Dr. Bayu Wirayudha, founder and CEO of Friends of National Parks Foundation

I’ve only been in Indonesia for a few days and already I’ve heard multiple accounts of intimidation, corruption, kidnapping, torture and even murder suffered by our allies here who have been bold enough to speak out and resist the destruction of their forests and villages by palm oil and pulp and paper companies. But I am going to save those dark tales for another post and start this one with a happier story.

I didn’t expect to encounter evidence of RAN’s work in Indonesia until after I finished a three-day personal trip to the island paradise of Bali. After that, my plans were to immerse myself in two weeks of conservation-related meetings and site visits on the islands of Java and Sumatra — that’s what I traveled across the world for. But a close friend of mine who knows of my strong passion for birds told me that while I was in Bali I had to make a point of seeking out Dr. Bayu Wirayudha, the man widely credited with rescuing the iconic and critically endangered Bali Starling from the very brink of extinction (a truly incredible and ongoing story of its own).

It turns out Bayu is also the founder and CEO of Friends of the National Parks Foundation (FNPF), an inspiring organization that I learned has received funds from RAN on more than one occasion. I spoke at length with Bayu at his office/educational center/activist-organizing hub on the outskirts of the village of Ubud, Bali, and learned why FNPF is exactly the sort of frontline ally RAN is proud to support.

It’s important to understand that the threats facing the rainforests and communities of Indonesia are extreme and the challenges encountered by those trying to stem the destruction are immense and extraordinarily complex. Corruption is pervasive throughout the government and corporate spheres, and challenging those entrenched interests often means put your life on the line. The power wielded by the forces of profit and politics are almost beyond comprehension when viewed from the perspective of a villager fighting for their home or a conservationist struggling to save a species from extinction. So it takes some serious savvy to make headway against the seemingly unstoppable tide of forest conversion and community displacement sweeping rapidly across the country.

FNPF staff educate villagers about the importance of conservation

Bayu and his team understand that human rights, cultural survival and biodiversity preservation are inextricably linked in Indonesia. Conservationists here have learned the hard way that without the endorsement and involvement of local communities, desperate and disenfranchised villagers inevitably return to a slash and burn, extraction-based existence, dooming even the best-funded and well-intentioned conservation initiatives to failure. The approach of FNPF is a sophisticated melding of wildlife conservation, habitat protection and community development. Bayu praised RAN for supporting his organization’s vision at a time when other donors were unwilling to invest in such far-sighted plans.

With RAN’s help, FNPF has spent years gaining the trust of communities surrounding the huge and species-rich but conflict-ridden Tanjung Puting National Park on the island of Borneo. More than half of the forested land within the park has already been degraded by logging and agricultural encroachment. They built this trust partially by providing the villages with their first-ever cows and chickens, and the know-how to tend them for sustenance. At the same time, FNPF staff helped the villagers establish agroforestry operations with crops like rubber trees and agar wood that provide sustainable income while maintaining high levels of biological diversity. FNPF is also training local villagers to offer outstanding ecotourism opportunities in and around the National Park, giving locals a way to benefit from this lucrative emerging industry (before, ecotourism profits went exclusively to outsiders).

Villagers learn how to propagate key tree species

Bayu relayed a heartening story about how local palm oil workers now call his staff at FNPF when an orangutan enters the palm plantations, so the animal can be relocated unharmed, whereas previously they would have killed them on sight or called the notorious Forestry Ministry, which would have done the same.

These hard-fought, piecemeal advances may be just a drop in the ocean compared to the immensity of devastation underway across Indonesia’s rainforests, but they provide preciously rare living proof that a cooperative way forward is possible from the heinous mess that exists now. People like Bayu, and projects like those of FNPF, are like saplings rising up from a clear cut forest. With enough light and nourishment, it is these fresh starts that can take root and provide shade for others to do the same.

In a decision that reverses the position taken by the Bush administration in 2007, when the U.S. voted against endorsing the declaration even as 145 nations supported it, the Obama Administration acknowledged the importance of this decision, which Indigenous, human rights and environmental organizations and activists in the U.S. have been working towards for over 30 years.

At the White House Tribal Nations Summit, Obama said, “The aspirations [UNDRIP] affirms, including the respect for the institutions and rich cultures of Native peoples, are ones we must always seek to fulfill. . . I want to be clear: what matters far more than words, what matters far more than any resolution or declaration, are actions to match those words.”

So by lending its support to UNDRIP, just what kind of actions can we expect the U.S. to take? That remains to be seen. As Indigenous rights organization Cultural Survival points out, Obama said that the White House would release an official statement on the declaration, and until that statement is released it will be difficult to know whether his endorsement is qualified, as were those of New Zealand and Canada, or a full-fledged endorsement of UNDRIP core principles, which include:

• The right of Indigenous Peoples to live on and use their traditional territories;
• The right to self-determination;
• The right to free, prior, and informed consent (known as FPIC) before any outside project is undertaken on their land;
• The right to keep their languages, cultural practices, and sacred places;
• The right to full government services;
• And the right to be recognized and treated as peoples.

