Large Scale Forest Conservation with an Indigenous People in the Highly Threatened Southeastern Amazon of : the

Barbara Zimmerman1, Stephen Schwartzman1, Adriano Jerozolimski1, Junio Esllei1, Edson Santini1, Sonia Hugh²

1 International Conservation Fund of Canada (and Environmental Defense Fund), 44 Queen Street #3, Chester, Nova Scotia, Canada B0J 1J0; [email protected] 1 Environmental Defense Fund, 1875 Connecticut Ave NW, Ste 600 Washington, DC 20009; [email protected] 1Associação Floresta Protegida, Rua Lateral #38, Setor JK, Tucumã, Para, Brazil 68385-000; [email protected] 1Instituto Kabu, Novo Progresso, Para, Brazil; [email protected] 2Instituto Raoni, Colider, , Brazil; [email protected] 2Griffith University, Academic Building 1 (G01), Gold Coast, Queensland, 4222; [email protected]

Keywords: Amazon, Xingu, indigenous territory, primary tropical forest, forest conservation, sustainable development

Synopsis: We examine the struggle of the Kayapo indigenous people of the highly threatened south eastern Amazon of Brazil to protect their constitutional land rights 40 years after the frontier of settlement and resource extraction reached their territories. We explore the conditions that enable and threaten the Kayapo’s continued success in thwarting deforestation and identify strategies for continued protection. We show that alliances of the Kayapo with conservation NGOs have enabled protection of over nine million hectares of their contiguous ratified territories. Key to success has been the development of resource management and territorial surveillance in combination with sustainably generated and equitably distributed income for Kayapo communities.

Abstract We examine the struggle of the Kayapo indigenous people to protect their constitutional rights over the 40 years since the frontier of settlement and resource extraction exploded around their territories in the highly threatened southeastern Amazon of Brazil. We explore conditions that enable and threaten the Kayapo’s continued success in thwarting deforestation and we identify strategies for continued protection. We show that 21st century alliances of the Kayapo with conservation NGOs have enabled protection of over nine million hectares of their contiguous ratified territories. Satellite analysis of Kayapo territory between 2001 and 2019 reveals significant correlation between the location of deforestation hotspots and the presence/absence of NGO investment with Kayapo communities. Key to success has been the development of scalable resource management and income generation activities with Kayapo communities, and

strengthening of Kayapo territorial surveillance and control that is essential in the absence of government enforcement of indigenous land rights. Conservation NGOs enabled Kayapo communities to set up their own indigenous NGOs that are critical to build capacity for managing territories sustainably. It is philanthropic investment into the Kayapo over the past two decades that has made the difference between protection and rampant invasion and degradation of Kayapo territories.

1. Introduction and Background

The arises in the woodland-savanna and transitional semi-deciduous forest of northern Mato Grosso and flows north through high moist forest of Pará for 2,700 km to empty in the Amazon. A clear water river, it drains a landscape of ancient crystalline Precambrian shield. The Xingu basin covers 51 million hectares, of which ~20 million ha is officially recognized indigenous land, while another 8 million ha is protected areas (Campanili 2012)

The 280,000 km² of indigenous lands and protected areas of the Xingu river basin form a continuous forest corridor larger than the United Kingdom, inhabited by 25 indigenous peoples and traditional riverine families. Immersed in the one of the world’s most intense deforestation zones in Pará and Mato Grosso states, the Xingu indigenous lands and protected areas network demonstrate how Brazilian government policy had been working to reduce Amazon deforestation. This progress is regressing due to infrastructure projects, mines, intensifying illegal logging and gold-mining, worsening lack of governance, emerging climate change impacts and government proposals to weaken indigenous land rights. This despite the global significance of these natural ecosystems for climate change mitigation, biodiversity conservation and the preservation of traditional cultures.

