How We Operate | Socio-environmental Institute

how we act

ISA currently has six priority themes for our political action. From them, we closely monitor public policy proposals and decision-making, whether by the Legislative, Executive or Judiciary, which may directly impact indigenous peoples, traditional populations, their territories and collective rights.

In addition, the organization seeks to formulate and present alternatives to public policies that result in increased protection of the environment and the guarantee of the rights of the populations that live and preserve their territories.

We monitor Indigenous Lands and Conservation Units throughout the country, following the processes of demarcation and creation of protected areas and the threats that hang over them, such as deforestation, infrastructure works, fires, mining, mining and land theft (the so-called "grilagem "), especially in the Legal Amazon, providing information to society and qualifying the public debate.

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Indigenous People

Traditional Communities

Politics and Law

Forest Economy

Threats and Pressures

Solutions

Indigenous People

“The meeting between Indians and whites can only take place in terms of a necessary alliance between equally different partners, so that together we can move the perpetual imbalance of the world a little further forward, thus postponing its end.”

Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, anthropologist, one of the founders of ISA

The theme "Indigenous Peoples" is at the origin of the existence of the Instituto Socioambiental. There are at least four decades of commitment and work with the subject, producing information for Brazilian society to know its native peoples better. Since its founding in 1994, ISA has continued the work of the Ecumenical Center for Documentation and Information (Cedi), which had begun in 1980 and which, in turn, dates back to the early 1970s, when the then dictatorship government The military launched the National Integration Plan, with a strong component of infrastructure works in the Amazon, a region that was then described by official discourse as a "demographic void".

Through the reports collected, data produced and research undertaken by a network of collaborators spread across the different regions of the country, Cedi helped to overturn this thesis. By publicizing the information collected by this social network from the time of the telex, Cedi has definitively placed indigenous peoples and their lands on the map of Brazil. Its members also actively participated in the movement to include indigenous rights in the 1988 Constitution and, together with members of the Núcleo de Direitos Indígenas (NDI) and environmental activists, founded the ISA in 1994.

Since then, expanding its network of collaborators throughout the country, ISA has consolidated itself as a national and international reference in the production, analysis and dissemination of qualified information on indigenous peoples in Brazil. The website "Indigenous Peoples in Brazil", launched in 1997, is the largest published encyclopedia on indigenous ethnicities in Brazil, with their languages, ways of life, artistic expressions, etc. The site is one of the main references on the subject for researchers, journalists, students and academics.

The action today is transversal to the territories where we operate, especially in the Xingu Basin, in Mato Grosso and Pará, and the Rio Negro Basin, in Amazonas and Roraima, and also involves indigenous peoples from all over Brazil, through the permanent update of the website. and its more than 200 entries, inclusion of new texts on newly contacted emerging and indigenous ethnic groups, in addition to monitoring and journalistic coverage of situations of violence and loss of rights against these populations. The theme "Indigenous Peoples" is still addressed on the website "Mirim GDP", aimed at children and young people.

The monitoring of Indigenous Lands is also a central axis of our work on the subject, and goes back to the systematization of data and dissemination of information started by Cedi in 1986, and takes place through the production of printed books and thematic maps on pressures and threats , such as deforestation, mining, mining, infrastructure works, among others, in addition to the website "Indigenous Lands in Brazil".

Check out the content produced on this topic:

Image	In encyclopedia format, it is considered the main reference on the subject in the country and in the world.
Image	The most complete source of information on the subject in the country
Image	Special version of the PIB Encyclopedia for early childhood education;
Image	Panel of territorial consolidation indicators for Indigenous Lands

Traditional Communities

"Each traditional people has an identity, a history, a shared memory and a territory"

Neide Esterci, anthropologist, former president of ISA

Traditional Communities are, according to the National Policy for the Sustainable Development of Traditional Peoples and Communities, “culturally differentiated groups that recognize themselves as such, that have their own forms of social organization, that occupy and use territories and natural resources as a condition for its cultural, social, religious, ancestral and economic reproduction, using knowledge, innovations and practices generated and transmitted by tradition”. Thus, quilombolas, rubber tappers, riverside dwellers, caiçaras, gypsies, beradeiros, babassu coconut breakers, geraizeiros, sertanejos, among others, can be considered Traditional Communities. All these peoples and communities are a fundamental part of the enormous plurality and sociocultural diversity of Brazilian society.

