Brazil’s Supreme Court reached a majority decision to reject Marco Temporal, a pernicious legal argument that translates as a “Time Limit” on Indigenous peoples’ land rights. As the results were announced, Indigenous communities around Brazil erupted into celebration, filling the central plazas of state capitals with music and dancing.
Brazil’s Federal Supreme Court is poised to make a critical decision on the Marco Temporal, a legal argument with profound implications for the land rights of Indigenous peoples. Dinamam Tuxá, the Executive Coordinator of the Articulation of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil (APIB), and Suzanne Pelletier, the Executive Director of Rainforest Foundation US, condemn this “time limit” on land rights in an op-ed featured on Mongabay.
In Peru, land titling processes typically take years, even decades. However, this time, a collaborative effort involving Indigenous communities, Indigenous people’s organizations like AIDESEP and FECOTYBA, along with Rainforest Foundation US and the Regional Government of Loreto, achieved a remarkable resolution in just ten months.
Land titles are the most effective way to reduce deforestation rates in Indigenous peoples’ territory, resulting in a 66% reduction in forest cover loss. 17 land titles were secured for Indigenous communities in the Peruvian Amazon in record time—more titles were established in ten months than were possible in the previous three years.
The Marco Temporal thesis is the greatest threat to the rights and lives of Indigenous peoples in Brazil today. But the potential impacts are not limited to these communities—they are universal. Our shared future depends on the health of the Amazon, the world’s largest tropical forest and one of the major contributors to the climate’s maintenance. As the primary and best guardians of the Amazon rainforest, Indigenous peoples and their lands play a crucial role in mitigating climate change.
Challenges have prevented funding from going directly to indigenous peoples who are key to combating the climate crisis. Rainforest Foundations outline key steps to ensuring climate and biodiversity funding gets to the frontlines.
Guyana’s indigenous peoples are pushing for revisions to the Amerindian Act, the federal law that outlines their rights. Proposed changes include the right to collective territory, and upholding indigenous groups’ land titling to fight extractive industries.
A Panamanian governmental agency annulled the land claim of Aruza, an indigenous Wounaan village sitting on 31 square miles of primary rainforest in the Darien Gap. With the support of Rainforest Foundation US, Aruza is legally challenging the decision.
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Didier Devers
Chief of Party – USAID Guatemala
gro.y1696117046nffr@1696117046sreve1696117046dd1696117046
Didier has been coordinating the USAID-funded B’atz project since joining Rainforest Foundation US in April 2022. He holds a Master’s in Applied Anthropology and a Bachelor’s in Geography. Before joining the organization, Didier worked for 12 years in Central and South America on issues of transparency, legality, governance, and managing stakeholders’ processes in the environmental sector. Prior to that he worked on similar issues in Central Africa. He speaks French, Spanish, and English, and is based in Guatemala.
