Supporting this belief, a new study by researchers at U of Illinois and U of Michigan has added to the growing body of evidence that indigenous peoples are better protectors of their forests than governments or industry. In a review of 80 forests in 10 tropical countries, the study showed that when indigenous and local communities own their forests, they effectively conserve their forest resources over the long term.

Reflecting the growing momentum behind viewing rainforests as carbon sinks that can either exacerbate or reduce climate change, the researchers measured the carbon emissions from forests under community and government control. The New Scientist recently ran an interview with the authors of this research, who said “our findings show that we can increase carbon sequestration simply by transferring ownership of forests from governments to communities.” This is a bold assertion, but one that is supported by their research.

However, the idea that indigenous peoples are the best protectors of rainforests is considered controversial by some, who usually argue that forests should be protected by governments, following the National Parks model of conservation pioneered by the USA.

In this model, forests are enclosed in conservation areas and put off-limits, supposedly to be protected from loggers and commercial agribusiness by government agencies. This rational has been used to move control of forests away from indigenous peoples and into the hands of the government in many tropical nations. In an article cited by hundreds, researchers highlighted the  problems with this approach in Indonesian Borneo, where conservation areas lost over half of their forest cover in the period from 1985 to 2001.  These supposedly protected areas have become increasingly fragmented, degraded, and isolated, greatly decreasing ecosystem functions.

Another compelling piece of evidence supporting indigenous peoples’ ability to protect forests comes from Brazilian Amazonia. In a study published in Conservation Biology, researchers showed that many indigenous lands prevent deforestation completely even though there are high  rates of forest destruction directly outside their borders. In a compelling statement for the value of the protections indigenous peoples give to forests, the researchers claim that indigenous lands are the most important barrier to deforestation in the Amazon.

As usual, the research is racing to catch up with what indigenous peoples around the world have known for hundreds of years: indigenous people’s are the most effective protectors of tropical forests.

David Gilbert is a Research Fellow at RAN. He has worked in the tropical forests of the Amazon and Indonesia, with a special focus on forest conservation and indigenous rights.

He can be reached at davidgilbert@ran.org

Amazon Rainforest & Brazilian Cerrado

Mobilization of Indigenous People of the Cerrado (MOPIC)
$5,000 to support the production of a documentary focusing on Bunge and Cargill’s operations in the heart of the Brazilian Cerrado in Mato Grosso to raise awareness and be used as an organizing tool to engage and empower communities on the frontlines of soy expansion, some of whom have fields coming right up to the border of their titled land.

Associação Indígena Kïsêdjê
$4,000 to support a gathering of members of the four Kisedje communities to organize and education all Kisedje people about agribusiness, its threats, and the Indigenous movement in the Brazilian Cerrado currently challenging the expansion of soy production.

Asociación Interétnica de Desarrollo de la Selva Peruana (AIDESEP)
$3,000 to provide emergency support to the Indigenous movement in the Peruvian Amazon carrying out blockades to demand a suspension of oil, gas and mining concessions in the Amazon, and the repeal of several new laws drafted to comply with a free trade agreement with the United States, which take away community land rights and allow companies to enter Indigenous land with no prior consultation or even warning.

Note: RAN channeled an additional $5,000 to AIDESEP in emergency support through Global Greengrants Fund. Here is an update on the situation from a previous Understory post.

Shinai
$3,000 to support Amo Amazonia, a week of artistic and cultural events to bring the color and life of the Amazon to the streets of Lima and the hearts of the Peruvian people to help educate the general public and shift attitudes in the wake of the recent blockades and conflict between the government and Indigenous peoples defending their rights and land.

Comision Intereclesial de Justicia y Paz
$3,000 to support work on behalf of Emberá communities living in the lower Atrato, Colombia, an area rich in minerals and expanding palm oil plantations, by a legal case in the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and pressuring the government to enforce its denouncement of paramilitary violence and the illegal expansion of plantations onto community land without consent.

Canadian Boreal Forest

Nishnawbe Aski Nation (NAN)
$4,000 to support community organizing to push for free, prior and informed consent and other land reform in Ontario building from the government’s commitment to protect 225,000 square kilometers of the Far North Boreal region.

