A recurring question in Brazil is how to ensure that land-reform settlements created in the Amazon rainforest don’t exacerbate deforestation. An answer might be found in a project that until now has involved neither recent settlers nor the rainforest. The project has focused instead on the lower Amazon floodplain in western Pará state, and on agreements reached by long-standing communities there to sustainably co-manage fisheries and grasslands. Currently run by Brazil’s nonprofit Amazon Environmental Research Institute (IPAM) and the Woods Hole Research Center of the United States, it is funded by WWF, the Moore Foundation and Brazil’s land-reform agency, the National Institute for Colonization and Agrarian Reform (Incra). Now, IPAM and Woods Hole are adapting the model for Incra’s 1,800 rainforest settlements. Editor George Hatch spoke recently with lead researcher David McGrath, a Woods Hole scientist and a professor at Brazil’s Federal University of Western Pará. [Log in to read more]

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