Promotion of low emission production practices by community-led enterprises in Brazil

• Deforestation rates and land degradation are accelerating in the Amazon and Cerrado regions, with much of this occurring between small-scale farmlands/pastures and native forests
• In the Amazon region alone, approximately 2.4bn tons of carbon are stored in the remaining forests located on smallholder settlements
• Scaling sustainable agroforestry and forest production systems require:
• the capacity to access adequate finance
• bridging a feasibility and capacity gap to offer effective and continued technical assistance at scale, enabling small producers to increase productivity and expand areas
• business models of community enterprises to connect local production to markets
• To tackle these bottlenecks, the project faced two main challenges – engagement of local actors and the technical development of activities

Conexsus successfully hired and built capacity of credit enablers operating with community enterprises. This network of credit enablers is expected to continue to engage, support and upskill family farmers, facilitating the wider adoption of low-carbon rural practices in Brazil.

Key outputs achieved by the project include:

• A network of 40 credit enablers was built, operating with community enterprises, in partnership with Banco da Amazônia (BASA). BASA are visiting family farmers and offering technical assistance in the adoption of sustainable production practices, along with financial education and support in building Pronaf credit projects. Over 1,000 producers are being assisted and over 250 credit projects have been submitted to BASA. Of those, nearly 200 have already been approved, representing nearly BRL 1.5 million of public money financing low-carbon rural production
• 38 community enterprises were engaged in capacity building, including modelling workshops and the construction of individual business canvas and action plans
• Conexsus developed a system to monitor the direct impacts of community enterprises on deforestation and carbon emissions. The monitoring system was tested in the Amazon and Cerrado, generating a central database for the credit enablers’ work on the field and results
• Finally, in partnership with UFMG, the team developed high-resolution mappings and optimised algorithms to deliver a scalable tool to analyse all CAR records in Pará. An online platform was developed to be adopted by the state and will be used to scale up CAR analysis both in Pará and across all states in Brazil, accelerating CAR validation and promoting emissions reductions and low carbon solutions in the country

The project worked closely with local communities to develop GESI considerations and ensure continued impact beyond UK PACT funding. To achieve this, GESI was embedded across two key areas:

• GESI was included in two specific training activities throughout the delivery of the technical assistance model. The goal was to sensitise credit enablers on the relevance of rural credit for female small producers and to train the enablers to carry out an inclusive approach with rural families and communities
• Through the capacity building of local community enterprises, there was a focus on revising the methodology of the business modelling workshops to incorporate an analysis lens sensitive to gender and the specificities of minority groups. This was followed by business activators advising community enterprises about the implementation of the GESI actions defined in their individual action plans

The GESI training was delivered through two panels and one online module. Two credit enablers who attended the training have since developed seven new credit projects together with female family farmers. The long-term impact of these actions is already starting to be seen, as credit projects designed by women are being submitted to BASA.

So far, 45 projects (30% of the total) designed by women with support by both male and female credit enablers, have been approved by BASA.

The project allowed counterparts greater access to public credit, and showed new approaches to business management and how a monitoring system can support decision making and strategy building. It is already contributing to long-term GESI impacts in the region through the creation of credit projects with a specific GESI focus.

By implementing the credit enablers network and expanding the monitoring system, Conexsus engaged other financiers, such as Norway’s International Climate and Forest Initiative (NICFI), to continue investing in and scaling up the strategy. UK PACT also made it possible to test the automatised CAR analysis system, a novel approach that will speed up CAR validation and the protection of natural vegetation. What’s next? Building on this initial implementation to develop the network of credit enablers to continue supporting access to public credit, and to use the CAR analysis system whilst replicating and scaling up to other regions.