Fishermen join boats to pass fish from the boat used to catch used to transport it faster to the processing ship riverine settlers and Indigenous villages are working together to promote the sustainable fishing of near magic fish called pirarucu raise a pirarucu fish from a lake in San Raimundo settlement they haul in the net and club the fish in the head two or three men are required to do the job and Manuel Cunha Da Lima raise a pirarucu fish from a lake in San Raimundo settlement Surrounded by houses the lake in Carauari city is seen during sunrise A boat transports fish to the processing ship Fisherman pull with a Pirarucu fish at a lake in San Raimundo settlement lake lie at a floating warehouse in San Raimundo settlement daughter Quilvilene Figueiredo Da Cunha and wife Irlene Das Gracas da Cunha Figueiredo in San Raimundo settlement there were 1,335 pirarucus in the nearby lakes in 2011 winds thread to weave nets at a floating warehouse in San Raimundo settlement The holes are large enough to allow smaller specimens to go through as taking fish under five feet is prohibited some with people sit at the port of Carauari city carries pieces of a pirarucu fish in San Raimundo settlement Women prepare turtle meat for lunch at San Raimundo settlement They usually cook turtle meat according to traditional recipes sit at their home in San Raimundo settlement in Carauari The pirarucus are then taken from the lakes to a large boat by the Jurua River Children participate in a fishermen party at San Raimundo settlement communal hall Youth fishermen watch a soccer game on the tv in San Raimundo Marcos Aurelio Canuto cuts wood from forest to use for kill the pirarucu fish Workers wash Pirarucu with clean fresh water A man separates leather from the body of a Pirarucu fish at industrial refrigeration factory of Asproc Association of Rural Producers of Carauari Heads and leather of pirarucu are kept cold in Carauari Fishermen look for pirarucu fishes at a lake in San Raimundo settlement Sustainable fishing in the Medio Jurua region has led to a surge in the population of the endangered pirarucu 3) (AP Video by Fabiano Maisonnave and Jorge Saenz) Brazil (AP) — Even in the most biodiverse rainforest of the world there is its mammoth size: It can weigh up to 200 kilos (440 pounds) by far the largest of 2,300 known fish species in the Amazon It is found primarily in floodplain lakes across the Amazon basin the giant fish not so long ago nearly vanished from Jurua as vessels swept the lakes with large nets The illegal and unsustainable fishing left river and Indigenous communities struggling to catch their staple food And it left pirarucu designated as threatened with extinction unless trade in the fish is closely controlled by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora The fish has come back to the lakes of Medio Jurua The story of how involves people of different backgrounds cooperating on many levels — a vision of what’s possible that veterans of the Amazon say they’ve seen nowhere else across the vast region With the assistance of a Dutch Catholic priest rubber tappers organized and led a campaign to persuade the federal government to create the Medio Jurua Extractive Reserve They proposed that river communities could take from the forest and its lakes — up to a point — and within protected areas Most successful of all has been the management of pirarucu Managing the comeback has required social organization The virtuous cycle plays out in the region of Carauari which stretches along 650 kilometers (404 miles) of the Jurua River and is home to 35,000 people The backdrop of that tragedy is a decades-old dispute between Indigenous communities and former rubber tappers who were hired by local businessmen to do illegal fishing Two local fishermen confessed to the crimes “Javari is a portrait of what Medio Jurua was like in the 1980s,” Manoel Cunha the main leader of the local rubber tappers told The Associated Press during a boat trip to Sao Raimundo his home community and one of the ones that takes part in regulated fishing “We managed to get rid of fishing companies and invading fishermen by monitoring and management and you have not seen any fishing boats except the ones from our organizations Fishing quotas are possible due to another remarkable characteristic of the pirarucu: It is one of the few fish species in the world that surfaces to breathe A local fisherman and a researcher in the nearby Mamirarua region developed a way to take advantage of this and count the fish since they stay underwater for no more than 20 minutes The government now recognizes this counting method The survey is done once a year by certified fishermen only 30% of the pirarucu in a certain area can be fished the following year This controlled fishing has led to a surge in its population in regions where it’s employed An AP team accompanied the first of the seven days of fishing in Sao Raimundo connected by well-maintained wooden footbridges amid açai palm trees whose ancestors arrived in the region from the impoverished and drought-ravaged Northeast during the rubber boom to work as tappers everybody that eats it falls in love with it and wants more,” Rosilda da Cunha a sister of Manoel who lives in Sao Raimundo the goal is to buy a solar panel system to replace the diesel-fueled generator Another share of the money goes to the community members who participate in the fishing All the production is bought by the Association of Rural Producers of Carauari so the fishers are never at the mercy of middlemen Founded by rubber tappers who wanted to liberate themselves from slave-like labor conditions Asproc has grown to be one of the most important grassroots entities in the entire Amazon It runs programs on everything from sanitation It now sells pirarucu to Brazil´s main cities including Sao Paulo and Brasília a complex endeavor that involves several days of transport by boat and road and usually takes more than two weeks Asproc’s success has attracted several partnerships One is counterintuitive — the United