Progress towards
protecting ancestral
territories

Our partners across the Amazon are reshaping governance from the ground up – anchored in Indigenous worldviews and community leadership. 

• The National Organisation of the Indigenous Peoples of the Colombian Amazon supported the Mataní Indigenous Territorial Council in the Great Vaupés Reservation, to gain formal government recognition as local governments. 

• Three Autonomous Indigenous Territorial Governments worked with partners to negotiate a transition to formal recognition with national authorities, a right that is enshrined in the Bolivian constitution.

• The Matsigenka and Harakbut Indigenous Nations in the Madre de Díos region of Peru established greater control through mapping and developing governance plans. 

• The Wampís Indigenous Guard, of the Wampís Nation’s Autonomous Territorial Government, evicted illegal miners, and secured recognition from the Peruvian state as an official ‘self-defence’ body.

Combined, these autonomous groups advanced toward controlling 6.6 million hectares of biodiverse forest, an area larger than Sri Lanka. 

Our partners made unprecedented progress in securing rights and territories for Indigenous Peoples in Voluntary Isolation and Initial Contact, or PIACI — balancing non-interference with proactive measures. 

• Following years of collaborative advocacy, Peru’s government officially established the Sierra del Divisor Occidental Indigenous Reserve: a huge refuge for three PIACI groups in the Amazon.

• The Amazon Conservation Team secured the approval of provisional protection for the ancestral territory of the Yuri-Passé people, marking a critical step towards safeguarding this vital ecological corridor in Colombia from illegal mining, logging, and drug trafficking.

• The National Indigenous Peoples Foundation’s reissued a Use Restriction Ordinance, triggering a coordinated government effort to remove intruders from the Ituna-Itatá land in Brazil, a territory that is home to a PIACI group.

Combined, these PIACI groups alone represent nearly 2.1 million hectares of biodiverse forest, an area twice the size of Jamaica.

Some 87 percent of land in the DRC is claimed by Indigenous Peoples and local communities based on customary ownership, but only a tiny fraction of their rights are recognised by the government. Our partners have been working tirelessly with communities to reverse this. 

• In 2024, sustainable forest group Tropenbos DR Congo’s mapping efforts covered 762,329 hectares, bringing 28 communities closer to securing legal rights to their forests by registering and governing Community Forest Concessions (CFCLs).

• The group helped establish management plans for 12 CFCLs that had already gained recognition of 387,260 hectares, with 70 percent of that land designated for conservation. Three of the CFCLs has already received approval by the year’s end.

Achieving scale in India means working with thousands of individual communities. This presents immense logistical challenges but time and again our partners overcome them, using innovative technologies and approaches.

• They helped 7,490 communities make progress toward securing and effectively governing their territories (almost three quarters of the total communities whose rights were strengthened by projects we financed in 2024).

• In Odisha State, Vasundhara helped document the community heritage of seven Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups, helping to secure government recognition of Habitat Rights over 875,000 hectares of forest for 547 communities. This included hard-won recognitions within protected areas such as Similipal Tiger Reserve.
• They also helped 1,223 communities in Odisha to establish Community Forest Rights Management Committees, helping to ensure responsible forest resource use and conservation.