Boreal Action Project
$3,000 to support a cross-cultural action camp in Manitoba, Canada between urban activists and youth and Elders from Indigenous communities to discuss methods of furthering mutual goals and build campaign, media, and direct action skills.

Grassy Narrows Women’s Drum Group (on behalf of Grassy Narrows youth)
$5,000 to support a three day gathering of youth from Grassy Narrows (who were the catalysts and initiators of the community’s blockade of their traditional territory) and other First Nations communities, including workshops on traditional skills and leadership building, sweat lodges and traditional feasts and discussions led by Indigenous leaders on tribal and treaty history and Indigenous land rights in a broader context.

Mushkegowuk Environmental Research Centre
$3,000 to support a First Nations youth conference, with participation from all 7 communities throughout Ontario that belong to the Mushkegowuk Council, focused on raising awareness around the topic of climate change and providing a forum for the youth to share their concerns and vision for the future of their territory.

Other Regions

Oro Community Environmental Action Network (OCEAN)
$4,000 to support community outreach, education, and organizing in the Musa Pongani area of Oro Province, Papua New Guinea, to resist new logging permit applications covering 250,000 hectares approved by the government without consultation as 99 year leases for Musa Century Landowners Company, a syndicate of Asian companies.

The Maya Leaders Alliance
$4,000 to support a Supreme Court lawsuit that seeks to force the government to comply with its commitment to abstain from carrying out activities that might affect the value and use of Maya lands in the rainforests of southern Belize without informed consent and the development of a mechanism through which communities can apply to have their lands demarcated. This will also support a mobilization of over 200 community members to attend the trial and speak with national media.

European Environmental Paper Network (EEPN)
$3,000 to provide bridge funding to maintain a part-time coordinator for 5 months to allow EEPN to continue networking on the Shrink Project (which recently secured a commitment from the French government to reduce paper consumption by 50%), the Indonesia Paper Campaign, and the Virtual Global Summit on the paper industry.

Photo by Aldenir Cadete

Today we are celebrating a landmark victory for Indigenous peoples’ rights in Brazil. Congratulations to the Indigenous Council of Roraima and the Indigenous residents of Roraima state, whose decades-long struggle has at last ended in victory!

Raposa Serra do Sol is the traditional home of some 19,000 Ingaricó, Macuxi, Patamona, Taurepang and Wapichana people in Northern Brazil. Located on the boundary of Guyana and Venezuela, RSS is over 6,000 square miles of mountains, savannas, and forests.

In April 2005, President Luis Inácio Lula da Silva ratified RSS as an Indigenous land, recognizing over 30 years of struggle of the Indigenous peoples of the area. As stipulated by the decree, all non-Indigenous occupants should have been removed from RSS within a year. A handful of powerful rice-growers refused to leave however, and vowed to use force in order to remain.

In March 2008, the Federal Government finally began a process of removing the remaining occupants. They resisted, burning bridges and attacking community centers, and instigating violence that culminated in the shooting of ten Indigenous people on May 5th.

By then, the State Government had filed an injunction asking for the removal process to be stopped, and questioning the demarcation of RSS as a whole.

The Supreme Court suspended the removals, pending their review. Yesterday, the judges voted 10-1 to retain the boundaries of the reserve, rebuffing rice farmers’ efforts to splinter it into smaller land segments.

The President of the Supreme Court said, ‘The basis we established in this case, the conditions and procedures, will serve as a guide for other disputes. We are putting an end to the issues surrounding similar cases.’

There can be no solution to the problem of deforestation without addressing Indigenous rights. Please support the efforts of frontline communities like those in Roraima by making a donation to RAN’s Protect-an-Acre program and the Global Greengrants Fund.

South America

Xavante Wara Association
$5,000 to support an emergency gathering to bring together leaders from 34 villages across Xavante territory in the Brazilian Cerrado to directly address the false information and pressure from large landowners interested in expanding soy plantations, which have negative impacts on Xavante traditional territory, culture, and health.

Mobilization of Indigenous People of the Cerrado (MOPIC)
$5,000 to support a gathering with more than 100 participants from 30 Indigenous nationalities to form an alliance between communities from the Brazilian Cerrado with those from the Xingu basin in the Amazon who are increasingly impacted and threatened by soy expansion.