Let’s hope for a full endorsement of these principles and “actions to match.” As many Indigenous leaders are saying, the U.S. supporting UNDRIP is something to celebrate, but much work remains to be done.

After its adoption in 2007 by the UN General Assembly, UNDRIP was heralded around the world by Indigenous Peoples, states, human rights and environmental organizations. Its provisions provide much needed guidance to governments, state institutions and society as a whole on how human rights laws and obligations can be best understood and applied to the distinct circumstances and the urgent needs of 370 million Indigenous People around the world.

First Nations across Canada pushed for the formal endorsement of UNDRIP as an important step towards the country improving its record on Indigenous rights.

RAN supported these efforts through a $1,250 grant to Defenders of the Land, a network of Indigenous communities and activists involved in land rights struggles across Canada.

Toronto demonstration on eve of G20 meetings

The grant supported the organizing of a national day of action to shine a spotlight on the country’s continued policy to remove First Nations’ control over their land and resource base, with the demand that Canada endorse UNDRIP and recognize Indigenous communities’ right to self-determination. Thousands participated, resulting in coverage from all of the major media outlets in Canada and some stories in the international press as well.

Canada’s endorsement of UNDRIP is an important first step towards addressing the demands put forth by First Nations. It also leaves the US in the shameful position of being the only country to remain in opposition to universally recognized Indigenous rights.

However, the US is currently undergoing a review and consultation process to determine whether or not to reverse its position from 2007 (as the other 3 countries that initially voted against the Declaration already have done).

Its well past time for the US to catch up with the rest of the world on this critical human rights issue. Ask President Obama to endorse the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples today!

Protect-an-Acre

KONTAK Rakyat Borneo
$4,000 to carry out a two week field investigation in and around PT Indo Sawit Kekal, a Cargill subsidiary, to gather concrete evidence and documentation of its operations in violation of Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil principles and criteria and Indonesian law, as well as establish a link between Sinar Mas plantations and Cargill mills.

Red de Permacultura America Latina en el Peru (REDPAL-PERU) on behalf of Achual Sustainable Harvest Project
$1,500 to support the Achual community’s permaculture project in the in Peruvian Amazon, which will produce tropical fruits with maximum biodiversity, provide income security, result in the reforestation of depleted areas, and help secure native status recognition of 4,000 acres of rainforest territory.

Maintenance of flooded camu camu plants

Keeper of the Mountains Foundation
$1,500 to support Larry Gibson’s tireless work bringing thousands of people to witness the destruction caused by mountaintop removal coal mining to help build a movement to ensure his ancestral land on Kayford Mountain in West Virginia will not become a part of the 7,000 acre MTR site that surrounds it today.

Ya’axché Conservation Trust
$1,000 to support a comprehensive advocacy campaign to secure the Government of Belize’s commitment to protected area legislation, specifically focusing on the most recent illegal, environmentally and socially detrimental activity, a proposed hydroelectric facility within the most restricted and perhaps most pristine protected area in the country, Bladen Nature Reserve.

Bladen Nature Reserve

Global Greengrants Fund

Secwepemc Nation Youth Network
$5,000 to support a four day Indigenous Peoples Assembly on Secwepemc Nation land located within British Columbia’s inland temperate rainforest just prior to the Winter Olympics to network and draft an action plan related to Canadian mining companies, independent power projects impacting water and salmon, all-season resorts, and other local issues.

Grassy Narrows Women’s Drum Group
$3,000 to support two public events in Toronto, including a public march that will form a human wild river, to raise awareness about the health impacts of mercury poisoning on the Grassy Narrows community on the 40th anniversary of when residents were poisoned by mercury from an upstream pulp mill.

Wild river march for clean water in Toronto

Indigenous Environmental Network
$5,000 to send an Indigenous Environmental Network delegation to the World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth, in Bolivia, to provide a platform for a moratorium against new fossil fuel developments in and near Indigenous lands and territories.

ClimAmbiente
$3,5000 to support two workshops in the Ecuadorian Amazon for Indigenous leaders to strengthen participation in international climate change policy debates on adaption, mitigation, and the United Nation’s Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) program, which could have a significant impact on Indigenous communities and rainforests.

Consejo Shipibo-Konibo Xetebo
$4,000 to provide the Council of the Shipibo-Konibo with initial seed money for a new organization to unite Shipibo-Konibo communities in the Peruvian Amazon in their efforts to protect their collective territory from the encroaching world.

Wahana Bumi Hijau Foundation
$5,000 to produce an updated field study, hold an open discussion forum and carry out a road show related to the Rimba Hutani Mas logging company’s activities in the Merang Kepayang peat swamp forest, an ecologically important area that acts as a buffer zone to Sembilang National Park in Indonesia.

Community Alliance for Pulp Paper Advocacy
$1,500 to organize a workshop for 17 representatives of Indonesian organizations to hold a facilitated discussion to share experiences, identify common objectives, and plan specific activities in support of community rights and sustainable land use in an area of Central Kalimantan that is targeted for large-scale pulp industry expansion, which would devastate natural forest and peat lands.

