Posts by Amazon Conservation Team
Amazon Conservation Team Reestablished in Brazil
On January 25, 2019, responding to several requests for partnership from indigenous communities in Brazil, the Amazon Conservation Team® (ACT®) decided to reestablish itself in the country. ACT began its work in Brazil at the turn of the 21st century. Through 2011, ACT supported several indigenous groups in mapping their cultural realities and traditional natural…
Read MoreSecuring Land Rights for Indigenous Communities in Colombia: A Methodology
Ensuring the collective survival of indigenous peoples requires guaranteeing their rights and access to traditional lands. In Colombia, indigenous peoples’ struggle for ancestral land rights has been ongoing for more than four centuries, marked by collective mobilization and pressure before official entities. In Colombia, almost 500,000 indigenous people lack official recognition of their collective land…
Read MoreCollective Empowerment in the Yunguillo Reserve of Colombia’s Inga People
In memory of the three youth of the Yunguillo reserve murdered in September 2018. ACT works with the Inga indigenous people of theYunguillo Reserve, located at the confluence of the Andes mountain range and the Amazon river basin in Colombia, a territory of great importance due to the ecological and ecosystemic characteristics of its forests,…
Read MoreOral Histories: Helping the Kogui Manage their Territory
Two of ACT’s objectives in our work at Jaba Tañiwashkaka, a coastal sacred site of the indigenous peoples of Colombia’s Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta region, are to increase the territorial management capacity of indigenous leadership and to establish conservation agreements between the local indigenous and non-indigenous communities. In contexts like the Sierra Nevada de…
Read MoreWhat is the correlation between the protection of indigenous peoples in voluntary isolation and the protection of the Amazon?
Let’s start with a question. If you lived in South America, and had to run away from society, where would you hide? The most remote areas of the Amazon, where thousands of small rivers are born and eventually become giant waterways—which along the way irrigate millions of trees, and in their final destination feed the…
Read MoreConserving the Vast Biodiversity of the Colombian Amazon
The great wealth of biodiversity present in the Amazon is at serious risk of disappearing due to several threats, which must be addressed through the joint work of the various stakeholders in the region. One of the first steps in addressing this problem is to identify which species of flora and fauna are present in…
Read MoreThe Sun through a Lamp: Solar Energy in the Colombian Amazon
For more than seven years, we have worked with the communities of the middle and lower watersheds of Colombia’s Caquetá River, supporting them in the conservation of tropical forests and the strengthening of their local initiatives. Thanks to this common purpose, we have come to understand the needs of the indigenous and small farmer families,…
Read MoreSolar Solutions for Traditional Communities
For remote forest communities, steady sources of renewable power can improve air quality, minimize tree harvesting, and provide domestic lighting for the evening work, especially important for children’s studies. In the Waura village of Ulupuene, which is situated along the banks of the Batovi River within the confines of the Xingu Indigenous Territory in Brazil,…
Read MoreA Green Dawn: Solar Energy and Community Empowerment in the Amazon Rainforest
The Amazon rainforest is privileged with rich biological and cultural diversity, natural splendor, and the potential to benefit all humanity by helping to stabilize the climate. Roughly the size of the 48 contiguous United States, it covers some 40 percent of the South American continent and includes parts of nine countries. It is also one…
Read MoreThe River School: Indigenous Communities Learning & Working Together for the Protection of Key Ecosystems in Colombia
Throughout ACT’s more than 20 years of conservation and indigenous rights work in South America, one of the greatest challenges our partner communities voice is the gaining of effective control over their territories. Conspicuously, many countries have legal means through which local autonomy can be achieved, but the communities still need the basic skills necessary…
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