Assisted Natural Regeneration Alliance

Esta página e recursos adicionais sobre regeneração natural assistida estão disponíveis no site do WRI Brasil aqui.

Nature has a magical power to regenerate itself. Even landscapes that have suffered from decades of severe deforestation and degradation can recover their function, bring back lost biodiversity, and store planet-warming carbon dioxide. But on its own, the natural regeneration process can take decades – and a little human assistance can make a big difference.

A middle ground between spontaneous natural regeneration and traditional tree-planting, assisted natural regeneration (ANR) is a set of ecosystem restoration techniques where local people – leaning on their knowledge of the land and on ancestral or local traditions – help trees and native vegetation naturally recover by eliminating threats to their growth and survival.

To prevent the spread of wildfires, people can build firebreaks, thin overgrown areas, and clear the forest floor of dry debris. To stop cattle from trampling and munching on saplings, they can build fences to keep them out. To give native trees enough room to grow, they can remove invasive grasses, ferns, and shrubs. To encourage new vegetation to sprout from underground root systems farmers can channel water into the soil and prune branches. And, if natural regeneration on its own does not increase tree cover quickly enough or the targeted species fail to pop up on their own, people can selectively plant trees to fill the gaps.

To encourage the use of assisted natural regeneration techniques by rural farmers and communities around the world, WRI is building a new global partnership that will collect requests from ANR practitioners and connect them with experienced peers, funders, policymakers, and researchers. We are starting in Brazil’s Amazon Rainforest, the biome with the most to gain from ANR.

In the states of Mato Grosso and Pará, WRI Brasil is working with ICV, Imazon, and Suzano to expand ANR across 300,000 hectares through assisted natural regeneration in 8 municipalities by:

• Identifying and mapping success factors and priority areas for assisted natural regeneration;
• Designing implementation strategies for ANR in priority landscapes; and
• Scaling up the existing successful initiatives throughout the states.

This work will sequester millions of tons of carbon, help communities become compliant with Brazil’s Forest Code, and bring countless other social, economic and environmental benefits to the region. In addition, the work in partnership seeks to create and consolidate financial mechanisms to encourage forest restoration, improve incomes, employment and livelihoods in the Amazon. Learning from this work, the ANR Alliance will work with leaders in Africa, Latin America, and South Asia to replicate success and accelerate restoration progress.

^{Cover image credit: Sesc Pantanal}