ISA has been working with Traditional Communities in the Xingu region, in Pará and Mato Grosso, and in the Ribeira Valley, since the late 1990s. In Ribeira, we work in partnership with local quilombola associations, city halls and civil society organizations, aiming to the implementation of sustainable development projects, income generation, environmental conservation and improvement of the quality of life of traditional communities in the region. It is worth mentioning our support for the productive activities of the Cooperativa dos Agricultores Quilombola do Vale do Ribeira (Cooperquivale), which have contributed to the strengthening and enhancement of the Traditional Quilombola Agricultural System. ISA has also supported the Forum of Traditional Peoples and Communities of Vale do Ribeira, which defends the rights of communities in the region and resists pressure and threats to these territories.

In Xingu, we work with riverside communities, also known as borderers, who live in the Terra do Meio region, in Altamira, Pará. Bordering families and communities are descendants of rubber tappers and indigenous people and their way of life is based on a deep knowledge of the forest and rivers they inhabit. Our lines of action include structuring income alternatives based on extractivism, supporting community organization and increasing the role of local associations, and implementing sustainable development projects. ISA also works together with riverside associations and families, in the development of collaborative research on the local way of life, and promotes articulation between riverside dwellers and indigenous peoples to produce and market the traditional forest products of these peoples, on fair bases, and that guarantee quality. of life for families, continuity of cultures and the way of being of the border and indigenous people.

At the national level, ISA also supports the struggle of traditional communities to defend their rights - we are proud of our partnership with the National Coordination for the Articulation of Quilombos, Conaq - through public mobilizations and political interventions in the Executive, Legislative and Judiciary branches. .

Politics and Law

Socio-environmental Brazil: development, yes. Anyway, no.

One of ISA's mottos in its foundation

Politics is the means of exercising citizenship to guarantee rights. In this field, ISA aims to contribute to making Brazil a fairer and more sustainable country, based on legal, institutional and public policy frameworks that reflect the challenges posed to Brazilian society, including indigenous peoples and traditional communities, whose role in maintaining of our socio-environmental heritage is fundamental. With our work in Politics and Law, we bring to the public debate and to the formulation of norms and policies the experiences developed by and with our partners, as well as the knowledge accumulated by ISA itself on socio-environmental issues.

Working on the topic of Politics and Law has been one of the pillars of ISA's work since its creation. The Nucleus of Indigenous Rights (NDI), an organization that preceded and integrated the foundation of ISA, was a reference in Brazilian civil society in the 80s and 90s, working together with the powers of the Republic for the implementation of indigenous constitutional rights, conquered in the Constitution of 1988. The work of the Indigenous Peoples Program of the Ecumenical Document and Information Center (Cedi), another institution that participated in the creation of the ISA, has also always focused on guaranteeing the rights of Indigenous Peoples.

Since its founding in 1994, ISA has expanded its activities to other socio-environmental issues, having actively participated in debates on the formulation of laws and policies that are fundamental to the sustainable development of the country. This work requires constant inter-institutional articulation within the scope of civil society, social movements and other sectors, which we do through the participation of our lawyers, researchers and activists in collectives, forums and networks.

The mission of the ISA team that works directly with the theme Politics and Law values the political and legislative initiatives of a propositional nature, qualifying the public debate and presenting solutions to the challenges on the agenda, but without giving up the resources of obstruction and the strategies of denunciation. and political resistance against any threat of regression.

The ISA team brings together multidisciplinary profiles and operates in direct articulation with the other teams of the organization, always in tune with the demands and proposals of civil society for the socio-environmental agenda and attentive to the performance of political actors and decision makers. In addition, we act inspired by the social movement that mobilizes thousands of hearts and minds across Brazil to transform the country into a more just and sustainable place.

Forest Economy

With guaranteed rights over their territories and with their valued cultures, indigenous peoples and traditional communities seek recognition from the State, society and the market over the economy they have practiced for centuries, in some cases millennia, based on ancestral production techniques and care with the forests.

With this forest economy - also called the Sociobiodiversity Economy, or the Care Economy - communities prioritize food security, guarantee well-being and even produce more biodiversity, which benefits the entire planet. However, development at any cost promoted by the State is based on highly subsidized, polluting, predatory economic models and illegal activities that threaten, kill and destroy.

In response to this enormous and historic imbalance of forces, ISA seeks to strengthen the role of partner communities by promoting productive activities, community-based tourism initiatives and forest restoration actions in the basins of the Negro rivers, in the Amazon and Roraima, Xingu, in the Mato Grosso and Pará, and Ribeira do Iguape, in São Paulo.

At the same time, ISA also seeks to sensitize the private sector, governments and the consumer market to the need to promote public policies and fair and transparent commercial relations that value the socio-environmental contributions of peoples and communities and respect their ways of life, territories and cultures.

