Cacao turns over a new leaf: groups of citizens in Itacare, Brazil, once a major producer of this important export, are educating locals about environmental protection while promoting development.

Located at the mouth of the Rio de Contas, in the heart of Bahia's Cacao Coast, Itacare has been dazzling outsiders for nearly three hundred years, when the first Europeans arrived to trade brazilwood with the local Pataxo Indians. Itacare's location has continued to shape the destiny of the town throughout its history--as a point of export for diamonds, sugarcane, and eventually cacao. But in the 1940s, because of extensive deforestation and erosion along the 250-mile river, the port became too shallow for ships to dock. Locals experienced firsthand the economic consequences of environmental degradation.

The crisis caused by the port's closing paled in comparison to the difficulties that the economy faced in 1989, when the first cases of witch's broom disease began withering the region's cacao trees, along with its main source of income. But through careful community planning and forward-looking economic and environmental policy, Itacare has been reborn and become a model of sustainable development, as well as attracting ecologically minded travelers from around the globe.

Periods of depression and economic prosperity were nothing new for the town, but the arrival of witch's broom disease (Crinipellis perniciosa) brought devastation to the region on a scale never before seen. The fungus, which thrives in balmy conditions and is spread by the wind, saps the tree's ability to produce cacao pods and desiccates the leaves into what look like a witch's broom.

By the mid-1990s, the fungus had cut cacao production by nearly 75 percent. "The disease spread so quickly," says Cleber Isaac Soares, one of the cofounders of the Itacare Eco Resort, "that by May of 1993, Brazil's major television networks had announced the destruction of the cacao economy."

At the beginning of the twentieth century, Brazil was the largest cacao producer in the world, a title it eventually lost to the Ivory Coast. At its peak in the 1987-88 planting season, the country produced 400,000 tons of cacao, according to Thomas Hartmann, a researcher for the Bahian Commercial Association. During the worst year of the cacao crisis, the 1999-2000 planting season, Brazil produced a mere 123,000 tons of cacao, says Hartmann.

Leaving the region became the most common reaction to the blight. Camacan, a town located near Itacare, lost roughly 50 percent of its population, according to Raul Valle, the director of the Cacao Research Center at the Comissao Executiva do Plano da Lavoura Cacaueira (CEPLAC). "Witch's broom disease caused immense problems for the region because of rampant unemployment," he says. "At the peak of the boom, roughly 250,000 people were employed in cacao cultivation." Today, some 100,000 people are employed in cacao, according to Valle's estimates. As a result, surrounding cities like Salvador, Ilheus, and Porto Seguro have received thousands of immigrants looking for work.

Those people who remained in the cacao-producing areas often looked to the rain forest to supplement their diminishing incomes. Hunting reached such significant levels that even the most common species were threatened. Many people turned to lumber poaching and subsistence agriculture, which relies heavily upon the slash-and-burn technique and involves significant deforestation. Farmers increasingly cultivated such staple crops as cassava root, which quickly depletes the soil.

Concerned for the future of Itacare, in 1994 a group of ecologically minded residents--many of them college professors, researchers, and graduate students from the State University of Santa Cruz (Universidade Estadual de Santa Cruz--UESC)--joined forces to found the Institute of SocioEnvironmental Studies (Instituto de Estudos SocioAmbientais do Sul da Bahia--IESB), which began lobbying for preservation of the area. IESB and its director, Rui Rocha, a graduate student in agronomy, recognized the area's potential for ecotourism and began developing a program of sustainable development for the region. Acknowledging the founders' scientific backgrounds, they nonetheless "understood the importance of economic factors," says Rocha, including the needs of local residents.

IESB's first challenge came in 1996, when the state of Bahia announced that it would begin paving the road that connected Itacare to neighboring Ilheus. Brazil's main highway, which runs the entire length of the country's coast, had conveniently bypassed Itacare in the 1960s, leaving the region fairly isolated from the outside world. The announcement that the forty-mile dirt road would soon be paved prompted Rocha to act. "We knew that the road would bring social as well as environmental change to the region because it was slated to pass through the rain forest," he says; however, "the environmental studies of the impact of the road on the region were limited."

