Deforestation spread throughout Nicaragua in the 1950s and 1960s, as plantations of cotton and other agricultural commodities expanded. Today, smallholder farmers own and operate the majority of the country’s farmland, much of which is available for reforestation. However, farmers often make less than $2 per day, so they need a way to grow trees that can also improve their livelihoods.

In San Martín, Peru, Initiative 20x20 partner Andes Amazon Fund has created two new conservation concessions: Cerro Blanco (1,016 hectares) and Los Otorongos (5,390 hectares). These two areas have a disproportionate impact on the region's biodiversity: Their proximity to the Gran Pajaten Biosphere Reserve expands  key ecological corridors that species use to migrate between habitats.  

Cerro Blanco

Andes Amazon Fund, an Initiative 20x20 partner, helped create the Bosque de Porvenir Municipal Conservation Area, which protects 31,859 hectares of Amazon forest in Pando, Bolivia. By helping communities manage their natural resources, it safeguards the health of centuries-old forests.

The Puyango Municipal Conservation Area in Loja, Ecuador was expanded by 24,524 hectares in November 2020. With support from the Andes Amazon Fund (AAF), an Initiative 20x20 partner, the reserve now protects 28,984 hectares of precious humid forest as well as rare tropical dry forest.

The Loja Municipal Conservation and Sustainable Use Area in the Ecuadorian Andes protects 73,701 hectares of tropical forest. Initiative 20x20 financial partner Andes Amazon Fund (AAF) and Nature and Culture International (NCI) joined forces with FORAGUA, a local municipal water fund, to safeguard this biodiverse ecosystem and ensure a clean and abundant water supply for 200,000 local people.

The Andes Amazon Fund, an Initiative20x20 financial partner, has helped create Carpish, 50,559 hectares of forest and grasslands in Peru's biodiverse central Andes. Rich in biodiversity, Carpish is home to many rare birds found nowhere else on Earth, like the collard inca and brown-flanked tanager. The Carpish Mountain Forest, the first Regional Conservation Area to be established in Huánuco, Peru, also shelters 78 endemic plant species.

Decades of civil war, high levels of poverty, and extensive cattle grazing have devastated the land in Colombia's Cimitarra and Tierralta regions. The result is that people are struggling and are forced to further degrade the land to meet their basic needs.

Deforestation for cattle ranching, industrial agriculture, illicit coca plantations, and mining has threatened Peru's Amazon rainforest for decades. That is partially because the people of the country's San Martín region, in the foothills of the Andes, have access to few alternative economic opportunities.

The Pantanal, at more than 42 million acres, is the largest and among the most pristine wetlands in the world. It spreads across three South American countries (Bolivia, Brazil and Paraguay) and provides water and livelihoods for millions of people.

Farms and ranches across Brazil’s Bahia State have suffered from decades of degradation. The result is declining crop yields and an uncertain future. For one Brazilian company, though, restoring that land makes both ecological and economic sense. Sucupira Agroflorestas grows both trees for timber and crops for food in a vibrant agroforestry system that is reversing that damage. Its goal is to promote agroecological principles as the instruments of a new green revolution.

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