The Ministry of the Environment has announced that the Amazon Protected Areas Programme (Áreas Protegidas da Amazônia – ARPA), created in 2002, established 18 million hectares of protected areas in the region by 2006.

The programme is ahead of schedule, the target of 18 million hectares of new protected areas having originally been set for 2007.

ARPA's ultimate objective is to ensure that a total area of 50 million hectares in the Amazon is under protection by 2012.

A federal government programme intended to run for ten years, ARPA has the objective of expanding, consolidating and maintaining part of the National System of Conservation Units (Sistema Nacional de Unidades de Conservação – SNUC) in the Amazon. The programme is run by Ibama (Brazil's national environmental protection agency) and by the state and municipal authorities in the region, with support from the Global Environment Facility (GEF), the World Bank, the German government’s Cooperation Bank, the WWF, FUNBIO (a Brazilian fund for environmental conservation, established to complement governmental action), the German Cooperation Agency, and civil-society organizations.

ARPA supports the creation and implementation of conservation units, and seeks also to protect cultural diversity in the region.

Source: Ministry of the Environment