Mongabay series: Amazon Illegal Deforestation

Celebration of the Ashaninka people in the Kampa of the Amônia River Indigenous Reserve, by the Peruvian border. Image by Arison Jardim/The Ashaninka of the Amônia River Association.

$3 million and an official apology: Brazil’s Ashaninka get unprecedented compensation for deforestation on their land

An unprecedented court settlement guaranteed reparations to the Ashaninka people of the state of Acre, in the Brazilian Amazon, whose lands were deforested in the 1980s to supply the European furniture industry. The indigenous people only agreed with the negotiation because it included an official apology and a recognition of their "enormous importance as guardians" of the Amazon.
Celebration of the Ashaninka people in the Kampa of the Amônia River Indigenous Reserve, by the Peruvian border. Image by Arison Jardim/The Ashaninka of the Amônia River Association.

Gold mining threatens indigenous forests in the Brazilian Amazon

Illegal gold mining led to deforestation of thousands of hectares of forests inside indigenous reserves in the Brazilian Amazon, according to new satellite image analysis by the Monitoring of the Andean Amazon Project (MAAP). Mongabay had exclusive access to the report prior to its release.