So, Rocha traveled to Washington, D.C., to lobby the Inter-American Development Bank, one of the principal financial backers of the road, to consider the implementation of environmental-protection programs.

The result was the creation in 1997 of the 740-acre Serra do Conduru State Park and eventual designation of more than forty thousand acres for an area of environmental preservation (area de preservacao ambiental--APA). The road, which was completed a year later, runs through the APA and alongside the park. These areas are fundamental for the protection of Brazil's ever-shrinking Atlantic rain forest and for the preservation of the flora and fauna of the region.

For example, the yellow-breasted capuchin monkey, which used to be abundant in the region around Itacare, has been hunted to the point that it is now listed as one of the twenty-five most threatened primate species in the world. Cecilia Kierulff, of Conservation International, is currently working on a project to determine how many of these monkeys remain in the wild. Other primates, such as the golden-headed tamarind, the titi monkey, and the howler monkey, are being studied as well. "The larger primates, like the capuchins, are almost extinct because they are hunted as food," says Kierulff, "while the smaller species are often caught and sold as pets."

While the creation of the environmental protection areas and of the park reserve represented a victory for IESB, it was only the beginning. Many of the rural people who were unemployed as a result of the cacao decline saw their only source of income and survival disappear with the creation of the reserves.

The next step for Rocha and IESB was to enlist the help of the citizens of Itacare in preserving the environment as a way of promoting income-producing tourism. IESB took a multi-media approach to the problem. "We used radio, film, newspapers, workshops, and posters to begin convincing people of the economic potential of the region," Rocha says.

Rocha understood that without the means to support themselves, the local population would continue looking to the forest. After a great deal of discussion, IESB founded the Floresta Viva (Living Forest) Project. "The program was a result of the realization that there were two realities in conflict," says Rocha. "Despite the programs to educate local residents, they still lacked the technological and biological resources for sustainability."

Focusing on those residents of the environmental protection area who own property inside the reserve, Floresta Viva is co-funded by local merchants, the Ford Foundation, and the Brazilian nongovernmental organization SOS Mata Atlantica. The program's range of goals includes helping to create a grass-roots organization from the reserve's ten communities of fifteen thousand residents. According to Rocha, without such an organization it would be impossible for the communities to participate in the process of finding solutions for their problems.

Another aspect of Floresta Viva is to teach new agricultural techniques, in order to break the dependence on slash and burn and on extraction of wood. "We knew that we needed to bring about a break from the past," says Rocha, "but that this would only be possible if we had a program that gave people the tools to create sustainable agriculture."

Families learned how to cultivate native tree seedlings, which are then planted in areas that have been deforested or have high risk of erosion. Many have also learned techniques of organic agriculture, and locally produced fruit and vegetables are now. sold to local hotels and restaurants, providing a seasonal source of income for these families.

"Farmers produce enough to supply the market during the low season, but demand goes up during the high season, when outside producers sell goods in Itacare," explains Rocha.

Other common practices, such as child labor, are slowly ending as a result of the project. "Much of our work involves enforcing existing laws," says Rocha. While children will continue to play an active role on family farms, IESB has helped to show families that "heavy labor will limit children's ability to pay attention in school, and their futures," he says.

In exchange for preserving the environment, each of the fifty families that participates receives one hundred reais per month, equal to about US$30, about half of Brazil's current monthly minimum wage.

Maria Regina Santos lives in the environmental protection zone and is the president of the Serra Grande Small Farmers Association. For her, one of the most important aspects of the program has been that her family is once again reunited. "Eight years ago, all of my children left the area to find work. There was nothing for them here," she says. Now, all three of her children and her two grandchildren have returned.

