Abstract
Indigenous Lands are critical for protecting Indigenous Peoples and the Amazon. Yet, they are increasingly exposed to socio-environmental frontiers, bringing violence, illegal resource extraction and deforestation. Urgent action is required to prevent irreversible harm to both people and forests, particularly in Brazil’s Vale do Javari Indigenous Land. Using satellite-based deforestation records from PRODES and MapBiomas, we show that forest loss surrounding the Vale do Javari Indigenous Land has risen sharply since 2008 while remaining stable within the territory itself, with the cumulative 200-km buffer zone recording nearly 187.5 times more forest loss than the Indigenous Land in 2022. We further find that 64% of deforestation in that buffer zone between 2008 and 2024 occurred within boundaries registered in Brazil’s Rural Environmental Registry (CAR), a system originally designed for environmental enforcement but increasingly misused as evidence of possession over public lands. We call for legal protections to be extended to Indigenous Land buffer zones, for the designation of undesignated public forests as protected areas, and for strengthened enforcement capacity that supports Indigenous monitoring groups and protects Peoples living in voluntary isolation.
Noemi Vergopolan
Assistant Professor of Earth, Environmental and Planetary Sciences
Computational hydrologist working on high-resolution water prediction for climate, agriculture and decision-making.