Virtanen et al. (2025): Indigenous governance and relationality have effectively avoided forest loss in the Southwest Amazon

Pirjo Kristiina Virtanen, Amaia Gonzaga Roa, Álvaro Fernández-Llamazares, Francisco Apurinã, Sidney Facundes IN: Communications Earth & Environment, https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-025-02174-8

By using matching methods coupled with community-based and ethnographic approaches, the authors offer a contextual measure and understanding of deforestation avoidance of Indigenous territories in Southwestern Amazonia. Their counterfactual analysis of 19 Apurinã territories in Brazil over a 20-year period (2001–2021) in different municipalities showed that, even if Indigenous territories are by no means immune to forest loss, they have avoided significant levels of deforestation.

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