Without adequate pro-environment and Indigenous representation, the roads and extractive development will march forward, making the Peruvian side of the forest even more vulnerable. A victory for sustainability, conservation and culture in Brazil could resonate across political borders into Peru and the other seven countries that share the Amazon, just as Paredes’ intervention in Peru stopped the tractors from ruining the forests and streams that flow into Brazil.

As leaders like the Piyakos, Paredes and others defend their forests and people, they are also targets for violence.

In the Amazon borderlands, danger threatens from multiple sides, and justice is rarely served. The killing of journalist Dom Phillips and activist Bruno Pereira in June 2022 was just the latest high-profile attack.

Fifteen years ago, the legendary Indigenous leader Edwin Chota protested the road that Paredes and her community are blocking today. He and three colleagues were later gunned down in 2014 after receiving death threats from loggers and traffickers. The killers remain free in the borderlands.

This summer, I visited Chota’s grave with over 20 of the surviving family and community members of the four slain defenders. Most of these families are afraid to return to their beautiful forests in the borderland community of Saweto, and instead remain on the outskirts of the city of Pucallpa, squeezed into dilapidated houses with intermittent electricity and clean water.

Far from their village, the children cannot build their cultural and environmental knowledge in the forest.

Five participants from Saweto were among the 120 Indigenous representatives from 13 ethnicities in the Amazon borderlands who joined our NASA workshop to discuss how they can use satellite imagery to monitor changes to the forest and climate. By integrating Indigenous ecological knowledge and geospatial analysis of the Amazon rainforest and climate, scientists and Indigenous groups can both better track the changing Amazon.

The Indigenous mothers, fathers and children told us they want training and education that will help them to protect their territory, adapt to climate change and build a sustainable future. Our NASA SERVIR project is creating mapping platforms based on satellite imagery analysis that the Indigenous communities, nongovernment organizations and government agencies can use to monitor roads, deforestation and climate change.

All of humanity is feeling the effects of climate change. Our Indigenous colleagues recognize the changes in temperature, the water cycle and the seasons already happening in their communities.

Environmental land defenders like Paredes are working to keep the world’s largest forest standing tall in the face of threats that don’t just harm the Amazon. If the Amazon rainforest becomes a savanna, there will be reverberations in the climates of South America, the Caribbean, North America and across the globe.

Everyone loses if the Indigenous defenders of the Amazon do not have the support and educational opportunities needed to be safe, prosperous and empowered to protect their rainforest home.

This article is republished from The Conversation, an independent nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts. It was written by: David S. Salisbury, University of Richmond. Like this article? subscribe to our weekly newsletter.

Read more:
The great Amazon land grab – how Brazil’s government is clearing the way for deforestation

Satellites over the Amazon capture the choking of the ‘house of God’ by the Belo Monte Dam – they can help find solutions, too

David S. Salisbury has collaborations with the communities of Sawawo, Saweto and Apiwtxa. He is co-investigator of a NASA SERVIR Amazonia Applied Science Team grant led by Dr. Stephanie Spera at the University of Richmond. He is a Board member of the Upper Amazon Conservancy, and has collaborated on research with ACCA, MAAP, and other Amazonian sources linked in the article. His book, Defending the Amazon, will be forthcoming in 2023.