Imazon (Amazon Institute of People and the Environment,
pt, Instituto do Homem e Meio Ambiente da Amazônia) is a non-profit organisation based in
Belém
Belém (; Portuguese for Bethlehem; initially called Nossa Senhora de Belém do Grão-Pará, in English Our Lady of Bethlehem of Great Pará) often called Belém of Pará, is a Brazilian city, capital and largest city of the state of Pará in t ...
, Pará, Brazil, that is dedicated to conserving the
Amazon rainforest
The Amazon rainforest, Amazon jungle or ; es, Selva amazónica, , or usually ; french: Forêt amazonienne; nl, Amazoneregenwoud. In English, the names are sometimes capitalized further, as Amazon Rainforest, Amazon Forest, or Amazon Jungle. ...
. It has published many reports on aspects of conserving the Amazon environment, has had a significant impact on environmental policy in Brazil, and has developed tools through which deforestation may be viewed online.
Organization
Imazon was founded on 10 July 1990 at the initiative of the American ecologist Christopher Uhl, then a visiting researcher at the
Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation
The Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation (Embrapa - pt, Empresa Brasileira de Pesquisa Agropecuária) is a state-owned research corporation affiliated with the Brazilian Ministry of Agriculture. Since its inception on April 26, 1973, it ha ...
(Embrapa), with Adalberto Veríssimo, David McGrath and Paulo Barreto with the mission of promoting sustainable development in the Brazilian Amazon.
The institute is supported by national and international donors, and partners with public, private and non-governmental organisations.
Imazon is designated by the Brazil Ministry of Justice as a Civil Society Organization of Public Interest (Oscip).
In 2015 the International Center for Climate Governance has ranked Imazon 53rd worldwide among independent centres of strategic studies on economics and climate change policy.
Work
Imazon's programs cover environmental monitoring, sustainability, economics, law, policy and climate change.
Imazon is respected for their research in fields such as rehabilitation of deforested area and the micro-economics of forestry, agriculture and ranching in the east of the Amazon region.
In the field, Imazon personnel have worked with loggers to show ways to harvest timber that cause lower environmental impact.
The institute has been asked to work with the Ministry of Environment and other government organisations in preparing policy documents.
As of 2016 Imazon had published over 300 technical papers, 150 articles on technical and public policy topics, and 111 books.
In 2006 the institute developed the Deforestation Alert System to monitor and disseminate information on deforestation in the Amazon.
Imazon developed algorithms to detect areas of deforestation, and Vizzuality worked with Imazon and the
Google Earth Engine to create a web tool that lets users view and annotate the results of the algorithms.
Imazon partnered with the
World Resources Institute
The World Resources Institute (WRI) is a global research non-profit organization established in 1982 with funding from the MacArthur Foundation under the leadership of James Gustave Speth. WRI's activities are focused on seven areas: food, for ...
(WRI) in developing the
Global Forest Watch
Global Forest Watch (GFW) is an open-source web application to monitor global forests in near real-time. GFW is an initiative of the World Resources Institute (WRI), with partners including Google, USAID, the University of Maryland (UMD), Esri, V ...
platform for monitoring the world's forests in real time.
In December 2009 Google demonstrated the cloud-based "Earth Engine", using the Sistema de Alerta de Deforestation (SAD) from Imazon and the CLASlite system from the
Carnegie Institution for Science
The Carnegie Institution of Washington (the organization's legal name), known also for public purposes as the Carnegie Institution for Science (CIS), is an organization in the United States established to fund and perform scientific research. Th ...
to let users quickly visualise forest changes.
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Environmental organisations based in Brazil