Background 

The identification of priority actions and areas for conservation has become a significant tool for biodiversity protection in Brazil and around the world. In the past decade, conservation opportunities in the Atlantic Forest were assessed through priority-setting workshops. The first large-scale analysis for the Atlantic Forest was conducted at Workshop 90 in Atibaia, São Paulo, coordinated by the SOS Mata Atlântica Foundation, and the first action plan was carried out also in 1990. Other studies identified priority areas for conservation in the Atlantic Forest: the Northeastern Atlantic Forest (1993), the Southern and Eastern Atlantic Forest (1996), and others.

The biome-level assessments have been incorporated as government policy through the National Biodiversity Program and financed by the GEF since 1997. All workshops were led by consortia of NGOs, government agencies, universities, and research organizations. This cycle of prioritization for Atlantic Forest culminated in Evaluation and Priority Actions for Conservation of the Biomes of the Atlantic Forest and Campos Sulinos, established as part of the Project on the Conservation and Sustainable Use of the Brazilian Biological Diversity of the Brazilian Ministry of the Environment. The project was intended to consolidate information on the biological diversity of the Atlantic Forest and identify knowledge gaps; identify priority areas and actions based on biological importance, ecosystem integrity, and opportunity to conserve biodiversity; identify and evaluate current and alternative uses of natural resources compatible with conservation; and promote greater awareness and effective participation of society in conservation.

Representatives of government agencies, NGOs, research institutions, universities, and the private sector attended the Atibaia workshop. Initially, 182 priority areas were identified as part of this prioritization process. Of these, 99 were deemed of extreme biological importance. This effort of more than 200 scientists provided the best consensus of site-based biodiversity assessment and priority conservation action for Atlantic Forest. The results are being published as maps, technical reports, and online databases. The work is being used by the Ministry of the Environment, state governments, and environmental NGOs to define biodiversity corridors, select sites for new protected areas, assess environmental impact, and establish institutional priorities and projects.

The CEPF strategy will focus on expanding the work in two biodiversity corridors and ensure the conservation of key forest remnants of the Brazilian Atlantic Forest within these corridors: the Central Corridor including north-central Espírito Santo, a portion of northeastern Minas Gerais, and southern Bahia; and the Serra do Mar Biodiversity Corridor, including south-central Rio De Janeiro State, southeastern Minas Gerais and northeastern São Paulo State.

The CEPF strategy seeks to complement activities underway as part of the International Pilot Program to Conserve the Brazilian Rain Forests (PPG-7), adopted in 1990 at the G-7 summit in Houston. Initial funding commitments to the program were made in 1991 at the London economic summit, and the program was developed in greater detail by the Brazilian Inter-Ministerial Conference, the EU Commission, and the World Bank to slow the destruction of Brazilian rainforest and to encourage sustainable use of their resources.

The delimitation of the Central and Serra do Mar corridors is based on the original limits proposed by Biodiversity Corridors projects of PPG-7, and on a biogeographic analysis that delimited the biogeographic regions of the Atlantic Forest by overlaying maps of the distribution of endemic passeriform birds, primates, and forest butterflies. The vegetation map of IBGE, based on orbital imaging data from the RadamBrasil project, was used to draw the limits between the areas considered biogeographic centers and those considered transition areas, since these limits could not always be clearly delimited on the basis of species distribution alone.

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