The Xingu basin has been continuously occupied over at least the last 1200-1500 years (Balee 1989, Heckenberger et al. 2008). Kayapo fleeing colonists, gold miners, rubber tappers and missionaries occupied the still relatively isolated middle Xingu in the first half of the 19th century. Intensive occupation of the basin only began in the 1970s, with the construction of highways through the basin and the arrival of colonists from southern Brazil. The middle and upper Xingu region has undergone the typical “boom and bust” cycle of frontier occupation and has become a major cattle and soy-producing region such that today, some one million people live in 35 counties throughout the basin (Campanili 2012, Rodrigues et al. 2009).

The official recognition of the Xingu Indigenous Lands and Protected Areas from the late 1940s to 2008, is a product of regional conflicts over land and natural resources and the strategies of indigenous and local communities to both resist and accommodate successive frontiers. The 1988 Constitution recognized indigenous groups’ right to maintain traditional cultures permanently, granting them permanent and exclusive usufruct rights over their traditional lands (Republica Federativa do Brasil 1988, Santilli 1991) and became the basis for large-scale demarcation of indigenous territories. In numerous local struggles and in the forum of national law and policy, indigenous peoples successfully gained recognition of their rights to their traditional lands and now control over 20% of the Amazon.

From the late 1980s the relations between Xingu indigenous groups and the national society changed radically. Mato Grosso and southern Para rapidly became major timber, soy and cattle producing regions, surrounding indigenous territories with agriculture, ranches, roads and towns (Mertens et al. 2004). Regional cities became accessible. Up until this time, FUNAI, the federal government Indian Agency mandated to uphold indigenous rights, had mediated and largely controlled all interactions with the outside world. But with shrinking budgets and diminished capacity, FUNAI decentralized services and some indigenous groups developed independent relations with outsiders. Pressure from outsiders on the natural resources of indigenous territories increased dramatically, as did internal demand for industrialized goods and technology. With increased dependence on manufactured goods and health care, semi-nomadic groups like the Kayapo became sedentary.

The reality faced by indigenous peoples of the Xingu is that enforcement of protected areas and indigenous territories by government authorities went from inadequate (Ferreira et al. 2014) to non-existent in 2019. Although at a much lower rate than in surrounding lands, deforestation, forest degradation and invasion of Xingu protected areas and indigenous lands by loggers, goldminers and land grabbers has been on the upswing over the past decade (Azevedo-Ramos and Moutinho 2018, Venacio et al. 2018)

2. Conservation Significance of Kayapo Territories

Much of the 20 million hectares of the Xingu basin indigenous territories is covered in near intact Amazon primary forest: part of the world’s most biodiverse terrestrial ecosystem that is large enough to maintain a full complement of floral and faunal species diversity and rainfall regimes (Benchimol and Peres 2015, Ewers et al. 2017, Gibson et al. 2011, Jones et al. 2019, Laurance et al. 2006, Michalski et al. 2007).

The 10,600,000ha block of ratified indigenous territory of the Kayapo is of particular conservation value because of its vast size and interdigitation of both closed-canopy Amazonian forest and central Brazilian savanna or cerrado. Of critical conservation significance, Kayapo territory is likely large enough to protect regeneration processes of primary forest tree species (ter Steege et al. 2015). Most primary forest tree species occur locally at very low densities but maintain large absolute populations sizes over large areas (Pitman et al. 1999) and most tree species depend on co-evolved animal vectors for pollination and seed dispersal across large inter-individual distances. Small areas do not contain animal vector populations sufficient for regeneration of many forest tree species over the long term (Ewers et al. 2017, Laurance et al. 2006, ter Steege et al 2015). The dauntingly intricate web of interdependence among Amazonian species requires large areas to function and persist.

