Brazil — The Amazon Conservation Team

About

Members of the Surui community with laptop provided by ACT

Members of the Suruí community. ACT has worked closely with the Suruí to use internet-based tools like Google Earth to raise awareness about the plight of their forests and their communities.

In Brazil, ACT advances its conservation efforts with our indigenous partners through capacity building programs focused on land management and the development of indigenous institutions. In doing so, ACT aims to elevate the degree to which Brazilian indigenous communities can act as effective and independent stewards of their lands and their community affairs by leveraging the power of modern technologies and techniques. This methodology is shaped heavily by the use of Participatory Ethnographic Mapping, the first component in ACT's Map, Manage, and Protect conservation strategy.

ACT's program in Brazil was officially launched in 2000 through a partnership with the Kamayurá and Yawalapití communities of Brazil's Xingu Indigenous Reserve to map the cultural and land use aspects of their traditional territories, using a methodology first employed in 1999 by ACT in Suriname. This achievement sparked a wave of interest among Brazilian indigenous groups in ACT's mapping programs and resulted in the subsequent production of ethnographic maps for the entire Xingu Indigenous Reserve, the Tumucumaque Indigenous Reserve, and the Sete de Setembro Indigenous Reserve. All told, these maps account for over 18 million acres of ancestral indigenous territory and have provided the basis for ongoing management and protection of these lands. In 2009, with the Wai-Wai, Kaxuyana, Txikayana and Tunayana peoples, ACT began mapping 25 million acres of indigenous land in Pará and Amazonas states.

ACT-trained park guards from the Xingu Indigenous Reserve

Park guards from the Xingu shown here during a training course.

Over the years, ACT's mapping programs in Brazil have led to longstanding collaboration with our indigenous colleagues to conduct capacity building courses, enabling them to design and implement land management plans for their territories. This has been achieved by conducting certified courses for indigenous park guards; by training our partners in the use of technologies such as Google Earth and mass media communications; and by fortifying the technical and administrative abilities of leading indigenous community associations.

Where ACT-Brazil Works

In Brazil, ACT has four major areas of focus:

For more, visit the ACT-Brazil website: www.actbrasil.org.br