In April, Brazil’s president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva recognized an additional two Indigenous territories, including one 32,000-hectare (more than 79,000-acre) territory belonging to the Karajá peoples in Mato Grosso. According to a new study published in the journal Perspectives in Ecology and Conservation, this act alone could quite possibly be the best investment not just for Indigenous rights, but for securing the future climate stability of the state. The state of Mato Grosso straddles two of Brazil’s largest biomes: The Amazon covers around two-thirds of the state, and the Cerrado covers the other third. Most of the remaining forest is protected within conservation units and Indigenous lands, which have stood as barriers to deforestation, forest fires and degradation. But Mato Grosso is also Brazil’s leading producer of soybeans and meat, and both have grown at the expense of the region’s native Cerrado and Amazon vegetation. According to this study on Indigenous lands and conservation units in Mato Grosso, these protected areas are crucial for slowing down and regulating climate change impacts. However, the same study shows, this barrier is weakening. The ability of protected areas to keep the forest intact has already begun to decline, especially on the southern edge of the Amazon, where forest degradation has been associated with intense droughts and forest fires. “Mato Grosso is experiencing intense changes due to the expansion of pasture and agriculture,” Hellen Almada, a researcher at the Vale Institute of Technologyin Brazil and the lead author of the study, told Mongabay…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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