Surveys have shown that much of Kayapo territory remains largely undisturbed as evidenced by population densities of some of the more vulnerable vertebrate species found in Amazonian forests. Large-bodied game species, which are preferred by local peoples throughout the Amazon, are abundant within the hunting range of Kayapo communities. The relatively high densities of game animals (that also include large cracid birds, several monkey species, lowland tapir, giant armadillo and white-lipped peccary) indicate an ecosystem that is little impacted by hunting because non-hunted areas predominate. Indeed, no other large forest reserve in southeastern Amazonia safeguards a full complement of disturbance-sensitive wildlife and the entire vegetation transition from open savanna (cerrado) to close-canopy forests (Zimmerman et al. 2001).

Kayapo lands and the contiguous 2.8 million-ha Xingu Indigenous Park to the south protect more than four hundred kilometers of the Xingu river from degradation by deforestation, pollution and over-fishing. Preliminary surveys indicate that as many as 1,500 fish species inhabit the Xingu River. Fish are the most important source of protein for local people of the Xingu. Sixteen species of fish are considered endemic to the Xingu as they have only been collected from this watershed (Perez 2015).

Consolidation of the Xingu Corridor is the only remaining possibility for conserving the last large, intact forest of the southeastern Amazon, and maintaining the connectivity of this ecoregion with the western Amazon. Kayapo lands play a particularly important role in the Xingu corridor because of their multi-landscape size under the control of a single ethnic group that is on its way to acquiring the skills needed for protected areas management. In addition to biodiversity conservation, the Xingu corridor contributes substantially to maintaining rainfall regimes and carbon stocks of global importance (Gibson et al. 2011, Sakschewski et al. 2016, Soares-Filho et al. 2010, Walker et al. 2014, Leite-Filho et al. 2019).

3. Warrior tradition and land gain: The Kayapo

Most Kayapo groups were first contacted in the 1950s and 1960s and inhabited widely dispersed settlements. Sub-groups following different chiefs were subject to ongoing internal feuds and regularly raided regional Brazilian settlements for trade goods, particularly firearms, and captives (Verswijver 1992). While many sub-groups were decimated by epidemics, “contact” with the surrounding society was shaped by Kayapo strategies to access outsiders’ goods for their own ends (Gordon 2003, Verswijver 1992). Their pro-active warrior attitude combined with well developed political and social organization served the Kayapo well to secure legal recognition of their territory and defend it from invasions during the 1980s and 1990s.

Through the 1980s and 1990s the Kayapo repeatedly staged highly visible demonstrations, blocked roads, took hostages and expelled gold-miners and ranchers from their territory in the process of winning official recognition of their land rights (Turner 2000). The result of this aggression was official ratification and demarcation of a block of five contiguous indigenous territories (TI) of the Kayapo that span 10,598,616 hectares (~106,000 km2): TI Kayapo, TI Bau, TI Mekranoti, TI Badjonkore and TI Capoto/Jarina. At the same time, nearly all Kayapo chiefs negotiated deals with illegal mahogany loggers and in a few cases in the east, with gold miners. In the early 2000’s, with mahogany stocks in decline and ramped up NGO investment in conservation and development programs, most, but not all, Kayapo ceased selling logging concessions in their territory. Today some 10,000 Kayapo live in more than 80 communities and small family settlements.

4. Alliance with Conservation NGOs

In the struggle to protect their lands, the objectives of Amazonian indigenous peoples coincide with a conservation mission of preserving biodiversity and natural ecosystems. Indigenous Amazonians repeatedly assert a fundamental interdependence between cultural identity and territory. Indigenous “traditional knowledge” of forest ecology and the grounding of culture and identity in territory represent a distinctly different world view from that of Western culture and science. While Western science concerns itself with the natural world ruled by material forces and not the cultural realm of values, conventions and concepts, Amazonian indigenous societies include animals, plants, and other natural phenomena in the domain of culture and society (Viveiros de Castro 1998, Descola 1994, West 2005). Indigenous resource knowledge arises from mutual recognition, active communication and exchanges amongst people, animals, plants, geographic features, spirits, and the dead conceived as actors in the same socio-cosmological networks. Indeed, sustainability of indigenous territories cannot be conceived or measured in purely ecological or economic terms; rather there is also a question of the viability and vitality of cultures (Schwartzman et al. 2013). The Kayapo fight to protect their culture, their livelihoods and very existence. Their goal overlaps with the conservation community in the need to protect what remains of the world’s richest terrestrial ecosystem.

