Indigenous Peoples Harness Space Technology to Stop Deforestation

Indigenous Peoples Harness Space Technology to Stop Deforestation

Satellite observations have long been used to detect deforestation, and a new study shows that giving Indigenous groups greater access to these data can improve response times and reduce tree cover loss.

In the Peruvian Amazon, deforestation is being driven by illegal gold mining, logging, and clear-cutting for cultivation of crops like palm oil and coca. Between 2001 and 2016, the Peruvian Amazon lost nearly 2 million hectares of forest.

More than one third of the Amazon rain forest falls within the territory of more than 3,000 formally acknowledged Indigenous groups, but the size and inaccessibility of Indigenous Peoples’ territory in the Amazon mean that timely alerts from satellite data can make a big difference in their existing antideforestation patrol efforts. For example, alerts can allow communities to take preventive actions, such as blocking the rivers where loggers entered.

To determine the effectiveness of timely deforestation alerts derived from recent satellite data, Indigenous Peoples in the Peruvian Amazon teamed up with scientists and conservation organizations. They analyzed deforestation rates in Indigenous communities with access to alerts about deforestation in their territory and compared them with rates from groups using other patrol methods.

The findings, published in July in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS), showed that from 2018 to 2020, there was a notable reduction in tree cover loss among communities with access to satellite data.

The study suggested that governments should provide Indigenous communities greater access to satellite data. “As a policymaker, you want to know: If a monitoring method works on this site, it might work somewhere else,” said Tara Slough, assistant professor of politics at New York University and lead author of the paper.

Training Locals to Monitor Forests

In 36 out of 73 participating Indigenous communities, researchers trained local people to use a combination of two smartphone mapping applications (Locus Map and Global Forest Watcher), with monitors receiving monthly deforestation alerts from Peru’s national GeoBosques deforestation-monitoring platform, which uses NASA’s Landsat data. They could then head out with the phone, document the problem area, see what activities were going on, and make a report to the community council.

Wendy Pineda, a project coordinator for Rainforest Foundation US—the rights-based forest protection organization that funded the research project—has been working for more than a decade to bring more high-tech monitoring tools to Indigenous communities.

For this study, each of the noncontrol communities designed its own monitoring plan, tailored to existing and potential threats in its area. For example, a Ticuna community in Buen Jardin de Callaru that was heavily threatened by land invasion from coca farmers was encouraged to send its monitoring data of 7 hectares of deforestation to Peru’s Environmental Prosecutor’s Office. As a result, the invaders left, deforestation halted, and the community is now the beneficiary of a reforestation project.

“Indigenous Peoples have done [forest monitoring] for their entire existence and will continue to do so, only now they can be more decisive, thanks to technology.” “Indigenous Peoples have done [forest monitoring] for their entire existence and will continue to do so, only now they can be more decisive, thanks to technology,” Pineda said. “Satellite imagery and technology…only complemented and enhanced the effectiveness of their plans.”

Jorge Perez is president of the Indigenous People’s Organization of the Eastern Amazon (ORPIO), which has long fought for land rights and preventing deforestation. ORPIO’s member communities participated in the study, and according to Perez, they are the ones who know the territory, know its problems, and feel the impacts of deforestation.

According to Perez, the satellite information aided Indigenous monitors in responding more quickly to sites where illegal deforestation was taking place. More immediate notification also allowed authorities, like the Ministry of Environment and the Environmental Prosecutor’s Office, to build the case against those engaged in illegal activity.

“Communities are experiencing the positive impacts of the intervention, so many continued to monitor even when funding ended and the pandemic began,” Pineda said.

Empirical Evidence

Ane Alencar, director of science for the Amazon Environmental Research Institute who wasn’t involved in the PNAS study, said empirical evidence of deforestation reduction helps generate strong arguments and ideas for policymakers. “Communities are experiencing the positive impacts of the intervention, so many continued to monitor even when funding ended and the pandemic began.”

“In this case, the availability of real-time information on deforestation…seemed to end up empowering the communities to do peer enforcement,” Alencar said. Consistency is key, she warned: Over time, the effect of community empowerment may fade away if offenders perceive that there are no consequences.

One criticism of the PNAS paper is that none of the authors are from Peru, raising the specter of colonial science, in which local collaborators contribute to a major paper in a prestigious journal published by scientists from the Global North but don’t receive the academic benefits of being named as authors.

“I think it is very important to engage local actors or experts in scientific studies, since they are aware of the context and they are able to redirect and enrich any discussion or conclusion, while avoiding any possibility of misinterpretation of the results,” Alencar said.

Back in the Peruvian Amazon, Perez said he wants more climate funding, including a recent commitment from Germany, Norway, the United Kingdom, and the United States, to arrive directly to Indigenous communities to help them to continue to defend their territory.

“Even if funds run out, we are able to continue to use this knowledge,” he said.

