Avoided Deforestation (REDD) and Indigenous ... - Amazon Fund

approximately 13 million hectares, or 25% of the total area of that region, with 3% of the system’s
area overlapping with 7% of the indigenous lands located there. In many Amazon sub-regions,
indigenous lands make up large mosaics with direct- and indirect-use conservation units, both
of which are managed by the federal as well as state governments.
Historical deforestation which has accumulated within indigenous lands in the Amazon
is not substantial and affects less than 2% of the area. Part of this deforestation is associated
with certain forms of indigenous occupation of the territory – areas used for construction
and expansion of villages, clearing of land for agriculture – and part is due to non-indigenous
occupation in the past, prior to official land recognition processes, or current occupation resulting
from ongoing invasions.
To be sure, it is not by avoiding historical deforestation in indigenous lands that consistent
actions to guarantee the future of the vast carbon stock in these lands can be developed. Wrongly
degraded areas located in these lands can and should be recovered, but the main focus should be
on preventing patterns of deforestation that have been observed in other parts of the Amazon
from reaching indigenous lands.
Indigenous lands in the Amazon are affected in various ways by processes of colonial
occupation, agricultural frontier expansion, and implementation of large infrastructure projects.
In other words, indigenous lands (as well as conservation units and other forested areas) located
along the “arc of deforestation” (including Eastern Pará, Northern Mato Grosso, and Central
Rondônia) have forest carbon stocks and other environmental services which are exposed to
greater pressures and are therefore subject to a higher level of future risk.
Therefore, it may be concluded that indigenous lands located in regions under greater
pressure are better suited for development of REDD-type projects, which have reducing
deforestation as their main objectives. In this case, these would be projects which intend to
prevent, for decades, the regional deforestation pattern from penetrating indigenous lands.
Nevertheless, reducing deforestation, in spite of benefitting climate and offering other
immediate positive results, is a limited-time objective, since it is hoped that, in the not-sodistant
future, deforestation in the Amazon will be limited to legally permitted levels. The greater
challenge, both in the short and long run, is ensuring perennial carbon stocks in the Amazon and
indigenous lands for the future.
In this strategy, the importance of indigenous lands in more remote regions grows, more
markedly so along the borders between Brazil and other Amazon countries, not only because of
the vast area and large forest carbon stocks contained therein, but also because they make up
Av o i d e d d e f o re s t A t i o n (redd) A n d i n d i g e n o u s p e o p l e s: experiences, chAllenges A n d o p p o r t u n i t i e s in t h e A m A zo n c o n t e x t 13