Amazonia

Securing 60M hectares of thriving forest landscape

What we know

40%

of the Amazon is managed and protected by Indigenous Peoples

10%

of the planet’s known biodiversity is contained in the Amazon

square kilometers of tropical rainforest

Why it's important

The Amazon is the world’s largest tropical rainforest, more than 8 million square kilometers (3 million square miles) and is about the same size as the forty-eight contiguous United States. An estimated 80% of the Amazon is forested and includes some 3,000 Indigenous territories, covering over a third of its area.

In the Amazon, Nia Tero’s long term goal is to work alongside Indigenous Peoples to strengthen, amplify, and maintain guardianship of 60 million hectares of thriving forest landscape.

We support Indigenous partners, primarily with grants, to exercise their territorial rights, bolster governance of their communities and assert their own vision of well-being. To achieve this, we are supporting Indigenous Peoples' guardianship in northern Brazil, south Suriname, western Guyana, eastern Colombia, and the Ecuador-Peru border region. In addition to grants, we also provide training, networking, and storytelling opportunities. Our regional Indigenous advisors are guiding us in this process.

Panoramic of trees in the Amazon rainforest

There are 350 languages spoken in the Amazon. They belong to six major and at least a dozen smaller linguistic families. The basin also has scores of language "Isolates" which are so unique that they cannot be linked to any other known language. Each language carries a specific and nuanced understanding of the ecosystem in which it has developed.

Nia Tero is contributing to the implementation of the self-determined vision of 19 Indigenous organizations and some of their NGO partners.

For example, in Colombia we are supporting the Organization of Indigenous Peoples of the Colombian Amazon (OPIAC) for their efforts to document and report human rights violations. In Suriname we are supporting the Wayana people to develop their own vision and plan as a people, and to map their territory. In Brazil, we are supporting organizations such as Apitikaxi and Apiwa in the Tumucumaque Indigenous Land to protect their territories, strengthen their internal governance, fortify their communications, and maintain their cultural continuity and intergenerational exchange. We also support the Union of Indigenous Peoples of the Javari Valley (UNIVAJA) to manage a Portugal-sized territory shared with the world's largest concentration of uncontacted peoples.

A 2020 Amazon basin-wide study in the Proceedings of the US National Academy of Sciences showed that Indigenous communities protect forest carbon more effectively than any other landowners in the basin: Carbon is 36 times as secure on native lands than on unprotected or private forests and six times less likely to be emitted as forest carbon is from conventional protected areas. The ecosystems of the Amazon thrive when the Indigenous Peoples who care for them thrive—and the whole planet benefits.