Gateway Communities Initiative
Arlindo Ruiz Santos, President of the community of Dulce Gloria, learning to fly a drone on the upper Yurúa River near the boundary of the Murunahua Indigenious Reserve.
The most remote communities located along the borders of protected areas play a critical role in protecting the last remnants of undisturbed Amazonian jungle—and the isolated tribes who live there. Yet the government has virtually no presence in these marginalized, hard to access regions. Not only to community members lack basic services such as clean water and access to medicine, but they lack training on how to report illegal activities or avoid conflicts with isolated tribes. Furthermore, they need assistance in generating sustainable income from resources within their communal lands, thus reducing the need to venture into adjacent protected areas where conflicts with isolated tribes are more likely.
Our Gateway Communities Initiative involves a combination of measures to support some of the Amazon’s most remote indigenous communities in the following themes:
Community Planning
Communities need strategic planning processes to guide their decisions about future development. Through community meetings and participatory workshops, community members strategize about their future. At the end of the Life Plan, they can answer: Who we are? What do we want? And how do we do it?
Stewardship and Vigilance Capacities
We have developed close to 20 community “vigilance committees” comprised of over 100 male and female Forest Guardians who work on the frontlines monitoring their lands and adjacent protected areas for illegal activities. Despite significant progress in developing the guardians’ technical skills, we continue to train new members in the use of GPS units, cameras, drones and tablets, critical tools for documenting threats and collecting data.
Sustainable Livelihoods
Communities need new sources of income to improve the quality of life and provide sustainable alternatives to destructive practices like logging, ranching and commercial agriculture. Especially important are projects to engage and empower women who are often left out of income opportunities. We will help implement projects according to each community’s Life Planning exercise and resource base, replicating projects that have been successful in other communities where possible, such as handicrafts and commercialization of abundant resources like fish, medicinal tree resins and rare timber seeds.
Land Ownership
Titling traditional lands is the necessary first step towards preventing deforestation from logging and drug activities. Local people must be empowered to protect their lands, but they are helpless if they don’t hold legal title to their lands.
We are seeking patrons to sponsor specific projects. Please contact Chris Fagan (cfagan@upperamazon.org) for more information on the initiative and how you can get involved. Thank you!
In 2020, UAC is focusing on supporting the most remote—way up the rivers!—and marginalized “gateway” indigenous communities in the Purús–Manu Landscape.