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IN BRAZILIAN AMAZON, INDIGENOUS LANDS STOP DEFORESTATION AND BOOST RECOVERY

by Lais Modelli on 13 May 2022 | Translated by Roberto Cataldo


 * A new study has confirmed that the best-preserved, and recovering, parts of
   the Brazilian Amazon are those managed by traditional communities or inside
   conservation units.
 * Between 2005 and 2012, deforestation rates were 17 times lower in Indigenous
   territories than in unprotected areas of the Amazon; in conservation units
   and lands managed by Quilombolas, the descendants of runaway Afro-Brazilian
   slaves, deforestation rates were about six times lower than in unprotected
   areas.
 * The study also shows that officially recognized Indigenous and Quilombola
   territories saw forest regrowth at rates two and three times higher,
   respectively, than in unprotected areas.
 * But the process of officially recognizing Indigenous lands has stalled under
   the government of President Jair Bolsonaro, which is instead pushing
   legislation that would open up Indigenous territories to mining and other
   exploitative activities.

Protected areas and lands managed by Indigenous and traditional communities have
been bulwarks of forest preservation and restoration in the Brazilian Amazon in
recent years, a new study shows.

It found that rates of native vegetation loss between 2005 and 2012 were 17
times lower in Indigenous territories than in unprotected areas of the Amazon.
In conservation units and lands managed by Quilombolas, the descendants of
runaway Afro-Brazilian slaves, deforestation rates were about six times lower
than in unprotected areas.

Lead author Helena Alves-Pinto, from the Department of Ecology at the Federal
University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), says that in the case of conservation
units, restrictions on land use are responsible for the lower rates of
deforestation.

“Activities in conservation units face a series of restrictions. In some units,
for example, only educational or research activities are legal. Others allow
sustainable extractive activities, but not agriculture, as it is related to
deforestation,” Alves-Pinto says.

The study looked at the whole range of conservation units established in the
Brazilian Amazon — from sustainable-use models such as national forests and
extractive reserves, to fully protected ones, which include areas with natural
sites and biological reserves.

In the case of Indigenous and Quilombola territories, Alves-Pinto says, the
degree of forest protection comes from the fact that entry to outsiders is
highly restricted.

“Previous studies have shown that, from the moment an Indigenous or Quilombola
territory was officially demarcated, deforestation began to decrease,”
Alves-Pinto says. “The main explanation is that demarcation reduced the number
of people circulating within those areas, limiting entrance to Indigenous or
Quilombola people.

“Our study confirms that demarcation helps to keep invaders from entering
Indigenous and Quilombola lands,” she adds, “and that these peoples preserve
biodiversity.”


ECOSYSTEM RESTORATION

Beyond their ability to prevent deforestation, the presence of conservation
units and Indigenous and Quilombola territories also encourages regrowth of the
forest — at rates two and three times higher, respectively, than in unprotected
areas, in the case of demarcated Indigenous and Quilombola lands, the study
says, based on data from 2012-2017.

“There is a lot of talk about reducing deforestation, but that alone is no
longer enough to reestablish the functions of the Amazon Rainforest,”
Alves-Pinto says. “We must start recovering deforested areas, recovering native
vegetation, recovering the ecosystem as a whole.”

She points to the practice of slash-and-burn agriculture, as practiced by
traditional communities, as an example of regenerative action.

“These Indigenous people cut down a small forest area of about 1 hectare [2.5
acres], burn it and then plant on it. After a while, they harvest their crops
and leave the area, so it regenerates naturally,” Alves-Pinto says.

This is starkly different from industrial agricultural practices, where
outsiders clear thousands of hectares of forest, sell off the valuable timber
and torch the rest, then turn the land in permanent cattle pastures or monocrop
plantations — giving it no chance of recovering.

A 2021 study by researchers from INPE, Brazil’s space agency, which monitors
deforestation rates across the country’s biomes, found that, for the first time,
the Brazilian Amazon had become a net carbon emitter — putting out 0.3 billion
metric tons of CO2 per year than it absorbs.

The study pointed to high rates of deforestation and burning for compromising
the Amazon’s function of capturing and storing carbon from the atmosphere.
According to the INPE researchers, this is most apparent in the southeastern
Amazon, in the so-called Arc of Deforestation, which flipped from being a carbon
sink to a carbon source during the study period.

Another study, published in March this year, warned that the Amazon is rapidly
approaching its point of no return, when the destruction will push the
rainforest into an irreversible transition into savanna.

The Parakanã and Trincheira/Bacajá Indigenous territories, in Pará state, stand
out as oases of solid green against the mosaic of deforestation in the
unprotected areas around them. Image from Google Maps.


INVASIONS AND DEFORESTATION

The study led by Alves-Pinto analyzed only Indigenous lands that have been
homologated, or officially recognized, by the federal government, without
breaking down the data by territory. “We looked at the mosaic of protected and
already homologated lands and compared them with their control area,” she says.