In 1992, at the request of leaders of the Kayapo village of A’Ukre, the international conservation NGO Conservation International (CI) enabled the founding of a biological research station as an income alternative to mahogany logging. The community declared 10,000 ha off-limits to hunting and logging in exchange for fees from researchers and training of Kayapo assistants, with benefits distributed equitably in the community – unlike mahogany payments which were controlled by chiefs. The research station was the Kayapo’s first exposure to a subculture of outside society that places high value on traditional indigenous knowledge, culture and ecosystem protection services and was not seeking exploitation for financial gain. Researchers and NGO personnel offered an alternative development vision to the community of A’Ukre that was based on sustainable resource management and forest conservation (Zimmerman et al. 2001)

The success of the research station to benefit the community equitably while conserving a highly valuable undisturbed population of mahogany trees (Swietenia macrophylla) that were under intense pressure to log led CI to convene a series of meetings over a six-year period with Kayapo leaders from the entire block of Kayapo territory. The purpose was to: i) present and discuss the idea of a Kayapo-conservation NGO alliance with the objective of strengthening Kayapo capacity for sustainable resource management, economic autonomy and territorial control, and; ii) provide opportunity for Kayapo leaders to reinforce traditional bonds and unite under a single vision for the future. By 2006, the majority of Kayapo leaders chose to ally with the NGOs and reject illegal activity and predatory resource exploitation on their land.

With consensus reached on the goal of a Kayapo-NGO alliance, CI helped the Kayapo to establish their own local NGOs: Instituto Raoni (IR) formed in 2001 and based in , Mato Grosso to represent the south-western Kayapo; the Associação Floresta Protegida (Protected Forest Association) (AFP) formed in 2002 and based in Tucuma, Para, to represent the north-eastern Kayapo, and Instituto Kabu (IK) formed in 2008 and based in Novo Progresso, Para, to represent the northwestern Kayapo. No local NGO was set up to represent the southeastern Kayapo because by the time CI arrived on the scene, the mid- to south-eastern Kayapo centred at their main community of Gorotire had fallen firmly into the clutches of the illegal sector. The Gorotire Kayapo were the first to face the main onslaught of the frontier during the 1980s. After valiant and successful land battles but facing hordes of goldminers, the Gorotire Kayapo were drawn into illegal resource extraction on their land in collusion with local frontier society.

Kayapo NGOs have fought hard to resist frontier pressure on their land and resources. As the frontier of roads, ranching and towns consolidated around them over the past three decades, the Kayapo gained much greater access to towns and manufactured goods. The young generation of Kayapo especially seeks technology and education. Today, Kayapo face a choice between unsustainable, illegal but in the short term high-value activities, and lower-value conservation- based enterprises that take longer to develop but are sustainable and legal. Kayapo NGOs have been developing a successful portfolio of non-timber forest product and service enterprises with their communities that fit with Kayapo culture and that generate equitably distributed benefits:

• Brazil nut: In 2019 32 communities participated in the harvest and sale of Brazil nut to the domestic food industry for a favorable price brokered by their NGOs. Kayapo NGOs subsidize harvest and transportation costs. Brazil nut sales now generate over US$350,000 per year for community members. • Cumaru nut (tonka bean). As with Brazil nut, cumaru is a fruit produced by a primary forest tree that is harvested by the Kayapo in natural forest after falling to the ground. The UK cosmetics company Lush buys 100% of the Kayapo cumaru harvest. Cumaru sales now generate over US$45,000 per year for Kayapo harvesters of 24 communities. • International field course: the Pinkaiti field station of the community of A’Ukre hosts two international university field courses every summer in partnership with Brazilian universities. This generates about US$25,000 per year for this community. • Catch-and-release sportfishing; the northeastern Kayapo NGO AFP partners with sport fishing company “Untamed Angling” to host a catch-and-release sport fishing enterprise based out of Kendjam village on the Iriri river. This enterprise generated US$50,000 in 2019 for the two communities on the Iriri river. The AFP and Untamed Angling are opening a second sport fishing and ecotourism enterprise on the Xingu river that will serve six communities located there. • Handicrafts; the sale of handicrafts including bead jewelry and paintings generated over US$40,000 for Kayapo communities in 2019.

