Amazonia Viva: Rondônia and Acre states, Brazil

Supported local and indigenous communities, helped provide monitor-drones and training, and funding for on-the-ground fire-fighting equipment and recording illegal land invasions.

Trillion Trees partner WWF has successfully strengthened links with indigenous communities and other local groups, and continues to deliver vital support. Not only to help fight fires and deforestation, but recently to ensure emergency Covid-19 relief against a background of soaring infections and deaths in Brazil. 

Specific examples of technological infrastructure support include: 

• In Rondônia, working with the local partner Kanindé, 14 drones were donated and a drone-piloting course was run in the Uru-Eu-Wau-Wau indigenous lands. This enabled the group to monitor remote areas more effectively, safely detect illegal invasions and report more quickly.
• In Acre, in partnership with the Comissão Pró-Índio, a voluntary fire brigade made up of young indigenous leaders has been created. Trillion Trees funding will help train firefighters and supply them with fire beaters, backpack pumps and hoses to protect their land. 

The Amazonia Viva project has also equipped the community with smartphones, laptops and apps to help monitor territories, as well as drones to provide aerial images of vulnerable areas. Volunteers share knowledge and training with other indigenous communities to help fight further fires. 

• Reverse the trend of illegal deforestation on indigenous lands and protected areas in Rondônia and Acre

• Create a model for collaboration and impact in Brazil that could be scaled up across the Amazon region
  

• Create a better future for the Brazilian Amazon – so that indigenous peoples and traditional communities have the tools and training to protect their lands. And they have access to legal representation. And a forum to ensure that there is visibility for the crimes committed on their land, and public support for these crimes to be investigated and acted on by the authorities.

Supporting indigenous communities to carry out ‘real-time’ land surveillance, increasing legal protection and advocacy for indigenous land rights, and raising awareness on a national and international level.

Trillion Trees partner WWF has long recognised that conservation and human rights are at the heart of sustainable development. The cornerstone of the Amazônia Viva programme is building and strengthening partnerships with local organisations. The actions being planned and taken are developed with indigenous peoples and respond to their priorities.

Phase 1 of the programme, which began in 2020, is supporting their fight against deforestation in three ways:

• Helping provide remote sensing equipment and training to detect and monitor land invasions and deforestation
• Assisting with the use of drones as a means of non-violent patrolling techniques
• Supporting local partners to structure a legal team to collect evidence and make complaints to law enforcement agencies

Phase 2, from 2022-2025, will scale up the work to more areas based on the experiences and lessons from Phase 1. We will help create a model for collaboration and impact in Brazil that can be scaled up across the Amazon biome – for the benefit of people and the planet.  

The Amazon rainforest has been at the heart of the global fight against forest loss for decades. It’s a fight we seemed to be winning in the Brazilian Amazon – until a few years ago.

The advances made since the 1990s – in tackling deforestation and recognising indigenous land rights – are now at risk. Many of the huge forest fires we have seen raging recently were set deliberately to clear land for farming, mining or land speculation. By 2021 so much of the rainforest was burning that, for the first time ever, parts of the Amazon were emitting more CO2 than they were sequestering. This not only disastrously reduces the Amazon’s capacity to fight climate change, the burning forests are also an obvious nightmare for the people who live there.

The Amazon biome is home to around 900,000 indigenous people, split into more than 3o5 groups (1). At least 20% of the Brazilian Amazon is recognised as land belonging to indigenous peoples. The forest provides their food, shelter and way of life. It is also some of the most intact, biodiverse and carbon-dense rainforest left in the Amazon. 

Since 2019, deforestation in indigenous Amazon lands has increased 174% compared to the previous decade. This is why the Amazonia Viva programme is so vital. Trillion Trees partner WWF is working in partnership with local organisations to help indigenous people halt and reverse the deforestation. The programme is focusing initially on two Brazilian states – Rondônia and Acre. Together they cover 39 million hectares. Roughly three times the size of England.

Lead Partner: WWF

Working in partnership with local organisations in Rondonia and Acre States

Kanindé

Comissão Pró-Índio