Joel Puyanawa is standing in a clearing near the Moa River, which cuts through the Amazon rainforest in western Brazil. Behind him is a thick canopy of trees creating a typical Amazonian tableau – one that almost was not.
Puyanawa is the chief of the Puyanawa Indigenous Peoples, whose traditional territory had for generations been diced up and deforested, including by the notoriously brutal rubber barons of the colonial era.
But in recent years, the Puyanawa have regained control over their lands, largely ending the clear cutting ravaging much of the Amazon. Instead, the Puyanawa have turned to farming, using traditional practices, like dotting their fields with hardwood trees, to ease the burden on the land.
“There’s extra work, yes,” says Puyanawa. “But it’s exactly to preserve what’s most sacred. If we cut down a forest, it will never recover.”
Some 93 per cent of Puyanawa territory is forested. While the area lost about 50 football pitches of tree cover from 2018 to 2022, this remains much less compared to many parts of the Amazon.
Observers say Puyanawa’s success is a possible antidote to the unchecked resource extraction that is decimating the world’s tropical forests and could serve as a model for other communities looking to balance sustainability with economic development.
“The work of the Puyanawa shows what is possible when Indigenous Peoples are able to exercise their rights to their traditional territories,” said Gabriel Labbate, the head of the Climate Mitigation Unit at the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). “The Puyanawa are proving that sustainability and economic growth can go hand in hand.”
Every year, the world loses enough forest cover to fill Portugal, with much of that deforestation happening in 20 tropical countries, including Brazil. In the wildlife rich Amazon, home to 9 per cent of mammals and 14 per cent of birds, deforestation is threatening the survival of tens of thousands of species. It is also driving climate change: when trees decay or are burned, they release carbon dioxide, a planet-warming greenhouse gas.
For generations, the clear-cutting of virgin forest was a common sight for the Puyanawa, one of 15 ethnic groups that inhabit the state of Acre.
Following first contact with non-indigenous settlers in the early 20th century, many Puyanawa were killed during clashes over their lands or died from diseases. The outsiders were keen to tap into booming demand for rubber to make tires for the world’s growing automobile industry.
In a cruel twist, those who survived were often forced to work on plantations on their own lands, their culture and forests withering under the harsh treatment of so-called “rubber colonels.” Not only were the Puyanawa stripped of their territory but they were also forced to convert to Christianity and enrol in state-run schools that rejected their traditions.
“When I took over as chief, I didn't know how to sing or speak in my language,” says Joel Puyanawa, whose comments came ahead of the International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples, celebrated annually on 9 August.
In 2001 – when Brazil’s government began to strengthen Indigenous land rights – the Puyanawa started to recover their traditions, such as their language, their spiritual practices and their techniques for managing forests.
As Acre ramped up efforts to tackle deforestation, officials realized that Indigenous Peoples – including the Puyanawa – are the best guardians of the forests, says state governor Gladson Cameli. The state implemented policies to secure Indigenous Peoples’ land rights and combat encroachment on their territory. The state now legally recognizes 34 Indigenous territories and 204 villages.
“What we in the government strive for most… is protecting and increasingly embracing the rights of Indigenous Peoples,” says Cameli. "Talking about conservation is meaningless if we don't take care of those who live in the forest.”
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UNEP, in collaboration with The Amazon Environmental Research Institute, is helping Acre incentivize efforts to reduce deforestation and forest degradation. This includes providing technical assistance designed to help the state access climate financing.
One of Acre’s key moves was to launch in 2010 the State System of Incentives for Environmental Services, which aims to compensate communities for protecting, restoring and sustainably managing forests. That made Acre the first jurisdiction in the world to implement a large-scale program dedicated to rewarding forest action through financial incentives.
As part of that effort, Acre receives funding from development organizations for keeping trees in the ground, crucial to countering climate change. (Globally, 11 per cent of all greenhouse gases come from deforestation, more than all modes of transport combined.) About 70 per cent of the climate-linked funding goes to communities, like the Puyanawa, to support sustainable development. Acre is also planning to sell carbon credits on the international markets, with a large portion of those proceeds expected to benefit communities.
“Indigenous Peoples play a very important role in balancing the climate and preserving forests by being guardians,” says Francisca Arara, the head of Acre’s Indigenous Peoples Secretariat. “We provide a service not just for our territories but for the world.”
The work to protect the Amazon, home to one of the greatest concentrations of life on the planet, is not only helping to counter climate change. It is supporting the targets of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, a global agreement to protect and restore the natural world. The plan calls on countries to, among other things, respect the rights of Indigenous Peoples and reduce the impact of climate change on biodiversity.
The Puyanawa’s efforts to protect and restore forests are expected to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 6,400 tonnes annually, the equivalent of taking almost 1,400 cars off the road. Observers also say it can be a model for other parts of the Amazon. Almost 50 million people live in the region – including 830,000 people in Acre state – and many depend on forests for their livelihoods, including 1 million Indigenous Peoples. But between 2018 and 2022, the Brazilian Amazon lost more than 5 million hectares of forest due to reduced protections and policies favoring agricultural expansion.
Initiatives like those in Acre can help reverse that trend, says UNEP’s Labbate. But the current price of carbon on international markets does not reflect the true value of forest ecosystems, nor does it cover the costs associated with maintaining and protecting forests. That makes expanding forest conservation and restoration a challenge. Labbate believes a carbon price of US$30-US$50 per tonne is needed, well above the going rate of US$5-US$10 a tonne.
“Payments for emissions reductions from forests continue to be unreasonably low,” he says. “A more equitable pricing model would not only incentivize conservation but also ensure that the financial resources are adequate to sustain these vital ecosystems and the communities that depend on them.”
The Sectoral Solution to the climate crisis
UNEP is at the forefront of supporting the Paris Agreement goal of keeping global temperature rise well below 2°C, and aiming for 1.5°C, compared to pre-industrial levels. To do this, UNEP has developed the Sectoral Solution, a roadmap to reducing emissions across sectors in line with the Paris Agreement commitments and in pursuit of climate stability. The six sectors identified are: energy; industry; agriculture and food; forests and land use; transport; and buildings and cities.
The planet is experiencing a dangerous decline in nature. One million species are threatened with extinction, soil health is declining and water sources are drying up. The Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework sets out global targets to halt and reverse nature loss by 2030. It was adopted by world leaders in December 2022. To address the drivers of the nature crisis, UNEP is working with partners to take action in landscapes and seascapes, transform our food systems, and close the finance gap for nature.
