The vast Amazon rain forest helps stabilize the local and global climate, harbors at least 10% of the world’s known species, and provides a home for more than 40 million people. To permanently protect 150 million acres of the Brazilian Amazon, Brazil established the Amazon Region Protected Areas (ARPA) program in 2002. Created in partnership with WWF and others, the program is the world’s largest initiative for the conservation of tropical forests.
In 2014, WWF helped launch ARPA for Life, an initiative securing $215 million of long-term funding for the program through an innovative conservation finance approach known as Project Finance for Permanence. These projects secure necessary policy changes and funding to ensure that large-scale systems of conservation areas are well managed, sustainably financed, and benefit the communities that depend on them.
Now, two decades after its creation, ARPA continues to play an essential role in the conservation of this invaluable rain forest, preserving biodiversity, reducing deforestation, and supporting local livelihoods.
