Forests4Water Brazil: Community Climate Action

Dear wonderful donors,

We have lots of exciting news for you today, and we’d love to do a couple of things upfront. First, to send you a big vote of thanks for supporting this project. Over the past few years your donations have enabled us to plant 26,000 trees, restoring water and restoring hope to dozens of farm families. Thank you, thank you!  

Next, we want to unveil our ambitious new plan to plant 55,000 trees in honor of the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration! We've told you a little before now, so here is the backstory.  

As you know, the original focus for this program was to reforest on family farms in response to the water crisis.

Both the uptake from farmers, and the support  from you, dear donors, have been magnificent. So much so that, after consulting our friends and neighbors, we have decided to launch a unified community response to the climate crisis, starting by linking existing forest fragments into a big, beautiful forest corridor that will store carbon, protect water, conserve biodiversity and create habitat for wildlife!

Now for a bit of background about the Serra do Brigadeiro mountains where we live. It’s a wonderful area of rugged terrain, and one of the highest priority conservation areas in the whole state. Much of the area above 1000 meters is protected in the Serra do Brigadeiro State Park, and we are located within the buffer zone – a 10 km radius surrounding the park. It’s a treasure house of endemic and endangered species – in fact species previously unknown to science are still being discovered! It's also an important watershed whose waters feed into two of the major rivers in southeastern Brazil: the Paraiba do Sul and the Rio Doce. And as you know, it's an area of family farms. Restoring and regenerating forest cover in these mountains will have a direct impact, not only on the local communities, but also on thousands of downstream consumers of water and electricity (hydropowered.)  

And we don't have to tell you that planting trees is one of the quickest, most economic and most effective ways of combatting climate change. (IPCC, 2019) 

Check out the Google Earth map so you can see where we’ll be building the forest corridor. Two of the plots are named Iracambi and Iracambi 2. These are on areas that are being purchased for Iracambi specifically to be restored. If you look at the bottom LH corner of the map you’ll see a forest patch with a house in it. This is an area previously donated to the NGO and we’re enclosing a picture of the forest restoration that has already been done there, in less than seven years. The remaining areas marked Kyvia, Ariele, Dudu and Rubens are also scheduled for forest restoration, making a total of 30 hectares. At the top of the google map you’ll see an area of forest which adjoins the State Park, and you’ll also see other cleared areas that are ripe for restoration.

So, with encouragement from the local community and from each one of you, we’re starting the next big adventure. And we’re thrilled to have you with us!

More news soon, in the meantime, please take care!

With rainforest love from Alfredo and everyone at Iracambi.

Dear wonderful donors,

Greetings from the rainy rainforest where everything is a riot of blossom in the most brilliant colors imaginable – purple, yellow and more shades of green than you can imagine!

And a big thank you for all your generous donations! They are the secret sauce that encourages us to jump out of bed and get to work – in the forest nursery, out on the planting sites, in the office, wherever we may be, as we make sure that the Forests4Water program is as good as we can possibly make it.

And while we’re on the subject, we want to give a special shoutout to our regular donors who stand with us month after month, rain or shine. Iracambi visitors, students, directors, global change makers and friends old and new – thank you, you are the best!

The end of the planting season brings renewed focus on monitoring and maintenance. We told you, didn’t we, that tree planting is a year round activity? So while we’re checking on seedlings that were planted over the past four months, replanting where necessary, we’re also collecting and uploading data to our GIS platform. You can check our maps page to learn more!  Open the page. and click one one of the property icons to see what has been recorded about that particular property.   

It's a work in progress, and we’re determined to perfect our data collection and management, so that we can continually improve our program, and so that you, dear donors, can see the amazing impact that we are making together.

And, in the meantime, our 2021 planning is almost, almost complete. We’re fine tuning the budget, getting ready to hire extra staff, and then we’ll be able to get started on upgrading the nursery. This will involve clearing a new area just across from the existing nursery, building dozens more seedling tables, erecting shade, and expanding our irrigation system.

Plus we’re hard at work making new seedlings to be planted during the next rainy season (November through February.) The work of the nursery team is never done.  And we love it that way.  (Well, most of the time we do!)

Look after yourselves, wherever you are in the world, and thank you for your amazing support.  

And to those of you in colder climes, we send warm rainforest love from

Alfredo and the Iracambi team

Links:

• Iracambi site
• Iracambi FaceBook page
• Iracambi instagram