From the forest to the consumer - GVces - Fundação Getulio Vargas

scale of their production despite covering a larger area (2.7 million hectares)
than public and private owners. Environmental agencies have approved the
harvesting of 10 thousand cubic meters of logs per year in community areas,
but currently there are only 6 thousand cubic meters being produced. “The situation
used to be worse, we used to harvest only a third of that volume before
2009,” Aquino says.
To increase their revenues, communities are going back to an activity they
CHICo MEnDES’ HERITAgE
We drove 189 km from Acre’s capital,
Rio Branco, to the municipality of
Xapuri to investigate what has changed
in the forest where Chico Mendes used
to live. From the road we saw extensive
pastures dotted with solitary Brazil nut
trees, showing the power of the cattle
ranching business and its advance
on parts of the tropical rainforest. In
the distance, fragments of preserved
forest were still visible.
From Xapuri, it takes another 25 km
on dirt and winding roads to get to the
Seringal Cachoeira, a rubber plantation
that preserves the heritage of Chico
Mendes, the rubber tapper leader
assassinated in 1988. In the 1980s,
the area witnessed clashes between
rubber tappers and landowners who
wanted to occupy and clear the forest.
Today the rubber plantation is a
benchmark for forest management and
part of the Chico Mendes Agricultural
and Extractive Project. There we meet
Antônio Teixeira Mendes, nicknamed
Duda, a cousin of Mendes. “I was born
in the forest but really got to know it
ten years ago, when I started to use
forest management,” he says.
The Porto Dias Rubber Association
was the first community area to
adopt, in 1996, forest management
techniques. The Seringal Cachoeira
followed two years later and in 2002
was the first to receive a social and
environmental label for its timber. With
the certification, wood became as
important a product for the community
as Brazil nuts and rubber. The timber
logs are sold for five times more than
before receiving the label and today
represents the community’s largest
income source. “We get everything
we need from the forest without
destroying it,” says Sebastião Teixeira
Mendes. He worked as a rubber tapper
for 45 years and now specializes in
explaining how forest management
works to visitors from all parts of Brazil
and the world
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