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To save the rainforest, let the locals take control

by Fred Pearce

Global intervention in tropical forests to combat climate change could sideline their most effective guardians

SATELLITE images of the Amazon rainforest are startling. Islands of green are surrounded by brown areas of land cleared for farming. In places, the brown advances, year by year. But in others, the forest holds firm. Why the difference? Mostly, the surviving green areas belong to local tribes.

http://www.cserc.org/main/issues/forests/BlueCreek.jpg

Brazil’s Kayapo, for instance, control 10.6 million hectares along the Xingu river in the south-eastern Amazon, an area often called the “arc of deforestation”. They held back the invasion that engulfed areas close by, often violently repelling loggers, gold miners, cattle ranchers and soya farmers. The Kayapo have kept deforestation rates “close to zero”, according to Daniel Nepstad, a long-time Amazon researcher now at the Earth Innovation Institute in San…