Where we operate

ISA works alongside Indigenous, Quilombola, and extractive communities in the Ribeira Valley basin in São Paulo, the Rio Negro basin in Amazonas and Rio Grande do Norte, and the Xingu basin in Mato Grosso and Pará, with a presence in four states in the Brazilian Amazon. Our work in these territories is long-term, involving multidisciplinary teams working continuously in alignment with our institutional mission and the priorities presented by local partners.

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Rio Negro

The Rio Negro Basin extends through the Brazilian states of Amazonas and Roraima, and also extends into neighboring Colombia, Venezuela, and Guyana. In its Amazonas portion, the basin is one of the most preserved regions of the entire Amazon biome, boasting incalculable biodiversity. On the other hand, the Roraima portion of the basin has suffered significant environmental degradation caused by illegal gold mining, deforestation, and land theft, or "land grabbing."

Approximately 68% of the Rio Negro Basin in Brazil is formally protected by a set of conservation units and legally recognized indigenous lands. The region's cultural diversity is enormous: it is home to 45 indigenous peoples and is home to two Brazilian cultural heritage sites—the Iauaretê Waterfall and the Rio Negro Traditional Agricultural System—as well as Brazil's highest peak, Pico da Neblina, a sacred site of the Yanomami people.

In Rio Negro, ISA maintains long-term work and institutional partnerships - which fills us with pride - with indigenous associations and their leaders, including the Federation of Indigenous Organizations of Rio Negro (Foirn), the Hutukara Yanomami Association (HAY) and the Indigenous Council of Roraima (CIR).

We maintain an office and staff in the city of São Gabriel da Cachoeira, Amazonas state, considered the most Indigenous municipality in Brazil, located on the Upper Rio Negro. From São Gabriel, we also travel down the Negro River to support Indigenous communities and associations in the municipalities of Santa Isabel do Rio Negro and Barcelos, both in Amazonas. In 2009, ISA incorporated the Pro-Yanomami Commission (CCPY), its team, and legacy, opening an office in Boa Vista, Rio Grande do Norte, and beginning to work directly with the Yanomami people and other indigenous peoples of Roraima.

Currently, ISA works in the Rio Negro Basin promoting training processes, articulating partnerships for the protection of indigenous territories, valorization of socio-environmental diversity, food security for communities, development of forest economy value chains for income generation, and production of intercultural research that gives visibility to the traditional knowledge and ways of life of the populations that, for many years, have maintained the preservation of the region's forests.

Xingu

The Xingu River Basin is a region between the states of Mato Grosso and Pará that symbolizes Brazil's socio-environmental diversity. A diversity of peoples, forests, and rivers that rise in the Cerrado and flow into the Amazon rainforest, in the center of the country.

The Xingu's socio-environmental diversity is largely sheltered within a "corridor" of protected areas (indigenous lands and conservation units) that represents 50% of the Xingu Basin. These protected areas and their interconnected forests are home to some of the richest biodiversity on the planet and 26 indigenous peoples and riverside communities, who resist and insist on existing as part of Brazil's present—and future.

Today, the Xingu is the scene of conflict between these ways of life and an economic model based on predatory activities involving deforestation, burning, intensive use of pesticides, mining, illegal logging, land grabbing, and the construction of hydroelectric plants, railways, and roads.

The forests, rivers, and peoples of the Xingu River are a shield against the devastation advancing across Brazil. The basin contains the municipalities and indigenous lands with the highest deforestation rates in the Legal Amazon over the last 10 years. The headwaters of the Xingu River have already lost more than 40% of their forest cover. Despite this, the socio-environmental diversity and incredible resilience of the Xingu peoples represent a concrete opportunity to agree on a new model of development and relationship with the forest and its peoples.

This is why we at ISA have been working for almost three decades with our feet on the ground, with teams and offices in the cities of Canarana (MT) and Altamira (PA), together with our local partners, in three main lines of work: forest economy, forest restoration and territorial protection.

Ribeira Valley

The Ribeira Valley, between São Paulo and Paraná, is an Atlantic Forest region with a strong presence of Indigenous peoples, quilombola, caboclo, and caiçara communities. These traditional populations, with their cultures and ways of life, keep the region's forests standing, resisting predatory activities and the uncontrolled exploitation of natural resources. The quilombola, Indigenous, caboclo, and caiçara presence makes the Ribeira Valley a socio-environmental heritage site for Brazil and a key region for climate balance, biodiversity protection, and rainfall production between the country's two major metropolises: Curitiba and São Paulo.

ISA has been working in the Ribeira Valley since the late 1990s in partnership with local associations and civil society organizations to guarantee the territorial rights of quilombola communities, as well as the protection of the region's forests, rivers, estuaries, and other ecosystems. We are grateful for the lessons learned through struggle that these communities and their leaders have passed on for centuries and are passing on to future generations.

ISA's work in the Ribeira Valley currently follows three strategic lines: political articulation to defend rights, strengthening resource management in quilombola territories, with emphasis on the structuring of the Ribeira Valley Seed Network and the valorization of the Traditional Quilombola Agricultural System of the Ribeira Valley, and promotion of forest products, with emphasis on supporting the production and commercialization, by communities, of organic production of local agrobiodiversity for income generation.

Amazon

The Amazon (or "Pan-Amazon" to consider the biome as a whole, beyond Brazil's borders) is an integral socio-ecological system, shared by eight countries and a French province in South America, which benefits all inhabitants of the planet. Its enormous socio-environmental diversity is a strategic asset for both the tropical environment of South America and the balance of the Earth's climate. Those largely responsible for maintaining the Amazonian ecosystems are the more than 400 indigenous peoples and other traditional populations that inhabit its forests, such as quilombola and riverside communities.

We at ISA believe that to strengthen a comprehensive vision of the Pan-Amazon, viewing the biome as a whole, it is necessary to overcome fragmented approaches and promote initiatives with territorial synergy, considering regional, national, and international geographic scales. Ultimately, we will strengthen indigenous territories and protected areas throughout the Pan-Amazon, which means increasing forest protection. To move in this direction, in 2007, ISA helped create the Amazon Network of Georeferenced Socio-Environmental Information (RAISG), a network formed by civil society organizations from Amazonian countries with extensive experience working in the Amazon and with its peoples.

Over these 14 years, Raisg has produced and disseminated maps, statistical data, and socio-environmental information on the Pan-Amazon region, contributing to the monitoring of 3,8 million hectares of indigenous lands and protected areas in 6 of the 9 "Amazonian countries" (Brazil, Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Venezuela). Amazon Under Pressure Atlas 2020 brings together the latest versions of many of these maps.

As Information produced by the network of South American organizations also generates evidence on the value of the Pan-Amazon region in addressing the climate crisis and can inform decision-making in sustainable development processes at different planning levels (municipal, state, national, and international) to prevent and mitigate environmental degradation in the region. Since 2017, Raisg has partnered with the MapBiomas Brasil initiative to map land use coverage in the Amazon region. The products and cartographic data produced by the network are available for download on its platform: www.amazoniasocioambiental.org.

In time: at ISA we also operate regionally in the Brazilian "Amazon", in two of its large hydrographic basins, that of Xingu River and the Rio Negro.