Associação Metareilá do Povo Indígena Suruí
$3,000 for travel costs of 4 members of the Surui Indigenous community to attend the World Social Forum in Belem in the Brazilian Amazon to organize with other communities and share information about the Surui’s innovative projects, including extractive reserves that provide income while protecting the forest, collaborations with rubber tappers, and a GIS mapping project of traditional territory working with Google Earth technology.

Confederation of Indigenous Women of Bolivia
$5,000 in emergency assistance to this organization, the leadership of which is working under death threats while leading the struggle to protect the rights of, and return lands to, Indigenous people in the Bolivian Amazon.

Community Development Council
$3,000 to support ongoing grassroots organizing that recently resulted in a victory keeping Canadian mining company Copper Mesa from developing a massive mine that would have a devastated the Intag region of northwest Ecuador, including a protected cloud forest reserve.

Achual Sustainable Harvest Project
$2,000 in support for the Achual community’s permaculture project in the Peruvian Amazon, which will produce tropical fruits with maximum biodiversity, provide income security, reforest depleted areas, and help secure native-status recognition for 4,000 acres of rainforest territory.

North America

Black Mesa Water Coalition
$5,000 to support organizing work amongst the Hopi & Dine communities to oppose coal mining and power generation on Indigenous lands in the Four Corners region of the United States.

Read about the action supported by this grant.

Justice for the Lubicon
$5,000 in support of the Lubicon Lake Indian Nation, a small aboriginal society living in northern Alberta, Canada who have been struggling for over sixty years to gain recognition of their traditional territory and are developing a campaign to pressure TransCanada and its financiers, which are planning a pipeline through Lubicon territory without the community’s consent.

Take action to support the Lubicon!

Wounaan Land Tenure Project
$4,370 to support the Wounaan Indigenous community’s efforts to stop cattle ranchers from taking over their communal land in Panama’s dense eastern rainforests by obtaining legal title to their traditional territory.

The Foundation for the Promotion of Indigenous Knowledge
$3,000 to cover travel costs for Panamanian Kuna leader Onel Masardule to attend international climate change negotiations, and corresponding protests, in Poland to push for a series of worldwide Indigenous-led ecosystem assessments, based on traditional knowledge, aimed at empowering communities to develop their own adaptation and mitigation strategies.

Asia-Pacific

Beuro Otemo Integrated Conservation and Development (BOICAD)
$3,500 to support a massive awareness campaign by the Baruga People, customary owners of the rich tropical rainforest along the Musa River in Papua New Guinea, which is threatened by a proposed 280,000 hectare acacia plantation (used for furniture) and a proposed nickel mine upstream from Baruga land.

Friends of Mamba
$3,500 to support Friends of Mamba’s effort to stop the construction of a palm oil mill planned on the Mamba River in Papua New Guinea, which would cause severe oxygen depletion in the river creating dead zones and drive the clearing of primary forests for plantations.

Indigenous leaders en route to a gathering and protest to stop plans for a dam on the Xingu River in Brazil

In celebration of Indigenous Peoples Day and to kick of World Rainforest Week, we are launching an expanded Protect-an-Acre section of our website featuring a map with descriptions of all of the grants we’ve made in the last 10 years, in-depth grant profiles, and more. If you are inspired by the stories of what Indigenous communities are accomplishing through their frontline efforts to defend their land and way of life, please consider supporting these efforts through a donation to Protect-an-Acre.

Protect-an-Acre is an alternative to “buy-an-acre” programs that seek to provide rainforest protection by buying tracts of land, but which often fail to address the needs or rights of local Indigenous communities. Some Indigenous peoples have even been kicked off of their land as part of this process.

There can be no solution to the problem of deforestation without addressing Indigenous rights. And besides, traditional forest communities are often the best stewards of the land because their way of life and well-being depend on it. A recent study by Forest Trends found that forest communities and Indigenous peoples do a better job of conserving woodlands than national governments or international donors. Another study published in Conservation Biology found through an analysis of satellite data that where Indigenous people hold title to their land, there has been less forest destruction than in surrounding areas.

Traditional U'wa territory in the Colombian rainforest

So check out our Protect-an-Acre program and make a donation in support of Indigenous rights and forests protection!