URL: http://www.amazonteam.org/index.php/295/ACT_2009_Highlights
ACT 2009 Highlights
Amazon Conservation Team 2009 Highlights
Impacting the Climate Change Discussion
- ACT is playing a central role in the development of the most advanced indigenous-led carbon credit project in the Brazilian Amazon, collaborating with other NGOs and assisting the Suruí people to present this effort at COP 15, the UN world climate change conference in Copenhagen this December.
Advancing the Conservation of Millions of Acres of Amazon
- Millions of acres of Brazilian rainforest lands – inhabited by the Kaxuyana, Wai Wai, Txikayana and Wayana peoples – are now being mapped with ACT’s guidance, the first step toward significantly improving the long-term conservation of an area over twice the size of the state of Maryland.
- Working with Suriname’s government and indigenous and Maroon communities that live on lands covering 70% of the country (over 40 million acres), ACT is helping the groups to map their traditional lands, a critical step toward the granting of land management rights. To date, 90% of the mapping has been drafted.
- ACT is continuing to expand a biocultural corridor in the Colombian Amazon, advancing the connection of indigenous lands to existing national parks and increasing the protection of hundreds of thousands of acres of rainforest.
Empowering Tribal Communities
- ACT built a training facility for Brazil’s Suruí people so that they can educate members of their community and advance the sustainable management of their 612,000-acre reserve. In addition, ACT is funding the Suruí in their work to collect complete data on the biodiversity found within their territory.
- ACT supported our indigenous partners in Brazil’s Xingu Indigenous Park, assisting in their efforts to build support against the planned construction of dams with potentially devastating environmental impacts. Thanks to this pressure, the environmental permits needed to proceed with the dams’ construction were canceled.
Sharing Ancestral Knowledge
- ACT made possible three gatherings of traditional healers – both men and women – from multiple tribes across the Colombian Amazon, so that they could share their strengths and struggles and find ways to better protect their rainforest lands and cultures.
- In four remote villages of Suriname, ACT supplied all necessary support to community traditional medicine clinics that ACT previously constructed, and this support provided continuous opportunities for elder tribal leaders to share ancestral medicinal knowledge with younger generations.