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ACT President and co-founder Mark Plotkin working alongside an indigenous leader. |
For over a decade, The Amazon Conservation Team (ACT) has pioneered a successful conservation model in the Amazon rainforest – biocultural conservation, an approach to conservation that views biodiversity and native cultures as an interrelated system.
We work alongside the men, women and children of indigenous communities of the Amazon to help them to meaningfully contribute to lasting conservation of their home – the Amazon rainforest – while strengthening fundamental aspects of their rapidly disappearing cultures. In order to achieve this goal, ACT believes its programs must both improve land management strategies in the Amazon and address the urgent survival needs and well-being of its indigenous communities.
The means by which ACT addresses these two paramount needs can be described as efforts to Map, Manage, and Protect indigenous lands and to Preserve, Strengthen, and Promote the integrity of the cultures, communities, and families of our indigenous partners. Help us to continue our work to help families and communities of the rainforest to sustainably manage the rainforest - a place so vitally connected to every family and community on our planet!
Map, Manage, and Protect
ACT's Map, Manage, Protect strategy encompasses activities to develop and execute land management strategies that protect land from illegal uses and to improve the management of natural resources. We accomplish this by helping our indigenous partners to identify and map their territory and to properly assess their needs; by training them to find and implement solutions to the identified problems; and by working with them to develop the institutions and capabilities to become autonomous actors within their respective context.
Program Components
Participatory Ethnographic Mapping
Management of Indigenous Lands
Indigenous-Driven Land Protection
Preserve, Strengthen, and Promote
ACT's Preserve, Strengthen, and Promote strategy aims to fortify indigenous cultures in order to enable them to retain core aspects of their collective heritage, and to operate more effectively within the modern context. ACT accomplishes this through programs that improve their physical health, support their livelihoods and sustain their cultural identity. To be sure, this is a conservation issue: people who are ill, malnourished or impoverished are in no position to serve as guardians of their environment, and those without an intimate sense of their connection to their forests will not quickly grasp the importance of their protection.
Program Components
Sustainable Development
Integrated Healthcare
Strengthening Indigenous Culture
Education
Women's Programs
Indigenous Association Building
