Posts Tagged ‘Conservation’
Every Restoration Begins with a Seed
Discover the Agrobiodiversity in Tocantins project, an initiative that brings together productive landscape restoration, Indigenous knowledge, and territorial protection. Restoring a territory requires more than recovering degraded land. It means protecting water sources, helping biodiversity thrive, strengthening food production, and ensuring that future generations inherit territories rich in life, biodiversity, culture, and memory. For Indigenous…
Read MoreMapping with Indigenous and local communities to help protect the Amazon
Brian Hettler, a geographer and cartographer with the Amazon Conservation Team (ACT), works with Indigenous communities in South America on participatory mapping initiatives that support indigenous land rights and rainforest conservation. Maps are more than collections of geographic coordinates or lines representing roads or country borders. They can be an expression of a community’s culture, territory, and…
Read MoreCelebrating 30 Years: A Path That Began in the Amazon Continues to Expand
This year, the Amazon Conservation Team (ACT) is celebrating 30 years of biocultural conservation, an approach that recognizes the protection of local and Indigenous knowledge and culture go hand in hand with protecting the Earth’s most critical ecosystems. And the conservation solutions led by these communities are as diverse as the cultures and geographic regions…
Read MoreMongabay: Suriname will not be saved by soybeans (commentary)
In a new commentary for Mongabay, Dr. Mark Plotkin, ethnobotanist and President of the Amazon Conservation Team, argues that large-scale foreign agribusiness — Brazilian, Mennonite, or otherwise — won’t modernize Suriname’s economy and bring shared prosperity, as promised. Instead, drawing on patterns seen throughout tropical America, he argues it will do the opposite: clearing forest,…
Read MoreA Bridge Between the Sierra and the World
Ati Villafañe grew up on Colombia’s northern coast, going between the city of Santa Marta and her ancestral village of Kutunsama, which for the Arhuaco Indigenous people means “the root of knowledge.” Ati is one of seven Indigenous students from Colombia who are part of a scholarship program supported by the Amazon Conservation Team (ACT) and the Universidad Externado de Colombia in Bogota. For the scholarship students, the goal is not to leave their territory behind: instead, they are encouraged…
Read MoreThe Amazon Conservation Team joins call for academia to support Indigenous science and equitable conservation
In a recent letter published in Earth Stewardship Journal, the Amazon Conservation Team, along with Indigenous and non-Indigenous colleagues from research institutions and nongovernmental organizations, called on academia to meaningfully support biocultural conservation. “Too often, relationships between academia and Indigenous peoples and nations remain extractive and asymmetrical, and without meaningful recognition or restitution of harm done…
Read MoreÃwa People Strengthen Environmental Restoration on Bananal Island
More than 800 seedlings are currently being planted across the territory through the collective work of the entire community. On Bananal Island (Tocantins, Brazil), the Ãwa people are taking new steps toward environmental restoration in their territory. Planting and forest management activities are gaining momentum through the Kawú Nursery, an initiative supported by ACT-Brasil and funded by the Overbrook Foundation and the Scheidel Foundation. Planting Advances in Flooded Areas, with Preparations for Forest…
Read MoreEasy Conservation Tips for Kids: How Young Protectors Can Help Nature
Welcome, Young Rainforest Protectors! Caring for nature doesn’t have to be hard. Kids everywhere can help protect forests, animals, rivers, and even the Amazon rainforest by making small choices every day. Here are easy, fun conservation tips that show how young protectors can make a big difference. Protect Nature Every Day Nature gives us clean air, water, and places to…
Read MoreTop ethnobotanist Mark Plotkin’s COP30 reflections on Amazon conservation (analysis)
As the world gathers for COP30 in Belém, Brazil, Dr. Mark Plotkin, co-founder and president of the Amazon Conservation Team, offers perspective on what thirty years of protecting the Amazon alongside Indigenous communities has taught us. He recently shared his reflections in an article for Mongabay, an independent environmental news organization. Read the full analysis…
Read MorePeru Fails to Seize Critical Opportunity to Create World’s Largest Reserve for Isolated Peoples
As the General Secretariat of the International Working Group of Indigenous Peoples in Isolation and Initial Contact (GTI-PIACI), the Amazon Conservation Team (ACT) has worked alongside Indigenous partners to establish more than 7 million acres of reserves and buffer zones for isolated Indigenous peoples across the Amazon. Yesterday, however, Peru’s Multisectoral Commission voted against the…
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