Protected Areas

thus increases employment and incomeopportunities for the rural population;• Management technology is simple andis easily learned by producers and overthe past 20 years it has been employed,tested and approved;• Biodiversity conservation complementsthe role of protected area sites;• It contributes to reduce the risks ofdesertification and decreases regionalvulnerabilities to climate changes;• It preserves the carbon stocks andproduces renewable energy thus avoidingthe emissions of greenhouse effect gases.Technical Assistance and ForestEducation to Family Producersin the Atlantic Forest, Caatinga,Cerrado and Amazon BiomesFamily agriculture is the mainemployment generator in the rural areasof Brazil. Even though such productionsoccupy only 30% of agricultural facilitiesin the country, they are responsible for76.9% of persons working on the land.Technical assistance is usually renderedto these persons with the objective ofincreasing productive capacity, incomegeneration and income improvement.Since 2004, the MMA has beensupporting measures regarding thecapacity building of family producerswith the purpose of fostering sustainablerural development in the Atlantic Forest,Caatinga, Cerrado and Amazon biomes.The capacity building process involvestraining multiplying agents on appropriatemanagement techniques for eachbiome, as well as on rendering technicalassistance and forest education to familyproducers in elaborating and monitoringsustainable, multiple-use managementprojects, silviculture and agro-forestrysystems.The objective is to capacitateapproximately 15,000 producers forforest practices so as to allow for valueto be attributed to goods coming fromsilviculture, agro-forest or managed forestareas and thus yield direct benefits suchas commercially viable goods, or indirectbenefits such as the environmental rolesplayed by forested areas.Forest CertificationThe Brazilian Program of ForestCertification (Programa Brasileiro deCertificação Florestal – CERFLOR)strives to foster sustainable forestmanagement of forest resources and itsobjectives include providing support tosmall forest producers. The program wasdeveloped through a partnership betweenthe National Institute of Metrology,Standardization and Industrial Quality(Instituto Nacional de Normalizaçãoe Qualidade Industrial - INMETRO),the Ministry for the Environment, theBrazilian Silviculture Society and theBrazilian Technical Standards Association(ABNT).INMETRO is the Brazilian government’sofficial accreditation organization. It isresponsible for accrediting certificationinstitutions in the country and operatesthe CERFLOR. This is a volunteerprogram and is open to the participationof interested parties in all steps fromthe process of establishing standards inthe ABNT to the process of elaboratingcertification requirements, includingthe criteria for accrediting institutionswithin the scope of INMETRO. In Brazil,there are 835,716 hectares of forestsaccredited by the CERFLOR. Of thesehectares, 91.3% have certified theirprinciples, criteria and indicators forforest plantations and 8.7% for forestmanagement (Facts and Numbers,2007).19