Amazon Rainforest Gets $215 Million Boost in Protection

In a major new conservation effort, the Brazilian government, World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and other partners announced last week the creation of a $215 million fund to ensure long-term protection of the world's largest network of protected areas - 150 million acres of the Brazilian Amazon rainforest.

Supporting the Amazon Region Protected Areas Program (ARPA), which comprises 15 percent of the Brazilian Amazon, the plan helps to carry out Brazil's prior pledge to triple the areas of the Amazon under legal protection.

Over the last decade, the ARPA program has conserved 128 million acres of biodiverse rainforests - approximately one and a half times the size of California. However, according to the Brazilian government, in 2012 deforestation in the Amazon had increased by nearly a third, reversing a decade of declining rates, Reuters reported.

Those involved in this innovative fund hope to better manage and monitor such large-scale conservation efforts.

"The explosion in demand for natural resources has made our parks and world heritage sites vulnerable," Carter Roberts, WWF president and CEO, said in a press release. "So we convened leading financial thinkers and philanthropic partners to create a plan for a first-of-its-kind bridge fund to ensure ARPA's inspiring success story can be told forever."

The fund is unique in that it consists of money from a variety of public and private partners, including the Government of Germany, the Inter-American Development Bank, Global Environment Facility and WWF.

In 1998, Brazil had committed to protecting at least 10 percent of the Brazilian Amazon in response to growing concerns about the future of tropical rainforests, and this endowment is projected to put them back on the right track.

The plan is to disperse these newfound funds slowly, making it last the 25 years until it runs out, hopefully by which time the Brazilian government can fully support funding on its own.