Community-based conservation is a good climate investment in Brazil & beyond (commentary)

A commentary piece revisits the decades-old debate between Garrett Hardin's “tragedy of the commons” and Elinor Ostrom's research showing local communities can manage shared resources successfully. It applies that framework to Brazil, where Indigenous lands lost just 1.2% of natural cover over 30 years and Quilombola territories lost 4.7%, compared to 17-19.9% loss on private land over the same period.

The piece credits Brazil's extractive reserve system, born from Chico Mendes's rubber tapper movement, which now covers 15.7 million hectares co-managed by communities and the state. It also points to the Bolsa Verde program, a quarterly payment to families in conservation territories, relaunched in 2023 with higher payouts and now reaching 32,800 beneficiary families.

Despite the conservation results, the piece notes 40% of people living in these sustainable-use areas face precarious sanitation or water access, a gap the payment program is meant to help close.

The full dispatch is available from the source below.