The Amazon Conservation Team (ACT) is a nonprofit organization that partners with indigenous people in tropical South America to protect the Amazon rainforest's biodiversity and the culture and land of its indigenous communities. ACT was started in 1996 by ethnobotanist Mark Plotkin and Costa Rican conservationist Liliana Madrigal. The group mainly works in the northwest, northeast, and southern parts of the Amazon.

ACT supports the rights of indigenous people to own and manage their land, and to make decisions about their governance and traditions. Since its founding, the organization has partnered with more than 50 indigenous groups. ACT created a new method called the "biocultural conservation model," which requires working closely with and getting permission from communities living in the forest. In addition to protecting the Amazon rainforest and its biodiversity, ACT helps preserve indigenous medicinal traditions and the rights related to these practices in South America. Although ACT's main office is in Arlington, Virginia, it has three field offices: ACT-Brazil, ACT-Colombia, and ACT-Suriname.

Recognition

In 2002, ACT was honored with the United Nations Environment Programme Global 500 Award for their efforts to protect the environment. In 2008, the organization was given the Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship by the Skoll Foundation. In November 2010, ACT was named a 2010 Tech Awards Laureate by the well-known Tech Museum in San Jose for using technology to map the Amazon rainforest. In 2015, ACT received the 'Seeing a Better World' Award from DigitalGlobe, a company that provides detailed satellite images, airplane photos, and maps that show locations.

Achievements

Since ACT was founded, the organization has helped create and expand more than 1.8 million acres of land for Indigenous communities in South America. ACT has also helped protect 193,000 acres of national parklands in the Amazon rainforest. In addition, ACT has worked with Indigenous groups to map over 76 million acres of land, showing how the land is used, identifying sacred places, and noting important natural resources. By 2020, ACT had placed more than 5 million acres of land under better sustainable management.

Initiatives

ACT follows a step-by-step process to help indigenous groups protect their land. First, ACT works with local communities to create maps of their land and study the environment. Second, ACT helps these groups create plans to protect their land while also supporting development that does not harm the environment. Third, ACT teaches communities how to monitor and protect their land and connects them with government agencies that enforce environmental laws. Each year, ACT trains indigenous rangers through a program approved by the International Ranger Federation. ACT has mapped large areas in Brazil, including the Xingu Indigenous Reserve (2,800,000 hectares), the Suruí Indigenous Reserve (248,000 hectares), and the Tumucumaque Indigenous Reserve (4,000,000 hectares). Google Earth Outreach helped map the Suruí Reserve and trained the tribe to monitor their land from a distance.

Since it began, ACT has worked with indigenous groups in Colombia’s Eastern Andes (Cofan, Inga, Siona, Kamsá, and Coreguaje) and in Suriname’s interior (Trio and Wayana) to protect their traditional healthcare systems, including their knowledge of plants used for healing. This work focuses on teaching younger people the same knowledge that elders have passed down. In Suriname, ACT built four traditional medicine clinics in remote communities (Kwamalasamutu, Tepu, Apetina, and Gonini mofo), run by local healers and their apprentices. In 2003, this work was chosen as one of a few global examples in the UNESCO/Nuffic publication "Best Practices Using Indigenous Knowledge." In 2004, ACT’s medicine project won a World Bank Development Marketplace Award, the first such award for a Suriname-based initiative. In Colombia’s Amazon, ACT helped create the Association for Indigenous Women of Traditional Medicine (ASOMI), which now includes 75 traditional healers. ACT supports ASOMI’s program that teaches more than 140 students.

ACT is helping Colombia’s National Park Service create rules and emergency plans to protect isolated indigenous communities in national parks, including Río Puré and Cahuinarí in Amazonas. In 2010 and 2011, ACT funded flights that found homes of uncontacted people, likely the Yuri (Carabayo) or Passé, who were thought to be extinct.

On July 17, 2018, the Colombian government approved a national policy to protect isolated indigenous groups. This policy was created through a partnership led by Colombia’s Ministry of the Interior, with input from government agencies, indigenous groups, and supported by the Amazon Conservation Team. The policy states that the choice of these groups to live in isolation must be respected and that their lands must be protected. It creates a system to protect these groups’ territories by involving both indigenous people and government institutions. This policy is the first in the Amazon region to be led by indigenous communities and organizations following international rules about free, informed consent. It also includes traditional spiritual beliefs in modern environmental protection efforts.

Methodologies

The Amazon Conservation Team has created three guides that explain how the organization works. These guides cover these topics: 'Collaborative Cultural Mapping,' 'Indigenous Land Titling,' and 'Mapping and Recording Place-Based Oral Histories.'

The Amazon Conservation Team started creating an application called Terrastories. This 'geostorytelling' tool helps Indigenous and local communities find and map their own oral stories about places that are meaningful to them. Community members can add locations and stories using an easy-to-use interface. They can also choose whether to keep certain stories private or restricted. Built with the Mapbox platform, Terrastories works online and offline, so remote communities can use it without internet access. The main screen of Terrastories includes an interactive map and a sidebar with media content. Users can explore the map and click on points to see stories linked to those places. Alternatively, users can click on stories in the sidebar to see where they are located on the map. Through an administrative section, users can add, edit, or remove stories, or set them as restricted so they can only be viewed with a special login. Users can also design and change the map’s appearance, including its colors and layout, to match their community’s style.

The first version of Terrastories was created in 2018 for a Surinamese community called the Matawai. The Amazon Conservation Team recognized the need for a custom mapping tool to protect intangible cultural heritage, such as Indigenous oral histories, which are at risk of being lost. The team is also using Terrastories to map oral histories with the Wauja in Brazil and the Kogui in Colombia. Terrastories is a free and open-source (FOSS) application that can be used by communities worldwide.

Creation of protected areas

In Colombia, ACT worked with the government and local tribes to create two protected areas. These areas include the 77,000-hectare Alto Fragua Indi Wasi National Park in the Caquetá Department. This park is special because it is the first reserve where a local tribe, the Inga, and the national park service share management. The second area is the 10,000-hectare Orito-Ingi Ande Medicinal Plant Sanctuary in the Putumayo Department. This sanctuary is the first reserve created to protect plants used for medicine.

Corporate partnerships

In the spring of 2020, cosmetics company Chantecaille, which focuses on environmental charity work, partnered with ACT to create a new makeup collection. The collection was based on the Amazon hummingbird, a bird that lives in the rainforests of Colombia. Five percent of the money earned from selling this collection is given to a nonprofit organization called ACT. ACT uses these funds to support ASOMI, which stands for Asociacion de Mujeres Indigenas. ASOMI is a group of indigenous women who are elders and healers living near the border between Colombia and Ecuador. The group works to protect the biodiversity of the Andean Amazon.