—Andrew J. Wight (@ligaze), Science Writer

The legal battle for indigenous peoples’ land in Brazil is also a fight for the planet’s survival

This week, the Brazilian Supreme Court (STF) is resuming the judgment of the Xokleng case, a landmark trial that will define the future of Brazil’s indigenous peoples, and consequently of the world’s forests, biodiversity, and climate.

The court will analyse the scope of the indigenous territorial rights enshrined in the Brazilian Federal Constitution and decide whether or not these rights are limited by the so-called “marco temporal” thesis - or “the time limit trick” - which, if upheld, will put at risk the indigenous territories that have already been recognised by the state.

Let me explain. Brazilian constitutions have, since 1934, recognised indigenous rights to land, but the Federal Constitution of 1988 represented an important leap in the protection of these rights. In addition to establishing that indigenous peoples are entitled to the land they traditionally occupy, the constitution states that such rights are not created by, but merely recognised through state law. The constitution has made it the duty of the federal administration to demarcate all indigenous lands.

The “marco temporal” thesis aims to change that. It posits that indigenous peoples are only entitled to the lands they physically occupied on the date of the 1988 Federal Constitution. It will mean all the theft of indigenous lands that took place up until 1988 would, with the stroke of the pen, be sanctioned by the legal system. This restriction clause will erase the history of violence and displacement suffered by indigenous groups and block legal means of redress. It would also put at risk all territories that have been demarcated until today, since demarcation processes would be reopened and demands be made to prove indigenous presence in 1988.

The pressure to restrict indigenous land rights is enormous. Land grabbers, loggers, agribusiness, and the industrial and semi-industrial mining sectors are among those that have an interest in exploiting indigenous land. And if indigenous lands go, all other protected territories are likely to follow.

This will of course have a potentially devastating impact on the environment. A growing body of scientific evidence demonstrates the crucial role that indigenous land tenure plays in the battle against deforestation, biodiversity loss, and climate change. Data from the ICCA Consortium this year revealed that more than 30 per cent of the earth is conserved thanks to indigenous people and local communities. According to the UN’s Special Rapporteur for Indigenous Peoples from 2019, 80 per cent of the world’s remaining forest biodiversity lies within indigenous peoples’ territories. And in the most recent report released by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the world’s top scientists attest in a unified voice that the contribution of indigenous peoples is critical for achieving the best-case scenario for our climate.

The “time limit trick” has been lurking for at least two decades amongst members of the National Congress involved in Brazil’s rural affairs. After his election in 2018, president Bolsonaro paralysed land demarcation processes across the country, arguing that indigenous presence on these lands in 1988 needed to be proven. In the judiciary, the “marco temporal” thesis is being pushed in hundreds of lawsuits in which indigenous land tenure is discussed.

The trial for the Xokleng will be a watershed case and decisive because it has been granted general repercussion status, meaning that whatever is decided in the dispute will be applicable to similar cases across Brazil. It refers to a territorial dispute between the Xokleng peoples and the state of Santa Catarina in which the “marco temporal” thesis was used to argue that the demarcation of the Ibirama La-Klãnõ indigenous land – inhabited by Xokleng, Kaingang, and Guarani indigneous groups - should be annulled.

Throughout the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries, Xokleng were hunted by militias sent by settlers. In 1914, a reservation of 40,000 hectares - a small fraction of their territory - was demarcated, freeing up the remaining land for colonisation. This reservation was later reduced to 16,000 hectares, sanctioning the illegal encroachments. In the 1970s, a dam and conservation park created by the state further reduced Xokleng lands. After the Federal Constitution of 1988, a land demarcation process begun and, in 2003, the minister of justice recognised the Ibirama La-Klãnõ indigenous land with the extension of 37,108 hectares.

This land demarcation is now being questioned as a result of the “marco temporal” thesis, as are over 245 indigenous land demarcation processes that still need to be concluded by Brazil’s National Indigenous Foundation (FUNAI). Even the indigenous lands where the process has been concluded are not safe, especially those located in development frontiers that were consolidated far before 1988.

In the Xokleng trial, the Brazilian Supreme Court has the chance to bury the “marco temporal” thesis once and for all. To do so, it must fulfil its role as guardian of the Federal Constitution and declare it unconstitutional. This will hinder its further application in disputes involving indigenous territorial rights. It will also block the approval of the clause via a federal bill.

The indigenous peoples of Brazil are not idly standing by. Over 6,000 people from across Brazil have gathered at the Struggle for Life Camp in Brasilia for the Xokleng trial this week. Those who govern Brazil today envision a country without indigenous lands, and consequently without indigenous peoples. But their struggle is not only about protecting a way of life, it’s about the survival of our planet.

Luiz Eloy Terena is the general counsel for the Articulation of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil (APIB).

