COMMUNITY MONITORING: A TOOL FOR THE PROTECTION OF INDIGENOUS TERRITORIES IN THE AMAZON BASIN

On Monday, August 16, 2021, a joint regional workshop was held between COICA and the Amazonia 2.0 project (A2.0) for the Exchange of experiences on community based monitoring in the Amazon basin.

Participants included indigenous leaders and technicians from COICA and its organizations and the regional technical team of A2.0, both from the regional coordination and the partner organizations implementing the project in its 6 countries. In this event, COICA's Early Warning System-SAT was presented, its progress and challenges, and the importance of the defense of indigenous territories in the Amazon. The A2.0 partners also presented their experiences and lessons learned in the six countries where the project is active.

In his turn, Elcio Manchineri, Coordinator of COICA's Territory and Natural Resources Area, and delegate of COIAB, an indigenous organization from Brazil, said: "it is important that we join efforts and connect the information generated in the monitoring experiences in the countries with the COICA system... for us it is relevant to strengthen indigenous agents so that they have the tools to carry out a qualified monitoring of their territories and natural resources, and also to strengthen indigenous organizations so that they can face illegal actions, deforestation, infrastructure, oil and mining; monitoring should also involve the community so that they feel part of these processes".

On behalf of the Amazonia 2.0 project, the regional coordinator Braulio Buendia, highlighted the importance of this institutional alliance, indicating that "monitoring is a process that demands the empowerment of the communities, in the different stages of occurrence (before, during and after) to be able to react effectively; technology is an important tool to protect the territories, but without neglecting the welfare of the people, looking for alternatives that contribute to the indigenous economy".

It is important to mention that the A2.0 project, in its last year of implementation (2021) is focusing its efforts on: (i) consolidating ongoing processes, (ii) socializing the information generated, results and lessons learned from the project, and (iii) strengthening the regional platform seeking sustainability and articulation with key stakeholders.

In this regard, since March 2021, a series of coordinations have been carried out with COICA's leaders and technical team, with the objective of identifying possible points of inter-institutional articulation to strengthen the monitoring and territorial management of indigenous peoples, empowerment of capacities (knowledge management), sharing experiences, enriching repositories and information systems, among others.

In the coming days, the A2.0 project will be transferring to COICA https://coica.org.ec/ the information generated by the project for its repository CEFO Indígena https://cefoindigena.org/; it also makes available the Geovisor with maps and information generated at www.amazoniadospuntocero.com.

Amazonia 2.0 is a regional project funded by the European Union and coordinated by IUCN South America.

Watch the event: