Forests managed by Indigenous peoples are some of the Amazon’s last remaining carbon sinks
Forests managed by Indigenous peoples and other local communities in the Amazon region draw vast amounts of planet-warming carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere while the rest of the rainforest has become a net source of the greenhouse gas, a new report has found.
The discrepancy results from differences in deforestation rates between the two types of land.
The study from the World Resources Institute, a nonprofit global research organization focused on solving environmental challenges, adds to a growing body of evidence showing that land held by Native peoples and other local communities around the world has better environmental outcomes than government and privately owned land.
The WRI study, published on Jan. 6, marks the first time researchers have quantified the forest carbon benefits of Indigenous territories and land stewarded by local communities in the Amazon region, which spans Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, French Guiana, Guyana, Peru, Suriname and Venezuela.
From 2001 to 2021, forested areas in the Amazon managed by Indigenous communities removed about 340 million more metric tons of carbon from the air each year than they emitted, an amount equivalent to the annual carbon emissions of the states of California and Massachusetts combined. Land managed by other local communities had similar outcomes, researchers found. [Continue reading…]