All the bad things that have ever happened to a forest—wildfires, slashing and burning, deforestation, etc. have come from humans. Yet a new study—Securing Rights, Combating Climate Change—from the World Resources Institute (WRI) and the Resources and Rights Initiative (RRI) learned that the best way to protect a forest isn’t to keep people out, but to let more people in. In the Amazon rainforest, deforestation rates in community-owned areas are far lower than outside. Since 2000, annual deforestation rates in Brazil have been 7 per cent outside indigenous territories, but only 0.6 per cent inside. The report estimates that indigenous territories in the Brazilian Amazon could prevent the emission of 12 billion tons of CO2 between now and 2050. Only 1/8 of the world’s forests are controlled by communities, the vast majority are controlled by governments who lease out logging and mining contracts to private corporations.
Rainforests are best protected by local communities
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