Sustainable income alternatives are now generating close to half a million dollars per year for Kayapo communities of the NGO alliance. Although reliable markets for these non-timber products and services exist, these enterprises are not yet 100% financially sustainable and require business management and administration subsidy.

The local Kayapo NGOs organize border surveillance. Guard posts established at key entry points have proven effective at blocking invasions by loggers, goldminers and ranchers. Government enforcement of Kayapo indigenous land rights ended in 2019 making the Kayapo surveillance program even more crucial for territorial protection.

The criterion for a Kayapo community to receive philanthropic investment is no involvement in illegal activity. The monetary value of payments from loggers and gold-miners to Kayapo individuals is higher in the short term than from conservation enterprises and requires no Kayapo labor. However, in addition to being unsustainable and leading inevitably to severe cultural and environmental degradation as well as territorial loss, illicit activities do not fulfill egalitarian values of Kayapo society. Loggers and goldminers negotiate concessions on Kayapo land with chiefs and generally do not distribute payments among community members; whereas NGO supported non-timber forest product enterprises and border guard posts generate equal opportunity work and equitably distributed benefits, as is compatible with Kayapo culture. Communities will not support individuals proposing to take them down an illicit unsustainable path when sustainable options that materially benefit all are available.

5. Hotspot analysis demonstrates success of Kayapo NGO alliance

The overarching goal of the Kayapo-conservation NGO alliance is to empower the Kayapo to defend their constitutional rights, protect their ecologically intact territories and develop sustainable economic autonomy within the lawless frontier zone of the southeastern Amazon. Kayapo NGOs and their partners have worked over almost two decades to grow and diversify a portfolio of sustainable conservation-based enterprise, generate equitably distributed benefits, and strengthen territorial monitoring and surveillance over a vast roadless area demarcated by some 2,000 km of border.

Other factors besides money figure in Kayapo development decisions. Perhaps most highly of all, the Kayapo value protecting their constitutional right to exclusive occupation and control over their territory; their concern is the survival of their culture and descendants. Once they gain a foothold, loggers and goldminers quickly overwhelm Kayapo traditional governance systems and take control of an area. The eastern Kayapo were drawn into the illicit frontier economy in the 1980s and 1990s having had no experience with these activities and no support to develop economic alternatives or to foresee the inevitable and irreversibly destructive consequences of predatory logging and goldmining. Immersed in a region where lawlessness and corruption prevail, they have lost control over roughly 1.2 million hectares of their territory in the east (Figure 1) which is now a no-man’s land dominated by goldminers, loggers and other illegal actors. The Kayapo living in these eastern communities depend on these actors to provide the manufactured goods they have come to need. Most rivers in this area are choked with mud and polluted by mercury used in goldmining. Forest is degraded by logging which removes most of the big, old growth primary forest trees so pivotal to the overall ecology of this biome. This opens these once resilient forests to fire. Traditional culture breaks down in lockstep with environmental degradation and the introduction by loggers and miners of alcohol, drugs and prostitution.

