Land and Resource Rights in the Amazon Rainforest

Environmental Importance of the Amazon

The Amazon is the largest tropical rainforest in the world.

The Amazon empties around one fifth of the worlds freshwater into the oceans.

The Amazon is home to 10% of the worlds known biodiversity.

The Amazon rainforest plays a huge role in the reuglation of oxygen and carbon dioxide cycles.

Resource Issues

As land in the Amazon is taken over for industrial projects and development, The Amazon's Indegnous people continue to lose mass amounts of resources from their native lands.

The Amazon rainforest absorbs a large amount of carbon dioxide within the Earth's atmosphere. With deforestation and areas of the Amazon quickly being destroyed, this natural resource is beginning to weaken.

Protection of the Amazon

Although it may feel like there is nothing we can do to help protect the Amazon, supporting organizations, donating, and signing petitions all bring us one step closer to ending the suffer of the Amazon rainforest.

The IWGIA strives to protect the climate and land rights of Indegenous people and to ensure their voices are being heard at national levels, at the UNFCCC (UN Framework Convention on Climate Change) and within the GCF (Green Climate Fund).

Although there are laws and regulations to protect the Indegnous land in the Amazon, they are often poorly managed or completley ingored, leading to free reign on Indegenous land from farmers and developers.

Land Issues

Although the Brazilian Indian Statue of 1973 guarentees native communities permanent possesion of the land they inhabitant, a section of the Statue also allows the government to relocate and create infrascture on native territory whenever it is deemed needed.

The deforestation of the Amazon forces Indegenous people of the Amazon out of their native land. They have little power to voice their concerns and the land protection laws are often ignored. This is a massive land issue for the Indegnous people in the Amazon.