Mato Grosso maintains the highest Amazon deforestation rates. In the attempt to scale up local successful projects and launch sustainable development model for Mato Grosso State, regional Civil Society Organizations and municipalities have teamed up to build the Sustainable Municipalities Program (PMS). Launched in 2014, the PMS aims to reduce Amazon deforestation, end poverty and food insecurity by means of three goals: (1) strengthening of municipal environmental management; (2) environmental and land tenure regularization; (3) promotion of sustainable production chains with focus on family agriculture.

The PMS governance bases follow the principle of connecting local (bottom-up) and state government (top-down) decisions regarding environmental and agricultural agendas as well as increase participation of CSOs in these decisions. The PMS' high-level decision arena receives inputs from local government through target plans. These target plans are discussed at the bottom, with local governments together with their local environmental councils (attended by the local civil society). The target plan discussions are guided by the priority agendas described in each of PMS axis.

The PMS governance model is composed by a Management Commitee (MC), a Executive Commitee (EC), and five Work Groups (WG - land tenure, financial resource, productive sustainable chain, target plan, training and learning). All those PMS governance components have representatives from civil society organizations, private sector and state government. The MC is the PMS high level decision body. It meets four times a year and aims to discuss structural problems faced by PMS. The WGs are not permanent bodies, but they change accordingly to PMS needs and they gather to discuss specific issues or to respond to specific needs. The only two WG which have remained over the years are the WG for financial resource and the WG for training and learning with have constantly had activities regarding PMS structural concerns.The Mato Grosso municipalities are a diffuse component of PMS' governance arrangement. In order to be part of PMS actions, each municipality has to commit itself to a target plan. The target plan is a sort-long term plan to be designed by the municipality government according to the PMS three axis. In this plan, each municipality describes its needs for each goal, identifies the financial resources needed as well as the timeframe in which to achieve the goal. The local government commits itself to hold these goals together with the PMS support.

Mato Grosso State, Instituto Centro de Vida, Instituto Socioambiental, Instituto Brasileiro de Administração Municipal (IBAM), The Nature Conservancy, Associação Mato-grossense dos Municípios (AMM), Instituto de Pesquisa Ambiental da Amazônia (IPAM), SEBRAE, Fundo Vale, Avina, Instituto Ação Verde, Earth Innovation Institute, Agroicone, Sistema OCB/MT, Climate and Land Use Alliance, Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Skoll Foundation