Aliança da Terra

Aliança da Terra (AT) is a Civil Society Organization of Public Interest - OSCIP, formed by farmers, researchers and entrepreneurs in the agribusiness industry committed to uniting the sector by creating and strengthening of alliances that enable the concept of "Producing Right".

Alianca da Terra was formed in 2004 by John Carter, a rancher and pilot in Mato Grosso, Brazil. Since 1996, John and his family have been ranching in the Eastern Xingu and watching as the forest disappears, a victim of the development that has been the engine of Brazil’s recent economic renaissance.

Agriculture is now responsible for a quarter of Brazil’s gross domestic product, a measure of economic production, and looks to keep that share for the foreseeable future. With a planet of 7 billion people, and heading for 9 billion, compounded with the increasing consumption of protein in many parts of the world, Brazil will be called upon to feed the world. However, in the past two decades, Brazil’s remarkable turnaround has come at a high environmental and social cost. Inextricably linked to deforestation, human rights abuse and land speculation, the development of the Cerrado and Amazon share a common inspirational yet tragic history with all other economic frontiers, including the Western USA and Southern Brazil.

As an experienced pilot, John has flown back and forth over this region for more than 500,000 kilometers. As a local rancher, he has seen the destruction first hand while facing the economic reality of trying to make a living under these conditions. The bravery, ingenuity, perseverance and grace of people eking out a living on the frontier were equally matched by corruption, thievery, fear and extortion. After a decade fighting alone to keep a handhold in the whirlwind, John realized that the only solution would come from the people living the day to day of the frontier life. Collectively, the strength and character of the frontiersmen, and women, can overcome any hurdle – in this case, the hurdle of how to balance production and environmental protection in the face of entrenched economic drivers.

To harness the love of the land found in the heart of any farmer and balance agricultural production with environmental conservation, John, with the help of Daniel Nepstad of the Insituto de Pesquisa Ambiental da Amazônia (IPAM) and Ocimar Villela from Grupo Maggi, founded Aliança da Terra in 2004. Aliança’s primary mission is to enable property owners to engage in and demonstrate good land stewardship and to protect the environment while fostering governance on the frontier. For the past eight years Aliança has steadily created a base of good land stewards in the Amazon, that includes ranchers, farmers, indigenous peoples and smallholders, and has laid the foundation for future ecosystem service markets. Through a Registry of Social-Environmental Responsibility (RSR), Aliança has developed the first true voluntary, producer-focused means of encouraging and demonstrating good land management. Coupled with its Voluntary Fire Brigade, founded in 2009, Aliança’s Registry is an important element in finding the balance between development and conservation.

RSR

Developed by Aliança da Terra, the Registry of Social-Environmental Responsibility - RSR - serves to support producers in the social and environmental management of their lands.

Joining forces with producers and other social and scientific partners, the RSR was created to identify, recognize and reward responsible producers, separating them from producers not concerned with sustainability. The RSR highlights producers that implement good land stewardship practices as well as those who seek to adopt such management methods. We have properties spread over all Brazilian territory in our Registry (Access the covered areas). Our goal is to register and work with more than 20 million hectares by 2017.

Through the RSR a detailed diagnostic is produced that describes the environmental and social conditions of the rural property. The performance of each property is analyzed using a set of key indicators:

Once completed, a property level score is produced and the landowner is presented with a list of action items to be completed. The landowner voluntarily commits to a recovery plan, based on his or her financial and management capacity. The landowner signs a Commitment Letter, which Aliança uses as a judge against future performance. Our goal is to encourage landowners to improve – we do not wish to punish or embarrass. Therefore we are flexible and encouraging of all improvements, however small. While we understand the benefit and need for absolute change and measuring quality, we believe in continual improvement to get there. Our approach, and the incredible commitment on the part of the producers in our system, is changing the face of agricultural production in Brazil.

The registry stresses economically viable production practices while obeying appropriate social-environmental standards. The RSR has the following objectives and benefits:

Because the RSR is voluntary, the investments of good land management are currently born mostly by the producer. We estimate that our members have invested more than 24 million R$ (approximately US $ 13 million) in environmental and social recovery between 2009 and 2011.

FIRE FIGHTING

In 2009 Aliança da Terra created its own Fire Brigade. This initiative's mission is to act directly in the fighting, as well as to raise awareness and educate local communities about the correct use of fire.

While common in rural USA, and other parts of the world, the concept of a coordinated volunteer fire brigade is alien to the Brazilian agricultural frontier. However, as three successful years in action have proved beyond doubt, there is the desire. In 2009 Aliança created and trained one 6-man fire fighting team. With this team, and with training and support of local fire brigades, support from the US Forest Service’s “Smoke-jumpers ” and the USFS International Program, and, most importantly, with joint support from the Corpo de Bombeiros, local landowners and Indigenous peoples, Aliança has laid the foundation for the first volunteer fire brigade in the Amazon, and created a sense of governance on the frontier, where the previous overriding sense had been “every man for himself”. This is an extraordinary change, showing that Aliança has tapped another vein of conscientious land stewardship, pent-up demand of self-help, and the frontier “can-do” spirit.

Fire is the common enemy of the producer, environmentalist, and indigenous people alike – it is also possibly the single most destructive force in the region and a massive hurdle for the creation of carbon markets and REDD. Previous efforts to control fire focused on research and monitoring – resulted in big technology leaps that Aliança now uses to track fire occurrence. These efforts, while commendable, have failed to do anything for the individuals facing the consequences. Armed with the knowledge and support of scientists and frontiersmen, Aliança is taking the fight to the field.

Until 2011, Aliança and the teams mentioned above successfully fought 90 fires, with a combined 1009 man-hours of firefighting. Of these hours, 550 were spent on properties registered in the RSR, 200 were spent in agrarian reform settlements, and 250 were spent in Protected Areas. In all, 15 ranches, 10 settlement homesteads and one state park were protected with an estimated 120,000 ha of forest saved. At 180 tons of carbon per ha (approximately 660 tons CO2), this implies a direct reduction in CO2 emissions of roughly 79 million tons.

With drought increasing as forests disappear and climate changes, and with more people moving into the vulnerable regions – especially smallholders whose frequent use of fire, while understandable in a labor constrained farming system, creates numerous ignitions sources – we, unfortunately, expect the demand for fire fighting to increase dramatically in the foreseeable future.

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