The Paraim Ecological Corridor Project (PECP) is a 67,000+ hectare (ha) restoration initiative in the southern region of the State of Piauí, Brazil. The project works on public and private land to restore and maintain ecological connectivity through the critically important gallery forests of Brazil’s Cerrado and Caatinga biomes. By engaging with provisions in Brazilian environmental policy—the mandate to restore and protect Areas of Permanent Preservation (APPs) and Legal Reserves (LR) on private land—Eden Reforestation Projects (Eden) embraces opportunities to build a community vision that will support conservation and restoration in southern Piauí's rural family farming communities to safeguard essential ecosystem services, support biodiversity, and improve livelihoods.
This restoration project sits in a dynamic landscape threatened by an expanding agricultural frontier and desertification. The project area is at the headwaters of the Parnaiba River watershed—the main water source for the State of Piauí—and creates a corridor between two networks of protected Conservation Units along the ecotone between Brazil’s Cerrado and Caatinga biomes. The gap between these protected areas has lost 18% (247,000 ha) of tree cover between 2001-2020 because of agriculture, grazing, and desertification. However, the Paraim Ecological Corridor Area of Interest (AOI) has only lost 11% (4,350 ha) of tree cover in that same period—suggesting that there is still an opportunity to change its deforestation trajectory through this project.
The Paraim Ecological Corridor Project is the next step in a broader vision to create multiple connectivity pathways in this gap between protected areas. The project area includes Rangel State Park, the two-kilometer (km) buffer zone surrounding it, and the legally required Areas of Permanent Preservation and Legal Reserves along the perennial channels of the Paraim River corridor and Lake Parnaguá. Collectively, these areas extend the Serra da Capivara and Serra da Confusões ecological corridor established in 2005 toward the Nascentes do Parnaiba National Park and neighboring protected areas. Additionally, the project seeks to support the restoration and conservation of Rangel State Park as an important piece of green infrastructure that can regulate water resources in the upper portion of the Parnaiba River watershed, which provides water to over 3,000,000 people.
Brazil’s Cerrado and Caatinga biomes are diverse systems that include savannah, dryland, and closed canopy forest formations. This heterogeneity creates conditions supporting a diversity of plant and animal species adapted to these areas. Gallery forest formations in these biomes have been acknowledged as critical to landscape connectivity, as they provide important habitat for a wide variety of species such as the recently reintroduced Spix’s Macaw, declared "extinct-in-the-wild" in 2019. These forests are threatened by agriculture and grazing, as they occur in some of the landscape’s most fertile, well-watered areas.
The PECP expands on Eden’s existing work in the APP of Lake Parnaguá, which began in 2021. This project engages with 83% of private landowners around the lake to implement restoration activities on their privately-owned land. This intentional effort to mobilize community members to support connectivity on their family properties is core to the PECP and will be the foundation for the long-term health of southern Piauí. This work has also provided jobs in an area where less than 10% of the population benefits from formal employment and GDP per capita is 64.5% lower than Brazil as a whole. Less than 10% of the Cerrado biome is protected, demonstrating that restoration must engage and benefit private landowners to succeed.
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The Paraim Ecological Corridor Project is an exciting restoration opportunity that will have tangible impacts on communities, biodiversity, and forests in Brazil. Eden’s Initial restoration activities in this landscape began around Lake Parnaguá in 2021. This profile represents an expansion of Eden’s current work in southern Piaui. The project is ready to receive funding to support comprehensive stakeholder engagement, detailed restoration planning, early restoration activities, and the development of supporting initiatives that will benefit communities and sustain restoration in the long-term.
The anticipated impact of this project includes:
Brazil is one of the most diverse countries in the world, being home to 15-20% of the world’s biodiversity. However, the country's ecosystems are threatened by deforestation with the rise of the agriculture industry in Brazil. Intensive farming techniques cause the soil to quickly wear down, escalate greenhouse gas emissions, and threaten the protection of local communities. Eden's team in Brazil began working with traditional groups, indigenous people, Quilombola communities, and local governments in 2021 to help restore Brazil’s forests while facilitating community development for nearby communities in the Amazon, Cerrado, Caatinga, and coastal mangrove areas. For more information, please visit Eden's website edenprojects.org.