Ana Carolina Alfinito conducts research on social movements, indigenous rights and legal pluralism in Brazil and is currently legal advisor at Amazon Watch.

Book review: Fatal Contact is a timely account of how epidemics devastated our First Peoples

Review: Fatal Contact: How Epidemics Nearly Wiped Out Australia’s First Peoples by Peter Dowling (Monash University Publishing)

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised this article contains images and names of deceased people.

As Peter Dowling reminds us in his introduction to this book, violence on the colonial frontier accounted for many thousands of deaths among the First Peoples — a truth unremembered in a process of historical amnesia labelled the “great Australian silence” by anthropologist W. E. H. Stanner.

Australia’s sense of its past in collective memory, Stanner said in his famous 1968 Boyer lectures, was:

a view from a window which has been carefully placed to exclude a whole quadrant of the landscape […] a cult of forgetfulness practised on a national scale.

A great deal has shifted in our understanding of the past since Stanner shocked the historical profession into a halting engagement with the truth of Australia’s settlement.

Yet, as historian Billy Griffiths pointed out in the anthology Fire, Flood and Plague, a key part of the “great Australian silence” has been our continued willingness to see pandemic disease that eliminated the great majority of the First People as “inevitable and apolitical”.

Read more: Friday essay: the ‘great Australian silence’ 50 years on

In the face of the current pandemic, playing out on a global stage, Griffiths writes, we can observe that “it is not only about microbes; it is also about culture, politics and history”. The radically different consequences of this pandemic as experienced by different peoples has shown us we cannot blithely assume spread of disease is without responsibility.

This is what Dowling would have us understand in his timely and meticulous account of “the greatest human tragedy in the long history of Australia”. He examines the recurring outbreaks of fatal epidemics of smallpox, measles, syphilis, influenza and tuberculosis (TB), which “nearly wiped out Australia’s First Peoples”.

Catastrophic impact

At the time of colonisation, these diseases were so endemic in Britain that a high degree of immunity existed in the population, as well as medical strategies to control epidemic spread. But in the virgin-soil communities of Australia’s First Peoples, everyone was susceptible, with no-one spared. So there was no-one to provide basic needs for the sick.

The impact was catastrophic, as illustrated in the multiple accounts of the smallpox outbreak at Sydney Cove in 1789. This is widely known about now, but a wave of epidemics, including smallpox, continued to decimate the First Peoples well into the 20th century.

Courtesy of Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales.

Alongside smallpox, syphilis also reached epidemic proportions in the Sydney region in the first few decades of settlement, gradually extending into every corner of the continent.

The scourge of syphilis was apparent in the early colony in Tasmania and a major contributor, along with influenza, to the rapid mortality that had all but eliminated the peoples of the south-eastern quadrant of the island by 1830.

Courtesy of State Library of Victoria.

It was in Victoria where the magnitude of the disease was most apparent. In 1839, a cohort of Aboriginal Protectors were appointed to various districts across Victoria. They all reported overwhelming syphilis infection, accounting for as many as “nine out of ten” of the many sick and dying.

One reported of the First People in his district “the most extensive ravages […] will render them extinct within a few years”.

Another despairingly complained “no medicine has been placed at my disposal”.

Worst in camps

Epidemics reached into isolated First People’s communities well out of sight of authorities — the Spanish Flu of 1918 managed to spread its deadly tentacles into communities of the Western Desert. However, outbreaks were much more likely in the government-supervised camps, reserves, missions and stations, where dispossessed First Peoples were forcibly relocated.

Uniformly, these places of concentration had overcrowded and inadequate housing, low nutritional diets and bad water supply, combined with individual distress and depression — conditions favourable to the incubation and spread of diseases.

The First People’s high susceptibility to disease, Dowling argues, was probably a consequence of chronic untreated TB among those forced into camps and settlements.

He examines the settlement on Flinders Island in Tasmania between 1832 and 1847, which became infamous for its horrendous death rate, mythologised by the colonists who had expelled these people simply due to their “pining away”.

The records examined by Dowling show these people actually died of either TB itself or an associated respiratory illness worsened by TB’s immunosuppressant effects.

TB was also known to have been an efficient killer in the Victorian settlements at Lake Hindmarsh and Coranderrk: the attributed cause of more than 30% of recorded deaths in those places between 1876 and 1900. At these same settlements, a measles epidemic in 1874-5 killed 20% of people.

Courtesy of State Library of Victoria

It is no coincidence this was the same story as at the notorious concentration camps for dispossessed Boers the British created in South Africa at the end of the 19th century, where various epidemic diseases were allowed to rage.

Read more: The COVID-19 crisis in western NSW Aboriginal communities is a nightmare realised

As I write, I am acutely aware most communities of First Peoples have the lowest vaccination rates in the nation — even though the government has assured us repeatedly vaccination for these most vulnerable communities was their highest priority.

In despair, I repeat the mantra: the past is not even past.