In addition to the creation of the protected areas, Rocha secured a $100,000 grant for environmental education. As a result of his efforts, legions of local residents have been trained as nature guides, and on any given day they can be found leading groups of tourists on hikes through the forest, to the region's fifteen beaches, to its numerous waterfalls, or on canoeing trips on the Rio de Contas.

"IESB training courses help the guides learn the technical aspects of the forest, and local people also have a great deal of cultural knowledge that they can share with visitors," says Carlos Augusto Cunha, owner of Itacare Turismo, who employs twelve local guides. "Every time a new trail is opened up, all of our guides go through orientation to learn about any special characteristics of the trail."

By hiring local guides, Cunha also believes he's helping the local economy. "When I arrived here five years ago, there were many people without jobs," he says; however, this summer, "unemployment in the region should be around zero," he predicts.

While the poorest people in Itacare were hit hardest by the changing economy, the former plantation owners were also forced to find new sources of income.

"Our family would have been completely ruined after four generations of cacao production if my father hadn't left Itacare to work," says Cleber Isaac Soares, of the Itacare Eco Resort.

Before witch's broom disease struck the region, the Soares family owned three cacao plantations. When one of them, Sao Jose, began to fail, they began exploring the possibility of tourism development where acres of cacao and coconut trees had once thrived.

The family visited successful ecotourism projects in Costa Rica and Venezuela and decided that the best way to develop their plantation into a resort was through preservation of its natural attributes. Roughly 80 percent of the 555-acre plantation is designated as a private ecological reserve, with a density of about two hotel rooms per acre.

While tourism has been an important option for many former planters, not everyone has abandoned cacao production. In recent years, as a result of investments in research and technology, Brazil's cacao production is slowly recovering. From its low point in the 1999-2000 harvest season, production has been increasing by around 15,000 tons per year and should top 160,000 this year.

While grafting techniques have helped cacao planters increase production, several farmers have opted to seek out niche markets, such as organic cacao. In 1999, with the help of IESB and the Organic Commodities Project, several local producers joined forces to create an organic cacao producers' cooperative. The cooperative, called Cabruca, after the traditional cacao production method that uses the canopy of the rain forest to protect the cacao trees, exports most of its production to the United States. According to the president of Cabruca, Marc Nuscheler, the cooperative hopes to eventually have its own processing facilities to make organic chocolate.

Cabruca has also helped its members expand cultivation beyond cacao. "When producers focus on intense production of one crop, they become more vulnerable to disease and to volatility on the international market," says Nuscheler. Currently, members of the Cabruca cooperative are selling organic bananas, palm hearts, coconuts, and papayas, as well as a number of tropical fruits, including graviola, cupuacu, acai, and jambo. While these exotic fruits and vegetables help increase income, they are not internationally traded commodities like cacao, and so it takes longer for producers to see returns on their investments, according to Raul Valle of CEPLAC.

New planting techniques have also helped Bahian producers become more efficient. "In the past, planters had the idea that increased production came from increasing the area of cultivation. As a result, Brazilian producers were among the most unproductive in the world," says Soares. "Average production was around thirty arrobas [one arroba equals about thirty-two pounds] per hectare [2.47 acres]. Today many of our planters are producing as much as one hundred arrobas per hectare by using smaller, more productive trees."

However, as Itacare attracts more tourists, there is concern that, in spite of its growing prosperity, the town will face new risks. The rising number of hotels and bed-and-breakfasts has sent real estate prices up, leaving many local residents without adequate housing. "The city is currently at a crossroads," admits Roberto Setubal, the former mayor of Itacare. "The bay surrounding Itacare is already fragile and without sewage treatment in these areas, tourism will be put at risk." The state government is currently working with local officials to improve urban planning in the region, but recent budget restraints have slowed the process.

Such challenges, clearly, are nothing new to Itacare, and there is hope now that those who live here, in the heart of Bahia's Cacao Coast, will know how to keep it beating.

Elizabeth Johnson is a historian and freelance journalist in Sao Paulo, Brazil.