1. World Wildlife Magazine
  2. Summer 2025

The power of durable conservation in Brazil

A watercolor collage of the animals, people, and environment of Brazil

The Amazon 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 the government of Brazil, FUNBIO, WWF, and many others, the program is the world’s largest initiative for the conservation of tropical forests.

ARPA for Life, launched in 2014, secured $215 million for the program through an innovative conservation finance approach known as Project Finance for Permanence—securing necessary policy changes and long-term funding to ensure that large-scale systems of conservation areas are well-managed and sustainably financed, and that they benefit the communities that depend on them.

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.

Five ways ARPA has made an impact

  1. PROTECTED LANDSCAPES
    ARPA created 57 million acres of protected areas in its first eight years and went on to support the improved management of millions more. ARPA protected areas now total 154 million acres, nearly 1.5 times the size of California.
  2. REDUCED DEFORESTATION
    Reducing deforestation in the Amazon rain forest is essential for mitigating climate change. Between 2008 and 2020, the protected areas supported by ARPA reduced deforestation by approximately 650,000 acres.
  3. BIODIVERSITY PRESERVED
    By minimizing threats like deforestation across millions of acres of standing forests, ARPA has safeguarded valuable diversity in the Amazon that may have otherwise been lost.
  4. BALANCED APPROACHES
    To meet the needs of people and forests, half of the areas ARPA supports are “integral protection areas,” which strictly limit resource use. The other half are “sustainable use areas,” which seek to balance conservation with the use of natural resources by local people.
  5. EFFECTIVE MANAGEMENT
    By establishing continuous and reliable funding; delivering management training to help effectively develop, execute, and monitor its goals; and securing input and support from local communities, state and federal governments, civil society, and donors, ARPA has made conservation more resilient and able to thrive despite political or economic change.

 

Partnership in Action

For decades, WWF has worked to protect and restore the Brazilian Amazon, including places like the Tapajós River basin, because of the region’s importance to protecting local and global biodiversity, stabilizing the planet’s climate, and as a home for millions of people who rely on its natural bounty for food, shelter, and livelihoods.

As we look to the future, we are reminded that this kind of broad-based, sustainable conservation work is only possible because of the generous commitment of the public institutions, private philanthropists, corporations, and other partners listed below that have helped secure the country’s natural diversity for generations to come.

  • Acacia Conservation Fund
  • Amazon Fund
  • Andes Amazon Fund
  • Anglo-American
  • Anonymous Donors
  • Bezos Earth Fund
  • Bobolink Foundation
  • Brazilian Federal Government
  • Brazilian State Governments
  • Margaret A. Cargill Philanthropies
  • CEK Foundation’s Earth Focus Initiative
  • Enduring Earth
  • Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development of Germany
  • Marshall Field V
  • FUNBIO
  • Joseph and Carson Gleberman
  • Global Environment Facility
  • The Jeremy and Hannelore Grantham Environmental Trust
  • Inter-American Development Bank
  • KfW (German Development Bank)
  • Linden Trust for Conservation
  • Scott and Jessica McClintock Foundation
  • Metabolic Studio
  • Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation
  • Charles Stewart Mott Foundation
  • Natura
  • The Nature Conservancy
  • Mary P. Nelson
  • O Boticário
  • Redstone Strategy Group
  • Richard and Anna Marie Rosen
  • Alex and Julia Roux
  • Emily Train Rowan and Jim Rowan
  • Sall Family Foundation
  • The Sant Family
  • C. Bowdoin Train and Georgina Sanger
  • Walmart Foundation
  • Windward Fund
  • The World Bank
  • ZOMALAB

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World Wildlife magazine provides an inspiring, in-depth look at the connections between animals, people and our planet. Published quarterly by WWF, the magazine helps make you a part of our efforts to solve some of the most pressing issues facing the natural world.

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