Development of incentives for the conservation and sustainable use of native forests in the Rio Uruguay region.

The project proposal of CEIDUR will be based in four western departments of Artigas, Salto, Paysandú and Río Negro in Uruguay. These departments have a surface of 4.769.687 ha, of which only 158159 ha can be classified as native forest which is about 21% of the native forest cover of Uruguay. In these four departments live about 60.000 people and there are 8629 farm properties. About half of these farms (4030) have a surface less than 100 hectares and are considered small scale farmers. The main focus of the project will be in the department of Paysandú. The target groups of this project are those landowners which own 1 up to 100 hectares of native forest. Other beneficiaries of the project are those who do not own land but use the forest for the subsistence purposes. Through the several old laws measures are defined that should help conserve native forests and it approves tax cuts diverse tax cuts for those who conserve these native forests. This compensation is limited for small producers because of lack of information, complexity and costs to access these benefits. However currently the national policies it is not structure to establish compensations or generate market mechanisms which reward those who provide environmental services to the general society. The project proposes to improve the access to a compensation scheme for small producers with native forest (owning 1-100 ha of land). The objectives of this project are to improve the system for economic incentives for small producers to conserve the native forest ecosystem. And to improve knowledge of the target group of rural producers and local population has about the native forest ecosystem and its benefits. CEIDUR hopes to achieve these two objectives by reaching the following results A)The improved legal base and policies which make the compensation for environmental services possible has been promoted. B) The presentation of the services of the institutional system related to the conservation of native forest and the access of small producers to fiscal incentives has been strengthened. C) 200 small producers and 1200 hectares have been added to the national forest register and they receive compensation through positive fiscal exemptions. D) The exchange and the distribution of the general knowledge has been promoted and facilitated between producers and users of the native forest. E) The knowledge on the value and the importance of native forest has been distributed between local producers, the decision makers, the syndicates and the guilds of small rural producers