That means it’s not possible to identify, from the study, how each Indigenous
territory performed in terms of forest preservation and restoration.

Data from INPE’s PRODES system, which monitors deforestation in the Amazon,
shows the highest deforestation rates on Indigenous lands from 2011-2021 were in
Pará state. The state has seen the most Amazon deforestation of any in Brazil
since the mid-2010s. The worst-affected Indigenous territories there are
Cachoeira Seca, with 304 square kilometers (117 square miles) deforested in in
that 10-year period; Apyterewa, with 266 km2 (103 mi2); and Ituna/Itatá, with
220 km2 (85 mi2).

Deforestation rates surged in the three Indigenous territories from 2019-2020,
the first two years of the Jair Bolsonaro presidency, when illegal deforestation
hit record levels across the Amazon.

A survey conducted by Instituto Socioambiental (ISA) on vegetation loss in the
Xingu River Basin, published in 2021, shows that these three Indigenous lands
are under pressure from illegal mining, logging, and land grabbing. In the
Apyterewa Indigenous Territory, for instance, invaders have established their
own village and are now filing lawsuits to reverse the territory’s homologation
so that they can exploit the land.

The most heavily deforested conservation unit in the Brazilian Amazon in the
past 10 years is also in Pará: the Triunfo do Xingu Environmental Protection
Area, near the Apyterewa Indigenous Territory. Some 2,902 km2 (1,120 mi2) were
deforested there between 2011 and 2021, according to Inpe.

Both Triunfo do Xingu and the Apyterewa reserve straddle parts of the
municipality of São Félix do Xingu, home to the most cattle anywhere in Brazil,
according to IBGE, the national statistics agency.

Both Triunfo do Xingu and the Apyterewa reserve straddle parts of the
municipality of São Félix do Xingu, home to the most cattle anywhere in Brazil,
according to IBGE, the national statistics agency.

Authorities with a seizure of illegally logged timber in the Cachoeira Seca
Indigenous Territory in 2018. Image by Felipe Werneck/IBAMA.


LEGISLATIVE THREATS LOOM

There are 722 Indigenous territories in Brazil, of which 235 have not yet been
homologated by the federal government. Even more have still not been demarcated,
part of the process toward homologation, including 300 in the Amazon alone,
according to data from the ISA. These don’t include Indigenous lands that are
home to voluntarily isolated Indigenous peoples.

Demarcation of Indigenous Lands is the right of all native peoples’ in Brazil
under the country’s 1988 Constitution, and should have been concluded in 1993 by
Funai, the federal agency for Indigenous affairs.

A survey published last year by MapBiomas, a collaborative initiative by various
universities, tech companies and NGOs, showed that Indigenous lands are the
best-preserved territories in the Amazon, despite the advance of invaders. The
study analyzed both homologated and non-homologated territories, and showed
that, from 1985-2020, only 1.6% of deforestation in Brazil occurred on
Indigenous lands.

While the data show the importance of demarcating and homologating the
territories and restricting their use to native peoples, bills introduced in
Congress intend to open up Indigenous lands to large infrastructure and mining
projects (Bill 191/2020) and stop the demarcation process for more than 400
non-homologated Indigenous lands (Bill 490/2007).

Bolsonaro has been outspoken in his opposition to Indigenous territories, saying
his government would not demarcate another inch of native land. That’s one
campaign promise he has so far kept: Since he took office at the start of 2019,
no Indigenous lands have been demarcated in Brazil. This marks the first time
since the end of military rule in 1985 that a Brazilian government has not
demarcated any Indigenous territory in the country.

 

Citations:

Alves-Pinto, H. N., Cordeiro, C. L. O., Geldmann, J., Jonas, H. D., Gaiarsa, M.
P., Balmford, A., … Strassburg, B. (2022). The role of different governance
regimes in reducing native vegetation conversion and promoting regrowth in the
Brazilian Amazon. Biological Conservation, 267, 109473.
doi:10.1016/j.biocon.2022.109473

Gatti, L. V., Basso, L. S., Miller, J. B., Gloor, M., Gatti Domingues, L.,
Cassol, H. L., … Neves, R. A. (2021). Amazonia as a carbon source linked to
deforestation and climate change. Nature, 595(7867), 388-393.
doi:10.1038/s41586-021-03629-6

Boulton, C. A., Lenton, T. M., & Boers, N. (2022). Pronounced loss of Amazon
rainforest resilience since the early 2000s. Nature Climate Change, 12(3),
271-278. doi:10.1038/s41558-022-01287-8

 
Banner image of the Pirititi Indigenous Territory in Roraima state, by Felipe
Werneck/IBAMA.

This story was reported by Mongabay’s Brazil team and first published here on
our Brazil site on April 25, 2022.

Article published by Maria Salazar
Conservation, Deforestation, Forests, Indigenous Culture, Indigenous Peoples,
Indigenous Reserves, Protected Areas, Rainforests, Tropical Forests
Print




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