machinery and receive rural technical assistance to conduct the entire process.
Understand how it works:
Planting of Seedlings
With the active participation of the rural producer and with the support of agricultural, environmental and forestry technicians, Instituto Terra (Earth Institute) has completed the planting of 117 thousand seedlings of Atlantic Forest species along the first 511 springs of Doce River tributaries protected by the Renova Foundation. The partnership between the institute and the Renova Foundation, which began in November 2016, aims to promote the revitalization of the Doce River. The springs are located in the Suacui River basin (Jampruca, Campanario, Itambacuri and Frei Inocencio districts in Minas Gerais), and in the Pancas River basin (Pancas, Governador Lindenberg, Marilandia and Colatina municipalities, all in Espirito Santo). In all, 215 land owners accepted the proposal.
Francisco Leal, a rural producer from Itambacuri (MG), learned a lot from the reforestation actions. “We embraced the cause through meetings and field days. On the property where I work, we have fenced three springs. The planting reached one thousand seedlings, and 99% of them are already growing,” he says. The goal is to recover 5,000 springs of the Doce River basin in 10 years.
According to the leader of the Environmental programs of the Renova Foundation, Lucas Scarascia, the determination of the TTAC opens new fronts of action in the area of reforestation. “It is a great opportunity to develop a supply network of seeds and seedlings produced locally, linked with existing public policies. We have paved the way for actions like these to set an example for other recovery phases,” he says.