The Amazon Project celebrates World Environment Day with an ecological restoration campaign

World Environment Day is celebrated annually on 5 June. It highlights the protection and health of the environment as a major issue, and in 2024 will focus on land restoration, halting desertification and building resilience to drought.

The celebration of this day will provide an opportunity to raise awareness of responsible behaviour for the preservation and enhancement of the environment. Hence, this initiative of UNESCO Amazon project, supported by LVMH, aims to restore vital ecosystems affected by forest fires or human activity, enhance biodiversity, and promote sustainable land management practices.

The campaign will kick off on World Environment Day with a series of awareness-raising events designed to engage local communities, stakeholders, and the global audience. These events will include educational workshops, tree-planting activities, and community outreach programs, all aimed at fostering a deep-rooted appreciation of the Amazon's unique biodiversity and the critical importance of its preservation.

Restoration efforts will focus on reforesting burned and degraded areas, enhancing habitat connectivity, and implementing sustainable agroforestry practices to prevent future degradation. Collaboration is ongoing with Indigenous Peoples and local communities - focusing on the youth, local universities, and environmental organizations to ensure a holistic and inclusive approach to restoration.

Leveraging the global platform provided by World Environment Day, it aims to amplify the message of ecological stewardship and inspire collective action towards the resilience and protection of the Amazonian Biosphere Reserves. Together, we can make a lasting impact on the health of our planet and ensure a sustainable future for generations to come.

• Primary forests are the areas of greatest biodiversity and are also a key component of carbon storage.
• Most fires result from the advance of the agricultural frontier, other land use land cover changes, and land degradation exacerbated by global warming and climate change (e.g., heat waves, extreme drought and flood events).
• While about 30% of the predominantly savanna ecosystems in Bolivia's Beni Biosphere Reserve burned between 2001 and 2023, the extent of the burned area in Ecuador's rainforest in Sumaco and Yasuní Biosphere Reserves represents a small fraction of these territories. In addition, it is worth noting that some areas have been burned several times. With the exception of Yasuní and Sumaco Biosphere Reserves, all other territories have areas that were burned between 3 and 10 times in that period. In BR Beni, ~40% of the total area burned between 2001 and 2023 experienced at least two fire events.
• In the 2001-2022 period, the months of August, September, and October concentrated 78%, 84%, and 86% of all active fire events detected in Bolivia, Brazil, and Peru, respectively. In Ecuador, November and December concentrated 63% of the fires in the same period.

UNESCO is contributing to improving resilience and halting biodiversity loss in the Greater Amazon Basin through the Amazon Biosphere Reserves Project (2020-2025) supported by LVMH (Luis Vitton Moet Hennessy). The project aims to create an integrated landscape governance and management model that addresses the pressures and needs for the long-term sustainability of Amazon biosphere reserves.

The project is implemented in 4 countries (Bolivia, Brazil, Ecuador and Peru) within 8 biosphere reserves (Beni Biosphere Reserve, Pilón Lajas Biosphere Reserve, Central Amazon Biosphere Reserve, Podocarpus-El Cóndor Biosphere Reserve, Sumaco Biosphere Reserve, Yasuní Biosphere Reserve, Manu Biosphere Reserve & Oxapampa-Asháninka-Yánesha Biosphere Reserve) covering 30 million hectares representing 5% of the Amazon basin area and home to 1.3 million people.

Central to the project methodology is the integration of scientific and participatory approaches, which emphasises the co-production of knowledge. This involves merging scientific data with indigenous and local knowledge to identify and address environmental challenges in order to find innovative solutions that are both locally relevant and globally meaningful.

The project supports local initiatives in areas such as territorial governance, sustainable economic activities, ecosystem restoration and integrated fire management. By building on these established efforts, the project aims to improve resilience, and the capacity of Indigenous Peoples and local communities to sustainably manage their resources, adapt to environmental changes and provide alternative economic livelihoods.