PARTICIPATORY MONITORING OF FOREST HEALTH IN THE CHICO MENDES EXTRACTIVE RESERVE, ACRE, BRAZIL

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Sabina Cerruto Ribeiro

Federal University of Acre, Brazil

: Expert Opin Environ Biol

Abstract

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“Forest Health” is a program focused on community capacity building to support participatory monitoring of forest health in the Chico Mendes Extractive Reserve (CMER) in the state of Acre, Brazil. The project pursued a two-stage approach: 1) community workshops along with 2)engagement with the public school system in Acre. The project team implemented participatory workshops for training of young adult leaders from community associations of CMER on community forest monitoring. The use of scientific instruments, which provided foundations for documenting vegetation characteristics, combined with skills training in forest inventories and information technologies, allowed participants to gain knowledge useful for forest health monitoring and valuable in local job markets. In addition to capacity building with young adults, the project team also implemented an environmental education component with teenagers and children from rural schools. Their inclusion arose as a demand of the workshops’ participants. For work with schools, the team stimulated the use of forests as laboratories to facilitate the teaching-learning process with regard to curricular content in many standard disciplines, highlighting the importance of forest health. Enabling children and young people today to know more about forest health will produce adults able to make more conscious decisions about how to conserve and manage forests in the future.

Biography

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Sabina Ribeiro is Professor of Forest Management at the Federal University of Acre, Brazil. She has conducted research in the Amazon on tree mortality, sustainable forest management, carbon stock and participatory monitoring of forest health. She has led a project with funding from USAID and participates in other national and international projects. Her work features collaboration across disciplinary, national and organizational boundaries. She has over 35 peer-reviewed publications in scholarly journals and books.