The Amazon rain forest
Brazil's Ministry of Environment said during the eighth meeting of the Conference on Biodiversity (COP 8) which took place end of March 2006 in Curitiba, Brazil, it would declare more 81,000 square miles of the Amazon rainforest a protected area in the next three years. The area, which represents 4.2% of the biome in Brazil, is about five times as large as the State of Rio de Janeiro. The project is part of the Amazon Protected Areas Program (Arpa), created in 2002, which also provides units with different degrees of protection and should be concluded until 2012. Since the introduction of the program an area of 62,000 square miles has already been protected. According to the Ministry of Environment only 8,000 square miles must still be protected to conclude the first phase, which is supposed to transform 35,000 square miles in completely protected areas and an additional 35,000 square miles in sustainable development zones. The estimated costs of the Arpa program amount to US$ 400 millions. The 81 millions US$ for the first phase were raised by a partnership between the Brazilian government, the Global Environment Facility (GEF) – a multilateral financial organization for projects that benefit the global environment, the German Bank KfW and the WWF-Brazil.