Water Caretakers: Vale do Ribeira [2022/2023]
Leadership training course at the Ribeira’s Iguape Watershed and South Coast of São Paulo.
The waters of the Atlantic Forest supply about 120 million people in Brazil.
The Ribeira Valley is a region that stands out for the preservation of its forests and great ecological diversity. There is more than 2.1 million hectares of forests, that are equivalent to approximately 21% of the remaining Atlantic Forest in Brazil, being the largest continuous area of an almost extinct ecosystem.
In this fantastic region, called “Amazônia Paulista” due to the great confluence of its springs and rivers, there is an increasingly urgent need for care and conservation.
For this reason, among the course initiatives that FunBEA carries out, the “Water Caretakers- Vale do Ribeira” is a vital project for training local community leaders in participatory water management.
In 2022 and 2023, the project is offering hybrid meetings across the basin, bringing together different social actors for a critical and popular environmental education training, as well as educational intervention projects in each region of the basin.
Galery
“Canjica”, a species of an albino tapir, found in the Juquiá region, in the Vale do Ribeira, was chosen by the participants as a representative visual element in the course. The species, rare in the Atlantic Forest, is an indicator of a healthy and preserved environment.