Our Progress above Drone view of the Amazon rainforest , Brazil | lucas ninno-shutterstock
In 2023 , Rainforest Trust launched five projects in the Brazilian Amazon . Four of them prioritize supporting partners who work with Indigenous and traditional communities to help them secure legal recognition for and continue sustainable management of their ancestral lands : Instituto Internacional de Educação do Brasil , Centro de Trabalho Indigenista , and Observatory of the Human Rights of Isolated and Initial Contact Indigenous Peoples ( OPI ). In Brazil , the best way to protect land from commercial exploitation is for the federal government to identify , demarcate , and designate it as Indigenous Lands , which legally forbids all uses beyond those of resident Indigenous Peoples .
Traditional stewardship of the land will also safeguard habitat for hundreds of imperiled species , including the Endangered Black-faced Black Spider Monkey , Wattled Curassow ,
Giant Otter and two species of Endangered river dolphins , the Tucuxi and the Amazon River Dolphin .
We are proud to report the success of one of our strategic projects in Brazil , which focused on the world ’ s largest continuous belt of coastal mangroves . These mangroves serve as habitat for at least 40 globally threatened species , including the Vulnerable American Manatee , and are of inestimable value for stabilizing the climate . Working with our partner RARE , we advocated for the protection of 189,375 acres of the mangrove forest and , on March 21 , 2024 , President Lula signed the protection decree into law . The intact mangrove forests now safeguarded will store over 40 million metric tons of CO 2 equivalents .
Over the next three years , our projects in Brazil will lock up 6 billion tons of CO 2 and block the deforestation of 20 million acres to help prevent the breakdown of global climate cycles tied to the Amazon rainforest .
"
Creating Indigenous Territories for groups in voluntary isolation – the last people on Earth living independently from Western culture and markets — is a moral obligation . But it is also the most effective way to protect the Amazon rainforest ."
– Fábio Ribeiro , Co-founder and
Executive Coordinator Observatory of the Human Rights of Isolated and Initial Contact Indigenous Peoples ( OPI )
Our Progress above Drone view of the Amazon rainforest , Brazil | lucas ninno-shutterstock
Raised : $ 7.8M Distributed : $ 1.8M to 6 Projects
Protecting : 6,152,300 acres 1.7B mT of CO₂e 125 threatened species
25 % of all drugs used in modern Western medicine are derived from Amazonian plants
18 % of the Amazon has already been irreparably destroyed
Rainforest Trust 2023 Annual Report 17