The intact environmental and social conditions of NGO-allied Kayapo territory contrast starkly with the breakdown in the east. As of 2019, the total Kayapo population numbers almost 10,000 people living in 82 communities and small family settlements located throughout their 10.6 million-hectare block of territory (Figure 1). Of this land, 89 percent, or 9,400,000 ha, is controlled by 61% of the Kayapo population who live in 48 communities and small settlements that have allied with the NGOs to pursue sustainable economic autonomy and territorial control (Figure 1). Ninety percent of the approximately 4,000 Kayapo living in 34 communities and small family settlements involved with the illicit frontier economy reside in the 1,200,000- hectare band of eastern territory that fell to the frontier of predatory resource extraction before the arrival of NGOs (Figure 1) or before NGO programs were developed enough to help the Kayapo bar the intense wave of illegal activity resurgent in the region after 2010.

Deforestation Hot Spots Analysis We analysed the Kayapo territory for loss events using Hansen et al.’s (2013) global forest change 2000-2018 imagery from the Google Earth Engine data catalog and GLAD alert imagery (Hansen 2016) for 2019. Loss events were extracted and tallied for each year within the time series for the Kayapo territory and the respective east and west boundaries. Loss events found within 5km of a village or in naturally occurring non-forest landscapes (i.e. cerrado/savanna, rock outcrops) were omitted.

An optimized hot spot analysis was performed using ArcGIS® Desktop (ESRI 2018). The optimized hot spot tool uses the Getis-Ord Gi statistic (Getis and Ord, 1992; Ord and Getis, 1995) to create a map of statistically significant hot (areas of higher incidence) and cold (areas of low incidence) spots given the event points. The focus is on presence or absence rather than measured attributes associated with each point. The hot spot analysis was performed for all of the loss events within the Kayapo territory from 2001 to 2019.

Hot Spot Analysis results From space we observe significant correlation between the location of deforestation hotspots and the presence/absence of NGO investment with Kayapo communities (Figures 1, 2, 3). The absolute number of loss events are greater for the western zone for most years. However, the western zone is 9,423,000 ha, approximately 8 times the area of the eastern zone (1,200,000 ha). When this is taken into account looking at the loss events per hectare, we see that the eastern zone has much greater densities of loss events per hectare (Figure 3).

6. Discussion

Indigenous territories are known to have formed effective barriers to frontier expansion and deforestation (Nelson and Chomitz 2009, Nepstad et al. 2006, Nolte et al. 2013, Pffaf and Robalino 2013,). Deforestation in the Xingu Basin is heavily concentrated outside of the indigenous lands and protected areas. Of the ~10 million ha deforested in the basin through 2010, 91% was outside of protected areas, 3% was in indigenous lands, 1.4% in Federal protected areas and 4% in state protected areas (Campanili 2009). However, the Xingu basin spans the most high-deforestation region of the Amazon frontier and pressure on indigenous territories and protected areas has ramped up dramatically over the past decade. There was a 54% increase in overall deforestation in the Xingu basin during the first two months of 2019 compared with the same period in 2018 (Siradx 2019a). The number of fire hotspots in the Xingu basin detected between July and August 2019 increased 271% from the same period in 2018 with deforestation in indigenous territories increasing 158% during the summer of 2019 compared to 2018 (Siradx 2019b). Intense activity by illegal loggers and goldminers combined with lack of law enforcement by government authorities has led to significant losses along the eastern band of Kayapo territory (Figure 1). Goldmining and logging continue to expand in the non-NGO represented areas of eastern Kayapo territory (Figures 1, 2, 3). Beginning in about 2015, over 1,500 hectares were being lost annually to goldminers in eastern Kayapo territory.

The relative lack of deforestation and degradation throughout more than 9 million hectares of Kayapo territory to the west compared to the heavily degraded 1.2 million-hectare eastern band of Kayapo territory can be explained by philanthropic investment into Kayapo empowerment for territorial control. Where Kayapo communities receive help to monitor and control their territory, develop equitable and sustainable sources of income and gain insight into threats, their borders largely hold and forest remains largely intact. Kayapo territory that receives no conservation and development investment is being heavily invaded by gold-mining and fire in forest degraded by logging (Figures 1,2,3). A low density of hot spot alerts overlaps almost exactly with Kayapo territory that is represented by and receives program support from Kayapo indigenous NGOs that in turn are supported by international conservation NGOs (Figures 1,2,3). This pattern cannot be explained by cultural differences as the eastern and western Kayapo belong to the same ethnic group whom share the same history (Verswijver 1998); nor can it be explained by distribution of gold and timber which is found throughout Kayapo territory. Also, access and exposure to the frontier is similar across all Kayapo territory: there is nowhere in Kayapo territory that loggers and goldminers cannot reach.

