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The general mission of this program is to restore the vegetation cover of the Mata Atlântica biome in the city of Rio de Janeiro by recovering degraded and permanent protection areas. The program started in the 1980s as part of measures by city hall to increase the quality of lif e in the informal settlements. The activities were from the beginning implemented with strong social inclusion as the workers for reforesting the areas came from the surrounding communities. Nowadays the program functions as well via contracting by private companies, environmental compensation or by mechanisms of tributary exemption (fiscal incentives).Thus, reforestation projects aim not only at reducing landslide risk, but at the same time contribute to biodiversity protection and enhancement of ecosystem services, such as carbon sequestration and food provision as well as increasing scenic beauty. Therefore, these measures also seek to provide benefits for the communities, for instance using fruits and medicinal plant organs, according to the reforestation expert from SMAC.2 cases were studied in detail: Morro da Formiga and Morro dos Prazeres
Regarding the implementation of a reforestation project, a multi-criteria prioritization methodology has been developed more recently considering the following criteria:<ul><li>Adjacency to existing forest fragments;</li><li>Adjacency to existing reforestation projects;</li><li>Proximity to informal settlements less than 1,000 meters;</li><li>Within an environmental conservation area;</li><li>Area size bigger than ten hectares;</li><li>Access via public road;</li><li>Landslide risk;</li><li>Slope higher than 30 percent; and</li><li>Slope orientation to north.</li></ul>These criteria are ranked by their importance which shows that the factor of landslide risk is so far of less priority as it only gets the lowest value of four, whereas the adjacency to existing fragments and reforestation areas get the highest values of 19.Data of the vegetation mapping of SMAC (SIG Floresta) shows that reforestation projects have been implemented in 2,158 ha.
Ecosystem-based solutions have also been considered but are so far limited to reforestation measures that could be strongly enhanced and are not fully integrated in overall urban policies and planning. Here, a more holistic approach could serve to tap the full potential of reforestation measures, e.g. by including additional benefits for the local population or by combining approaches used by SMAC and Geo-Rio to hybrid solutions as well as paying more attention to small scale areas and monitoring. The interlinkages between urban planning, environmental management, climate change adaptation, and disaster risk reduction require a more systematic and comprehensive approach to disaster risk management, which in the past has mainly been reactive rather than preventive, engineering focused rather than based on planning and use of natural landscape features to prevent disaster risks. Thus, there is still a high potential that has not been explored yet.
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The already implemented projects have been carried out in cooperation with the local communities.
Rio de Janeiro, Brasil