Inibição da perda de cobertura vegetal natural nas Terras Indígenas da Amazônia Legal Brasileira

Abstract

The Brazilian Amazon contains the world’s largest tract of tropical forest, about one quarter of which is within demarcated indigenous territories. Formal governmental recognition of these traditional territories is often a critical deterrent to deforestation, but the relative conservation performance of Indigenous Lands (ILs) under different legal categories and geographic contexts remains poorly understood. We used 30-m resolution Landsat satellite imagery to quantitatively assess the land cover status and annual rates of natural vegetation loss for 381 indigenous territories between 1985 and 2017. Using a comprehensive set of environmental and socio-economic covariates and a mixed-modelling approach, we found that all stages of formal IL recognition consistently inhibits natural vegetation loss throughout the Brazilian Amazon compared to adjacent unprotected areas. Formal Demarcation and distance from roads were the main proximate drivers of avoided natural vegetation loss inside ILs. Forest loss associated with road building is substantially curbed by ILs, showing the importance of frontier expansion when assessing indigenous reserve performance in counteracting natural vegetation loss. Because forest and savannah losses associated with agribusiness frontiers and infrastructure projects are likely to intensify, the importance of ecosystem services provided by ILs is expected to grow across the Brazilian Amazon. Cultural traits or heavily settled ILs have no impact on their effectiveness in precluding natural vegetation loss. Given widespread encroachment of agribusiness, formal recognition of indigenous territories is a key factor in decelerating primary habitat conversion across the Amazon.