Governance in the southeastern Amazon region has always been weak. After goldmining resurged in the eastern region of Kayapo territory in about 2013, the federal Ministry of Environment (IBAMA) performed helicopter supported enforcement operations designed to deter goldmining and logging. Between 2015 and 2018 IBAMA executed 12 raids on illegal goldmining and logging afflicting Kayapo territory. Although several millions of dollars of illegal heavy equipment was destroyed and dozens were arrested, an under resourced IBAMA was unable to apply operations with enough frequency to shut down illegal activity completely. Nevertheless, there was a deterrence effect and goldminers and loggers were hesitant to enter new areas.

In 2019, with government enforcement operations halted, loggers and goldminers became emboldened to enter Kayapo land. The three Kayapo NGOs which together are responsible for protecting over 9 million hectares of Kayapo territory have responded with a ramped up territorial surveillance and more border guard posts. This territorial surveillance program depends in large part on international philanthropy.

7. Conclusion

Kayapo territories are a critical source of ecosystem services – biodiversity conservation, carbon storage, watershed protection and, maintenance of rainfall regimes. As with other indigenous peoples of the Xingu region, the Kayapo clearly and consistently affirm that their territory, cultural identity and traditional knowledge are mutually interdependent. Self-reflexive understanding and valuing of traditional culture and knowledge as distinct from Western values and science, including dialogue between Western science and traditional knowledge, are key conditions for the sustainability of these territories.

Creation of protected natural reserves and legal recognition of indigenous territories has largely formed a barrier to deforestation until now; but illegal logging and goldmining remain pervasive threats and deforestation rates are intensifying. NGO investment has been effective in enabling the Kayapo to maintain control over almost 90% of their vast territory, mostly by supporting their local indigenous institutions (NGOs) to develop sustainable enterprises and manage and control their territories. Economic alternatives to logging and goldmining have clearly had an impact but need to develop further in order to fully meet community demand for income and market access. Kayapo NGOs have responded to intensifying threats by ramping up their territorial surveillance programs and establishing border guard posts that have proven effective for controlling access to their territory. These projects are scalable but will require continued philanthropic investment to grow as well as continued capacity building for community members to effectively manage local enterprises. In essence, outside support for Kayapo NGOs and their programs can be viewed as payment for ecosystem services. The Kayapo have demonstrated that partnerships between indigenous people of the Amazon and conservation organizations can achieve protection of primary forest and concomitant empowerment of indigenous rights.

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Figure1: The block of five contiguous Kayapo indigenous territories (TI) from space (TI Kayapo, TI Bau, TI Mekragnoti, TI Capoto/Jarina, TI Badjonkore). The light colored non-forest in Kayapo territory denotes naturally occurring savanna-woodland on plateaus and outcrops of Brazilian shield rock. The locations of villages with more than 50 people are shown. Red outlines 9.4 million hectares of Kayapo territory that is represented by a local Kayapo NGO and receives outside conservation and development investment. Blue outlines 1.2 million hectares of Kayapo territory that receives no NGO investment. Alerts indicate forest cover loss. Figure 2. Hot spot analysis of all forest cover loss events across Kayapo territory from 2001 to 2019. The map shows statistically significant areas of higher hot spot incidence (in red) given the event points. Hot spots indicate deforestation events Figure 3. Forest loss event densities for the east and west sectors of Kayapo territory. The blue bars are the eastern (no NGO investment) Kayapo territory loss events per hectare per year. The red bars are the western (NGO investment) Kayapo territory loss events per hectare per year.