States Forest Service and the Agency for International Development (USAID) which helped to finance a warehouse for processing fish in Carauari city “This project is unique as it requires a strong governance structure,” Ted Gehr told the AP during his first visit to the Sao Raimundo community “Everybody is in agreement that they may have to sacrifice and not be able to fish all of the pirarucu that are available but knowing that they’ll reproduce more and that in the long run they will be more valuable.” The Medio Jurua region is blessed with remoteness So far it is free from the deforestation and fire that have been devastating elsewhere in the Amazon But the smoke that has left the skies grayish in September is a reminder that the destruction is not far away The challenge is to be a strong organization and economy to stave off future threats “Had we not organized ourselves through fishing management to protect our environments and take our fish we could be in the same situation as our colleagues from Javari,” says Cunha who is the head of the Medio Jurua Extractive Reserve a position usually held by government officials they could have saved the lives of those two comrades.” Please press and hold the button until it turns completely green If you believe this is an error, please contact our support team 147.45.197.102 : 3ad3e3c8-47d2-444c-8e67-50dfa20e Located in the heart of the Amazon rainforest Carauari is not a place that is easy to reach but the spreading global panic over the COVID-19 pandemic has arrived A colorful collection of stilt houses scattered along the massive brown meanders of the Jurua River in western Brazil its 29,000 residents are spread out over 26,000km2 It is one of the most remote towns on Earth with no roads connecting it to the outside world The only way to get to Carauari is a three-hour flight from Manaus COVID-19 was a far-away thing people in Carauari heard about on the news but then the first case was confirmed in Manaus on Friday last week and the panic that has swept from Wuhan to Europe and the US arrived in the heart of the jungle waking old traumas in a place that has a devastating history with diseases brought in from the outside world “Now they’re saying they don’t want to let anyone leave here for Manaus so they won’t bring in the disease,” resident Raimunda da Silva dos Santos said from the door of her house near the river port Carauari residents are now obsessed with protecting their community from COVID-19 “We’re just praying to God not to bring this epidemic here.” The local government is keen to keep the coronavirus away since it is as hard to get out of Carauari — including for emergency medical care — as it is to get in “The logistical difficulty of accessing the town is an advantage for us for now in that it minimizes the risk of an infected person arriving but it also means we’ll have more difficulty transporting patients out if we need to,” hospital director Manoel Brito said The town on Tuesday launched health checkpoints to screen passengers arriving by plane and boat on the orders of Carauari Mayor Bruno Luiz Litaif Ramalho the new restrictions have raised fears that Carauari would be even more cut off from the outside world than before Residents’ lives depend on the goods that arrive by boat from Manaus — medicine industrial products — anything they do not produce themselves “It’s going to be hard to survive” if boat traffic is affected as he unloaded equipment from his wooden canoe along the banks of the Jurua The coronavirus is especially worrying for indigenous communities in the Amazon contact with the outside world has often meant death from foreign diseases painful history that goes back to the first European colonizers who wiped out an estimated 95 percent of the population of the Americas Amazonas state has declared an emergency that includes a temporary ban on outsiders visiting indigenous reserves while the national indigenous association has canceled meetings and assemblies to avoid gathering groups of people Many communities are worried about the potential impact of the coronavirus which they have only limited information about “The situation is very delicate for indigenous peoples,” Bare “Whether it’s COVID-19 or other diseases that we hadn’t been exposed to Metrics details The Amazon hosts a large biological and cultural diversity with a deeply established knowledge of natural resource management many parts of the Amazon are increasingly urban the design of new development pathways based on the principles of the circular economy is a promising alternative to align biodiversity conservation and urban changes based on an analysis of Carauari municipality in the western Brazilian Amazon we discuss how the principles of the circular economy can be integrated in the Amazonian urban development frontline using the existing co-management organizations The region is also characterized by many small informal urban settlements spreading along with the vast network of rivers we discuss the possibilities available to ensure a more sustainable pathway for urban Amazon via the principles of circular economy (CE) by analyzing opportunities for improving solid waste management through the re-use of by-products of natural resources used in the value chains The CE framework can be key to biodiversity conservation and urban management conciliation with local well-being the remoteness of some small urban communities added to the lack of roads and transport systems makes traditional waste collection and disposal systems difficult to implement in the Amazon the low population density in most of the Amazon leads to high costs for waste management systems in a region that lacks the financial resources to pay for them much of the waste contains materials potentially valuable as inputs in biodiversity-based productive activities as the import of certain materials is both costly and time-consuming the region has a number of communities organized for the commercialization of a variety of products in the different local and global value chains