Rainforests are cleared at alarming rates to make space for growing livestock feed, resulting in habitat loss for wildlife species. Brazil is also the world’s second largest beef producer, producing an astounding 10.4 million metric tons of beef and veal in 2021, largely as a result of industrial-scale factory farming. In the same year, the value of Brazil’s agricultural exports reached $125 billion.

Such large-scale industrial agricultural practices inflict horrific suffering on animals – farmed and wild. Factory farming is also one of the largest contributors to greenhouse gas emissions and the destruction of biodiversity. Eighty percent of global deforestation and habitat loss is the result of intensive agriculture. Factory farming accounts for approximately 10 percent of total global greenhouse gas emissions in Brazil alone. Research from World Animal Protection revealed that JBS, the world’s largest meat processor, based in Brazil, accounted for CO2 emissions equivalent to 14 million cars in just one year.

At the forefront of protecting the rainforest and preventing the destruction of Brazil’s rich biodiversity and diverse habitats are local and Indigenous communities who live in these areas. Across the planet, Indigenous Peoples represent about 6 percent of the population, yet safeguard an astounding 80 percent of the world’s remaining biodiversity. In Brazil, forests outside of their protection are being lost to commercial farming and cattle ranching, extractive industries, infrastructure and other developments.

A 2021 UN report found that Indigenous Peoples of Latin America are by far the best guardians of the region’s forests – a crucial habitat for wild animals in Brazil. Over a 12-year period, deforestation rates in Indigenous territories in the Bolivian, Brazilian, and Colombian Amazon were between one-half and one-third of those in other similar forests. Between 2001-2021, forests managed by Indigenous Peoples and other communities were carbon sinks, whereas those that weren’t managed by them were, on average, net carbon sources.

Despite this mass of evidence, there is a gaping lack of recognition and support for these communities from both government and non-government sources – in particular the global philanthropic community. Less than 1 percent of all climate finance trickles down to Indigenous communities.

Protecting animals and their habitats in the face of the global agricultural production juggernaut requires making philanthropic models much more accessible to Indigenous and local communities. For philanthropists, it means utilising resources strategically so that these communities are recognised and empowered in their role as the most effective stewards of the natural world. Above all, it means removing the barriers that prevent local and Indigenous communities from accessing funds to help them protect the forest: enabling them to take ownership of projects from planning to execution and to make the decisions about how to use resources from the outset.

Read the full article about Indigenous communities protecting biodiversity by Lisa Gunn at Alliance Magazine.