Instituto Socioambiental: Mapping and Defending Brazil's Indigenous Lands

Founded in 1994, Instituto Socioambiental (ISA) combines legal advocacy, satellite monitoring and on-the-ground partnerships with Indigenous, quilombola and traditional communities to secure and defend land rights across the Brazilian Amazon and beyond. Brazil now officially recognizes 490 Indigenous Lands covering nearly 107 million hectares — about 12.6% of the country's territory — land ISA has helped map, demarcate and defend for decades through its long-running Povos Indígenas no Brasil program. Research cited by ISA found that fully demarcated Indigenous territories in the Amazon saw 66% less annual deforestation than similar land outside their borders between 1982 and 2016. ISA's annual Prodes-based monitoring reports continue to track deforestation inside these territories, showing it stays a small fraction of losses on surrounding, undemarcated land.