Threats and Pressures

ISA's work in monitoring "pressures and threats" starts from the understanding that "pressure" is a process of environmental degradation (deforestation, logging, mining, forest fires, etc.) Indigenous Land, Quilombola Territory and Conservation Units, such as National Parks and Forests, leading to losses of socio-environmental assets and services. In other words, "pressure" is a process that can lead to the legal and environmental destabilization of a certain protected area. On the other hand, "threat", in turn, is the existence of an imminent risk of some environmental degradation occurring within a protected area.

Taken cumulatively, the pressures and threats can generate negative socio-environmental impacts of sufficient magnitude and scope to trigger a collapse in the functioning of ecosystems and the livelihoods of local populations - and negative impacts on cities. Indigenous peoples and traditional populations, such as quilombola and riverine communities, are directly affected by the pressures and threats of having their territories invaded, their forests deforested and their rivers diverted and contaminated.

Here at ISA, the work of monitoring pressures and threats is carried out by researchers specializing in anthropology, socio-environmental law, land use modeling and public policy evaluation. The team directly responsible for monitoring ISA protected areas acts as a link between researchers, public policy makers and decision makers. This team's areas of expertise include the development of scientific research and applications in geographic information systems and tools for monitoring the legal and demographic situation and government projects that impact protected areas.

ISA's monitoring of protected areas has accumulated knowledge in monitoring pressures and threats since the 1980s as one of the first civil society programs in Brazil to build an organized platform of socio-environmental information systems, even before government sectors. This work began in the former Ecumenical Center for Documentation and Information (Cedi), in 1983, with the monitoring of Indigenous Lands in Brazil. In 1992, still at Cedi, the monitoring of Conservation Units in the Amazon and other public areas began. Its Protected Areas Information System (SisArp) is a web system with 15 data modules by specific themes, including the pressures and threats module. SisArp feeds institutional sites that provide data, maps, images, videos, news, publications and thematic analyses. Some sites are listed below, check it out!

Image	In encyclopedia format, it is considered the main reference on the subject in the country and in the world.
Image	The most complete source of information on the subject in the country
Image	Special version of the PIB Encyclopedia for early childhood education;
Image	the first reference web product on this topic, launched in June 2007
Image	territorial consolidation indicators panel for Indigenous Lands
Image	panel of information on the state of forests and alerts of pressures and threats that impact protected areas.

Solutions

"We have devastated more than half of our country, thinking that it was necessary to leave nature to enter history: but behold, the latter, with its usual predilection for irony, now demands from us precisely nature as a passport".

Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, anthropologist, one of the foundations of ISA in 1994.

ISA works in partnership with indigenous peoples, quilombolas and traditional communities to develop innovative solutions to the challenges faced by these communities and peoples. Our initiatives support and promote the defense of rights, territorial management and protection, care economies, training processes, inclusive and productive ecological restoration. They are based on transparent, equitable and long-term processes of experimentation and exchange of knowledge with our partners, which are based on valuing the ways of life of these populations and guaranteeing their rights.

Our approach to action puts the power of traditional knowledge in dialogue with legal, academic and market practices. Innovation, produced from this interaction between different worlds, thoughts and languages, offers paths for the recognition by Brazilian society - and worldwide -, that these people are the ones who care for and protect the forests that provide socio-environmental services for the very survival of the planet. and each of us.

There are several other initiatives that point to original solutions to the challenges faced by indigenous and traditional populations to guarantee the right to land, to live well, to preserve their forests and ways of life, which are intrinsically interdependent. The training of young indigenous communicators, for example, technically enables the youth of the Xingu and Rio Negro territories to master technology to tell their own stories, defend their rights and connect with the culture of their ancestors. Find below other examples of solutions developed by ISA and its local and national partners:

Copy, Relative, the first podcast made in Brazil for the people of the forest
Solar Xingu, photovoltaic energy promotion project in Xingu
Terra do Meio Canteen Network, in Xingu
Intercultural Research that promotes dialogue between traditional knowledge and western science
SIRAD monitoring, in Xingu, Yanomami Land and territories with indigenous peoples isolated
Public campaigns for the protection of territories and ways of life, as #TaNaHoraDaRoça, #ForaGarimpoForaCovid ou #IsolatedOrDecimated
Connection Quilombos of Vale do Ribeira and vulnerable communities in the region in the city of São Paulo
Promotion of Traditional Agricultural Systems of the Ribeira Valley and the Basin of Rio Negro.

how we act