Indigenous lands and traditional communities cover 25% of the Amazon Basin. Effective protection of these lands, as a complement to the additional 25% that have been designated as conservation areas are widely recognized as essential to meeting the interlocking challenges of climate change, biodiversity loss, and socioenvironmental justice (e.g. Science Panel for the Amazon Chapter…
On February 22 and 24, 2022, the Center for Latin American Studies and the Tropical Conservation Development Program facilitated a virtual conference “VOICES FROM THE FOREST: Community-driven strategies and actions for biocultural conservation.” The event brought together 27 Indigenous and grassroots voices as presenters and collaborators from Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, and Paraguay, to present…
Since the pan-Amazon workshop in May, the UF GIA team has been working with partners in regional and thematic working groups to complete a series of products and plan next steps. In this issue of the GIA Bulletin, we launch the Final GIA Project Report: Synthesis of Lessons and Recommendations for Infrastructure Governance. We also…
The Governance and Infrastructure in the Amazon (GIA) Project has created regional and thematic Communities of Practice and Learning (CoP-L). The Upper Madeira CoP-L is the group that has advanced the most, in part because it builds on the previous work of the Amazon Dams Network, but also thanks to the great leadership of Marliz…
The Governance and Infrastructure in the Amazon (GIA) Project is led by the University of Florida’s Tropical Conservation and Development (TCD) Program and aims to create, strengthen and expand a Community of Practice and Learning (CoP-L) for exchanges of experiences and reflections on the use of tools and strategies for infrastructure governance by conservation and…
We thank all the GIA partners who participated in the rich discussions over the past weeks. Brief reports and copies of Zoom videos will be available on the GIA web site shortly. A final reminder about the workshop next week. The overall agenda with links to more detailed daily agendas is available here. In preparation…
The Governance and Infrastructure in the Amazon (GIA) Project is led by the University of Florida’s Tropical Conservation and Development (TCD) Program and aims to create, strengthen and expand a Community of Practice and Learning (CoP-L) for exchanges of experiences and reflections on the use of tools and strategies for infrastructure governance by conservation and…
The current phase of the GIA project ends with a series of Pan-Amazon events throughout the month of May. Since our 2019 workshops in Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia and Peru, the partners in the GIA Community of Practice and Learning have adapted to difficult and unexpected challenges. Universities, NGOs and grassroots organizations are working in partnership.…
Over the past month GIA working groups have been sharing results through virtual discussions: Case studies of indigenous resistance strategies to roads and dams in Colombia and Bolivia: Strategies for collaboration among NGOs, grassroots organizations and academia; Communication strategies for social mobilization and political impact. Our upcoming workshop will bring these threads together by discussing…
Do you have any sense of how the pandemic is affecting conservation threats such as land grabbing, deforestation and fires in the Amazon region of your countries? Are threats increasing? Decreasing? Why? There seems to be a disturbing synergism between COVID-19 and (dis)governance and this is consistent across Amazonian countries. COVID-19 is weakening already weak…