Youth Community Biodiversity Initiative
$3,000 to plant trees in collaboration with 10 schools throughout Uganda and reduce deforestation through the implementation of energy saving stoves that burn rice husks and coffee so less wood needs to be gathered.

Copper Mesa, until last year, was the owner of a two mining concessions in the Intag. But the company ran into a strong, organized opposition from communities, local government and, eventually even the national government, which eventually stripped Copper Mesa of its concessions in the country.

Now the Toronto Stock Exchange, which had been sued by 3 Intag activists, has delisted Copper Mesa from the exchange.

DECOIN organizer Carlos Zorrilla wrote in an email to Intag community supporters:

“This is a key victory in Intag’s very long and exhausting battle against mining interests. So big in fact, that I still find it difficult to believe. After all, this has been a dream of ours and something we’ve been working on for almost six years.”

Copper Mesa’s shares lost about 60% of their value in the 48 hours after the TSX delisting.

Protect-an-Acre

La Fundacion de Proteccion Ambiental Waira Samay Yawayry
$3,000 to support the Kichwa community of Rucullacta’s campaign to stop oil exploration on their territory in the Ecuadorian Amazon, through workshops to raise awareness, legal actions and non violent direct action.

Traditional U’wa Authority
$2,500 to support a grassroots mobilization of U’wa community members in defense of their territory in the cloud forests of northeastern Colombia against imminent gas extraction activities, also facilitating a delegation of civil society allies, civilian government officials, and international media.

Read the press release.

Photo: Daniel León/Censat

Rainforest Action Network Ghana
$3,000 to support a project to build the capacity of Pokuase communities in southern Ghana to help protect the imperiled Gua Koo Forest Reserve, 50 acres of intact forest that is part of a larger forest ecosystem in the region.

RAN Ghana members with Pokuase youth

Global Greengrants Fund

Indigenous Environmental Network
$5,000 to support an Indigenous delegation to Copenhagen for the UN COP 15 climate negotiations to strategically and forcefully ensure that the rights and perspectives of Indigenous peoples on climate change are reflected in the eventual climate agreement.

See video of IEN members’ participation in Copenhagen (scroll down the page).

Defenders of the Land
$4,000 to support the 2nd annual Defenders of the Land gathering to forge a new Canadian First Nations network to build a movement for self-determination and control of traditional lands and resources.

Group photo from the gathering

Frente de Defensa de la Amazonia
$5,000 to support Secoya and Cofan communities to help address immediate health needs brought about by pollution caused by Chevron in the Ecuadorian Amazon.

Fundacion Shiwiar Sin Fronteras
$3,000 to support the Shiwiar-led Ikiam Expedition ecotourism project, which seeks to raise funds and increase international awareness towards the goal of legalizing an additional 100,000 hectares of traditional territory, while generating hope and self-reliance.

Learn more about the project.

Green Concern for Development
$3,000 to mobilize 7 communities in opposition to a Cameroun-based palm oil company’s plan to develop plantations on the Bakassi Peninsula, recently transferred from Nigerian to Cameroon control after a UN-brokered agreement, that would deforest 3,000 hectares of land occupied by Indigenous peoples and negatively impact mangroves critical to the local fishing economy.

As this report back from a previous Understory post shows, the mobilization was very powerful and got great media coverage, but the permit was still granted on December 22nd by the Department of Interior’s Office of Surface Mining (OSM) in one of several fossil-fuel friendly 11th hour decisions by the Bush Administration.

Last week, after a year of further community-led efforts to challenge the OSM decision, a Department of Interior Administrative Law Judge withdrew Peabody Coal Company’s Life of Mine permit. Check out It’s Getting Hot In Here for this update from BMWC Co-Director Wahleah Johns for more details about this critical victory for Hopi and Navajo communities.

Action at Ontario legislature supported by RAN

Platinex has finally given up its staked claims to land near the KI community in exchange for a financial settlement with the provincial government of Ontario, Canada.

Last year KI’s chief and five councilors were jailed for refusing to allow platinum mining exploration that would threaten the health and livelihood of their Indigenous community in the heart of North America’s wildest forest.

This became one of the highest profile Indigenous land rights and environmental justice struggles in Canada. KI’s supporters helped to organize a huge coalition of environmental, human rights, Indigenous, labor, student, and social justice organizations in support of KI and other communities calling for moratoria on industrial extraction on their territories. In May of 2008 First Nations community members and 300 supporters occupied the front lawn of the Ontario legislature for 3 days demanding justice, and culminating in a national day of action for Indigenous rights with 4,000 people marching in the streets of Toronto.

Ontario has since rewritten the Mining Act, committed to community led landuse planning in the Far North that will require First Nations consent, and to protecting an area half the size of California in the Northern Boreal Forest.

It is primarily the work of these communities (and their supporters) that has created the political and economic necessity for this change. The work goes on as these communities continue the process of asserting their sovereignty, re-claiming their territories and livelihoods, healing their people, and caring for the earth. They are setting a bold example for the whole world to follow.

You can support communities like KI by supporting Protect-an-Acre.

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!