that could build the social and organizational infrastructure required to operate CE initiatives there is the likelihood that the generation of large quantities of waste will threaten the pristineness of the region and so bring further powerful threats to its biodiversity waste management and agro-extractive activities are urgently needed in the Amazon region we present the concepts associated with a CE framework which can be strengthened by incorporating many of the co-management initiatives already present in various value chains in the region This approach can be used to connect the production of local goods and the generation of waste to the implementation of a CE strategy in small urban centers We studied an example of an emerging system of CE in the municipality of Carauari which borders the Juruá River in the western part of the Brazilian Amazon a conservation hot spot where a series of promising CE and co-management initiatives have occurred These could serve as models for the development of similar programs in other parts of Amazon a Potential for integration between organic waste recovery and production and consumption activities in the Amazon and biodiversity-based value chains; b co-management of Açaí palm (Euterpe oleracea) fruit; c co-management of Copaíba (Copaifera langsdorffii) oil; d production of cassava flour; e co-management of arapaima (Arapaima gigas); f co-management of Brazilian nut (Bertholletia excelsa); and g cupuaçu (Theobroma grandiflorum) fruit The Amazon has tremendous opportunities to strengthen the CE in small urban centers and distances are often great so that making the maximum use of resources becomes essential for minimizing costs there are challenges to establishing the organizational arrangements for the CE model and waste management logistics complicated the utilization and strengthening of existing organizational models and capacities in other activities are key for managing the CE initiatives Even though the NSWP has ambitious goals and responsibilities its implementation is slow and enforcement weak The shared responsibilities for the product life cycle are not a reality for many products a major tributary of Amazonian River where local communities are starting to integrate the co-management arrangements through circular economy principles Solid black line indicates the boundaries of Carauari municipality; yellow and pink polygons represent two sustainable-use protected areas Sustainable Development Reserve of Uacari and Extractive Reserve of Medio jurua respectively; b aerial photo of Juruá river; and c) urban environment of Carauari recycling initiatives have been organized by a local recyclable materials association 40 tons of recyclables are taken to Manaus only every 6 months 28 families declared themselves to be recyclable material collectors but the quantities and destinations of this waste are not known There is a need to connect these rural communities to the small urban centers and having these form a network for strengthening CE opportunities the seeds are processed in the agroindustry with the potential to process 36 tons/year of oils approximately 2 tons of waste is generated giving potential for some 20 tons of waste in 2019 The fruit peels were being reused in the forests by the communities themselves in home gardens for example while the oilcake (approximately 70% of the waste or in this case 14 t/year) was being processed and turned into soap for local use Proposal for the Integration of Waste Management Systems and Agro-Extractive Activities using Circular Economy concepts and structures Infrastructure investments include refrigeration boats there is a need to overcome the main bottlenecks to recycling chain establishment supporting the diagnosis of existing value chains to accurately estimate product and waste flow and how these might be integrated; quantifying dry and recyclable waste; providing logistic support for productive sectors in supporting reverse remanufacturing; as well as analyzing the main infrastructure in the region to promote productive sector interconnectivity the alignment between co-management arrangements and CE framework can generate important socio-ecological outcomes including food and energy security; reduction of certain production costs and environmental impacts; and increase in added value to the region’s production chains and the market players should work together with the Brazilian government towards a more sustainable policy for the Amazon with a special focus on small urban communities and biodiversity assets that can generate wealth and well-being with the standing living forest Using existing co-management practices to strengthen CE initiatives in the urban areas of the region could form one of the pillars for promoting a sustainable pathway model within the Amazon All relevant data and information used are available in this article Complementary information can be obtained with the authors under request IBGE—Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatísticas. Cidades. Brasília. http://www.cidades.ibge.gov.br (2020) sustainable development and circular economy: alternative concepts for trans-disciplinary research Conceptualizing the circular economy: an analysis of 114 definitions Paes, M. X. et al. Transition to circular economy in Brazil: a look at the municipal solid waste management in the state of São Paulo. Manage Decis. https://doi.org/10.1108/MD-09-2018-1053 (2019) Circular cities: mapping six cities in transition From waste to sustainable materials management: three case studies of the transition journey Circular economy—a new relationship with our goods and materials would save resources and energy and create local jobs Municipal solid waste management: Integrated analysis of environmental and economic indicators based on life cycle assessment Local scale comparisons of biodiversity as a test for global protected area ecological performance: a meta-analysis Help restore Brazil’s governance of globally important ecosystem services The performance and potential of protected areas Decentralization for cost-effective conservation Temporal decay in timber species composition and value in Amazonian logging concessions Cox M., Arnold G., Tomás S. V. A review of design principles for community-based natural resource management. Ecol Soc. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-03704-150438 (2010) A general framework for analyzing sustainability of social-ecological systems Community-based management of amazonian biodiversity assets in Participatory Biodiversity Conservation Lessons from integrating fishers of arapaima in small-scale fisheries management at the Mamirauá Reserve Community-based management induces rapid recovery of a high-value tropical freshwater fishery populations by community‐based management in floodplains of the Purus River Community-based population recovery of overexploited Amazonian wildlife Unintended multispecies co-benefits of an Amazonian community-based conservation programme Co‐management of culturally important species: a tool to promote biodiversity conservation and human well‐being Resource co-management as a step towards gender equity in fisheries Return on investment of the ecological infrastructure in a new forest frontier in Brazilian Amazonia Analysis of the non-timber forest products market in the Brazilian Amazon Generation of domestic solid waste in rural areas: case study of remote communities in the Brazilian Amazon Evolução e desafios no gerenciamento dos resíduos sólidos urbanos nos estados da região norte Implementation of aquaculture parks in Federal Government waters in Brazil Recent progress on innovative urban infrastructures system towards sustainable resource management Brasil. Lei n° 12.305, de 02 de agosto de 2010. Política Nacional de Resíduos Sólidos. Brasília [National policy for solid wastes], DF. http://www.planalto.gov.br/ccivil_03/_ato2007-2010/2010/lei/l12305.htm (2010) Community-Based Management of Amazonian Biodiversity Assets Determinants of yield in a non-timber forest product: Copaifera oleoresin in Amazonian extractive reserves Plano Municipal de Saneamento Básico e de Gestão Integrada de Resíduos Sólidos do município de Carauari-AM Associação Amazonense de Municípios e Secretaria de Meio Ambiente e Desenvolvimento Sustentável do Governo do Estado do Amazonas (Municipal Plan for Basic Sanitation and Integrated Solid Waste Management in the municipality of Carauari-AM) Download references The authors would like to express gratitude to Adrian Barnett for editing the paper These authors contributed equally: Michel Xocaira Paes São Paulo School of Management (FGV/EAESP) Michel Xocaira Paes & José Antonio Puppim de Oliveira Faculty of Environmental Sciences and Natural Resource Management Instituto de Ciências Biológicas e da Saúde Brazilian School of Public and Business Administration (FGV/EBAPE) participated in all stages of the work (conceptualization The authors declare no competing interests Publisher’s note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations Reprints and permissions Download citation DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s42949-021-00031-z Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content: a shareable link is not currently available for this article Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science In, um, other news: By taking a different approach to conservation, the world could make biodiversity-renewing projects far more effective at protecting freshwater species, according to a new study in Science focused on areas of the Amazon rainforest they should pay particular attention to restoring the planet’s freshwater rivers which are threatened by habitat loss and the climate crisis Freshwater ecosystems make up less than 1% of the Earth’s surface yet are home to some 10% of all known species on Earth and a third of all vertebrates they play key roles in regulating the planet’s carbon and providing food for people around the world freshwater ecosystems aren’t really prioritized in biodiversity policy policies are designed to prioritize terrestrial ecosystems and species with the assumption that they’ll benefit freshwater systems by extension the report’s researchers analyzed more than 1,500 land-based and marine species in the Amazon rainforest These species live in 377 localities and 99 forest river channels in Paragominas and Santarém By running computer simulations of various conservation efforts the currently existing strategy isn’t great Land-focused conservation efforts provided an average of just 22% of the freshwater species-boosting benefits that would be achieved through specifically freshwater-focused conservation planning When they modeled jointly-focused efforts which target both land and water ecosystems (what they call “integrated cross-realm planning”) the results for species population sizes went wild The study shows that with these changes to prioritize conservation of freshwater systems it was possible to see benefits to freshwater species population levels that were 600% higher and at the expense of just a 1% decrease in benefits to land-based species on average these integrated strategies would cost the same amount as the land-specific ones many terrestrial species drink and eat from freshwater lakes and streams and rely on the those water bodies to supply nutrients to the rainforest’s rich foliage Though the study focused on the Amazon in particular the authors said their findings could inform biodiversity-saving policies everywhere because freshwater bodies aren’t just under threat in Brazil Because of habitat loss from agriculture and other human activities freshwater vertebrate populations have dropped by about 80% over the past 40 years which is more than twice the decline of marine and land vertebrate populations So it’s high time we start giving them the attention they deserve in conservation plans ' + scriptOptions._localizedStrings.webview_notification_text + ' " + scriptOptions._localizedStrings.redirect_overlay_title + " " + scriptOptions._localizedStrings.redirect_overlay_text + "