Instituto Terra, Brazil

The Land Institute for Environmental Preservation (ITPA) is a private, non-profit organization that has been working since 1998 for sustainable development. It is the largest environmental organization based in the State of Rio de Janeiro, where it maintains dozens of work fronts, with more than 70 employees.

Instituto Terra works in the recovery of degraded Atlantic Forest areas and recovering water sources from the region known as the Rio Doce Water Basin, one of the most environmentally impacted from Southeast Brazil.

Founded in April 1998, as a initiative from Lélia Deluiz Wanick Salgado and Sebastião Salgado, had its starting point the reforesting of an area of 608,69 hectares known as the Private Reserve of Natural Heritage Bulcão Farm.

Besides taking on the challenging commitment of planting a forest where before not even plant weeds would grow, the Instituto Terra today is helping reforest thousands of hectares in its surroundings and promoting environmental education to encourage the region’s sustainable development.

The Program Olhos D’Água extends this action and targets protecting over 300 thousand Rio Doce River springs, therefore effectively “planting water”.

Through established partnerships with all sectors of society (private companies, public authorities, NGOs and organized groups), it has become one of the most influential environmental organizations in the country.

Since its foundation, ITPA has already made investments in projects for the creation and implementation of natural reserves, natural tourism and public use, forest restoration, among others. For this, it maintains a modern management structure that has allowed the generation of more than 500 green jobs with a formal contract.

The institutional focus of ITPA is the State of Rio de Janeiro, notably the nature conservation units.

ITPA is an organization based on the principles of participatory democracy, transparency and professionalism. Their actions seek results for the conservation of nature with social inclusion.

The organization emerged from a local initiative of environmentalists interested in ensuring the protection of one of the last and most conserved fragments of the Atlantic Forest in the State of Rio de Janeiro, the Federal Biological Reserve of Tinguá. This natural reserve maintains high levels of diversity, mainly due to its high altitudinal gradient, which varies up to about 1800 meters.

Founded in the municipality of Miguel Pereira, ITPA is present in more than ten municipalities in the state of Rio de Janeiro, and continues its constant search for the construction and improvement of public policies, especially those dedicated to nature conservation and sustainable development.

ITPA is an organization based on the principles of participatory democracy, transparency and professionalism. Their actions always seek effective results for the conservation of nature with social inclusion.

The organization was born from a local initiative of environmentalists committed to ensuring the protection of one of the last and most conserved fragments of the Atlantic Forest in the State of Rio de Janeiro, the Tinguá Biological Reserve. This natural reserve maintains extremely high levels of diversity, especially due to its high altitudinal gradient, which varies from elevations close to sea level to about 1800 meters.

Founded in 1998, in the municipality of Miguel Pereira, ITPA has become professional and is now considered one of the largest and most respected environmental organizations in Brazil. It maintains many fronts of work throughout the state of Rio de Janeiro, without giving up militant activity in the constant search for the construction and improvement of public policies, especially those dedicated to nature conservation and sustainable development.

Ensure that sustainability is built with participatory democracy, enhancement of cultural diversity and preservation of biodiversity.

Basics:

Transparency;
Objectivity and pragmatism;
Appreciation of differences;
Networking;
Solidarity;
Democracy;
Integration of popular knowledge with scientific knowledge;
Quality score.

We are responsible for the restoration and / or conservation of more than 100,000 hectares native to the Atlantic Forest, the most threatened tropical forest on the planet – and, at the same time, one of its richest and most biodiverse biomes. To date, the organization has helped create about 300 green jobs, demonstrating its concern to achieve a new paradigm of economic and social growth based on the protection of natural resources.

ITPA has around 70 employees, including fixed and temporary staff and consultants. For this, it maintains three offices, being one in the capital and two in the municipalities of Miguel Pereira and Rio Claro.

Through established partnerships with all sectors of society (private companies, public authorities, non-governmental organizations and organized groups), we have become one of the most important environmental organizations in the state of Rio de Janeiro.

We execute actions in different locations, but the Tinguá-Bocaina Biodiversity Corridor (CBTB) is currently the main focus of our executive projects. This is the most critical point of fragmentation of the Atlantic Forest and the location of the source springs of the Metropolitan Region of Rio de Janeiro.