Indigenous organizations from Peru and Brazil are joining forces to push their respective governments to safeguard a 16-million-hectare (39.5-million-acre) territorial corridor in the Amazon that stretches from the Tapiche River in Peru to the Yavarí River in Brazil. The 15 Indigenous organizations, which include the Indigenous Peoples of the Eastern Amazon (ORPIO) from Peru and the Union of Indigenous Peoples of the Javarí Valley from Brazil, plan to create a binational commission to define cross-border policies for the protection of peoples in isolation and initial contact (PIACI) who live inside the Yavarí-Tapiche Territorial Corridor and cross freely between both countries. The corridor spreads across the departments of Loreto and Ucayali in Peru and Amazonas and Acre in Brazil and is also home to the greatest diversity of primates in the world, including spider monkeys (Ateles belzebuth) and pygmy marmosets (Callithrix pygmaea). “We proposed the creation of a binational commission made up of Indigenous organizations to strengthen the protection strategies of the PIACI, as well as to call for and demand urgent action from countries to stop the territorial invasions,” said Apu Miguel Manihuari Tamani, an Indigenous leader who forms part of ORPIO’s board of directors. “[There’s a] need to articulate efforts for the monitoring, management and surveillance of the territory between Indigenous organizations, both at the national and cross-border levels.” This effort faces challenges from politicians in both countries who favor an agribusiness and development model that would scrap and restrict the recognition of Indigenous territories for plantations or industry.…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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