Brasília, April 25, 2003 (Agência Brasil - ABr) - The Brazilian government is getting underway with the Amazônia Protected Areas Program (ARPA), with support from the Global Environment Facility (GEF) of the World Bank (IBRD) and the environmental organization World Wildlife Foundation (WWF). According to the coordinator, Aurélio Vianna, Arpa will be "the biggest initiative in history for the conservation of native forests in that region." The director of the IBRD in Brazil, Vinod Thomas, signed a document yesterday (24) attesting that all the conditions that were established have been fulfilled.

Created last August and coordinated by the Ministry of Environment, the ARPA program will triple the area of tropical forest under federal protection. This will guarantee the environmental conservation of an area comparable in size to the state of Bahia and equivalent to 12% of the total Amazon Forest, which currently occupies 4.1 million square kilometers in the country (approximately half of Brazil's total territory). The ARPA is also intended for the protection of 500 thousand square kilometers representative of the 23 eco-regions that make up the Amazon biome, including the various types of landscapes and genetic resources. (DAS)