Chief Tojtxi never forgot his first, furtive contact with the invaders.
"We saw traces of the whites, and fled into the forest," he told Survival International a few years back. "The whites saw our footsteps and followed us. We went further and further away, but the whites came to our village, and we left our plantations, our caxiri (manioc drink), and everything, to flee."
He was chief of the Arara, an isolated people of the Amazon Rainforest who had their first contact with Brazilian authorities less than 35 years ago. The "plantations" he described were temporary agricultural plots that the Arara borrowed from the forest for a few years at a time before letting them return to their natural state. It's one of the many ways they adapted to the notoriously poor soil of the Amazon, and it served the Arara well for hundreds of years. But the practice went into sharp decline after the Arara made contact with Brazilian authorities in1981, and much of their forest fell to ranchers, loggers, and others bearering short-term prosperity at the expense of the land's long-term viability.
The Brazilian state of Acre is now trying to help the land recover, in part through its System of Incentives for Environmental Services (Sistema de Incentivos a Serviços Ambientais / "SISA"), which aims to revive land-use activities that were common in Tojtxi's day.
Launched in 2010, SISA creates a framework within which indigenous people, rubber tappers, and small farmers can earn Payments for Environmental Services (PES) by practicing sustainable agriculture and protecting endangered rainforest. For indigenous people, SISA explicitly aims to support traditional methods of farming and forest management that have proven to be more suitable for the rainforest than are the western methods brought by the newcomers. So far this year, the indigenous component has received R$6.5 million ($2.9 million) in jump-start funding, and current Arara chief José Maria Arara says that's critical to moving his people forward.
Members of the Ashaninka People take stock of their natural capital at a workshop in their territory.Photo Credit: Flavia Cunha
The new funding provides a partial answer, and it comes in two waves.
The Money
It's all part of a R$50 million ($24.2 million) grant that KfW, the German development bank is providing through 2018. Seventy percent of that is earmarked for providers of environmental services, including rubber-tappers and indigenous groups. It marks the German government's first grant specifically to a state rather than to a country.
Much of the funding will come into Acre in the form of performance-based REDD+ (Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation) payments designed to help the state reduce its overall rates of deforestation, and the state government believes the best way to achieve that goal is to support indigenous people and traditional management systems.
Phase One: Indigenous Forestry
Phase Two: REDD+ and Other PES
Funding Indigenous Projects
Members of the Yawanawa People at a SISAworkshop in their territory.Photo: Laura and Tashka Yawanawa
The awards will range in size from R$50,000 ($22,390) to R$210,000 ($94,000) and can be used for a broad range of activities - from strengthening land management to promoting associations and communities to generating income for women. The final projects will be selected by the government according to a criteria established by SISA's Indigenous Working Group (GT-Indígena).
"GT-Indígena was created to guide the implementation of the indigenous component of SISA, to figure out, for instance,how to distribute funds and other benefits to local indigenous communities - to answer questions like, 'How will money strengthen land tenure rights? How will this money strengthen the management and governance of territories that have been demarcated?'" says Beto Borges, who heads the Forest Trends Communities and Markets Initiative and sits on GT-Indígena.
"We're talking about 2.4 million hectares of forest being managed by indigenous peoples," he says. "That's 15 distinct ethnicities dispersed among 35 indigenous territories. Their traditional territories have been demarcated. They're official. Now, the new funding from SISA will strengthen the management and conservation of their forests."
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