The Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization (ACTO) recently announced the creation of a formal role for Indigenous peoples, giving them a voice for the first time in one of the Amazon Basin’s most important intergovernmental bodies.
The announcement was made during ACTO’s fifth summit of presidents of Amazonian countries in Bogotá, Colombia, marking a historic shift that grants Indigenous peoples more influence over important issues including deforestation, biodiversity and protected-area management.
“Our ways of life already offer concrete solutions to confront climate change and biodiversity loss with justice and effectiveness,” a coalition of Indigenous peoples from the nine countries of the Amazon Basin said in an opening statement at the summit last week. “That’s why we emphasize that we’re not only guardians: We are climate and environmental authorities.”
ACTO’s members — Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Peru, Suriname and Venezuela — coordinate a regional agenda for protecting the Amazon’s natural resources. (The ninth Amazonian territory, French Guiana, isn’t part of ACTO.) Traditionally, ACTO has been composed of each member country’s minister of foreign affairs along with various commissions, drawing criticism that the organization’s structure excludes Indigenous voices.
Its new Amazon Indigenous Peoples’ Mechanism (MAPI) will include two Indigenous delegates from each member country. They will meet annually to discuss threats to their ancestral territories, including from illegal mining, wildlife trafficking, food insecurity and poverty, among others. MAPI will also issue reports and recommendations to other bodies within ACTO, with the goal of promoting Indigenous knowledge systems and languages.
“This is the result of a high-level political commitment and a historical debt to Amazonian Indigenous peoples, whose contribution to biodiversity protection, climate change mitigation and cultural preservation is invaluable,” ACTO coordinator for Indigenous affairs Freddy Mamani said in a statement.
The announcement comes at a crucial moment as member countries work toward implementing policies that build on the Belém Declaration from 2023, including reducing deforestation and carbon emissions from deforestation and degradation. Officials are also preparing climate and conservation financing plans ahead of the U.N. Climate Change Conference (COP30), scheduled for November in Belém, Brazil. At the summit, they reinforced their support for the Tropical Forests Forever Fund that will be discussed at COP30, a mechanism to pay countries for protecting their forests.
“The responsibility is enormous, and the challenges are many. But this alliance between governments and Indigenous organizations has all the foundations to succeed in achieving our common goal: protecting our forest, our home,” said Sônia Guajajara, Brazil’s minister of Indigenous peoples, during the meeting.
Banner image: Ecuadorian Vice President María José Pinto, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Colombian President Gustavo Petro speak at the closing of a meeting of leaders of the Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization in Bogotá, Colombia, on Aug. 22, 2025. Image by AP Photo/Fernando Vergara.
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