A study on the Ecuadorian Amazon shows that forests managed by indigenous communities are more resilient than those protected by the government.
The health of the Amazon rainforest in Ecuador is better in territories managed by indigenous peoples than in areas protected by government institutions. The conclusion comes from a study published in the scientific journal Biological Conservation, which used satellite imagery to analyse vegetation trends and deforestation over the past decade, comparing government-protected areas, those managed by local communities under formal conservation agreements, and indigenous territories with no formal conservation agreements.
The fact that forests under government management show the worst environmental performance is evidence of the importance of deepening our understanding of the role of long-term indigenous land management practices, the researchers emphasise.
Ecuador is a green lung of Latin America and, by extension, of the world. 51.2 per cent of the country is covered by native forests, and 74 per cent of these are located in the Amazon rainforest. As highlighted by UNDP, the United Nations Development Programme, the Amazonian forest area covers a total of 120,000 square kilometres, is home to 8 per cent of all animal species, 10 per cent of the planet's flora, and 14 indigenous groups who depend on the forests for their survival.
From the 1990s onwards, Ecuador saw its deforestation rate rise sharply due to the expansion of agricultural activity, an increase in wildfires driven in part by the effects of climate change, and the growth of extractive industries. In the last decade of the twentieth century, the country lost around 130,000 hectares of forest per year, and the trend continued into the new millennium, with a deforestation rate exceeding 10 per cent placing it second only to Brazil on the continent.
This dire situation increased pressure from civil society organisations on political institutions, which took steps to reverse course. It took considerable time before results became visible, and by 2017 the deforestation rate had been cut in half compared to twenty years earlier, with 64,000 hectares of forest lost, while in subsequent years the trend continued to improve — without, however, the emergency being fully resolved.
Among the measures taken by Ecuador's political authorities to limit deforestation was the creation of the National System of Protected Areas (Snap), stretches of territory corresponding to roughly two-thirds of the national Amazon forest where all extractive activities have been banned. Alongside this system, another mechanism was subsequently established: Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES), a legal agreement between the government and local communities that offers financial incentives for not commercially exploiting the forest. A final portion of forest, meanwhile, has remained outside any formal conservation agreement and has continued to rely on the ancestral practices of land management carried out by indigenous communities.
A group of researchers analysed the environmental performance of forests subject to these three different protection regimes in order to understand which of them works best. To do so, they examined satellite images from the past decade to assess long-term changes in vegetation, sudden changes in forest conditions caused by disturbances linked to new human settlements, roads and agricultural fields, and, finally, the response in terms of forest productivity to the drought caused by the El Niño phenomenon in 2015–2016.
The study concluded that territories managed by local communities perform better than those under government protection, particularly with regard to resilience to phenomena such as drought. Territories excluded from any type of agreement and managed by indigenous peoples through ancestral practices show forest performance equal to that of government-protected areas in the short to medium term, and better in the long term, especially when it comes to vegetation.
"If we want forests to continue providing clean water, regulating the climate, preserving biodiversity and offering economic opportunities for future generations, we need to understand which management approaches actually work on the ground," the researchers stressed. And the answer points in the direction of indigenous peoples and local communities, whose models and practices must be studied and analysed in depth in order to improve what is not working in government forest management practices within protected areas.