HerbalEGram: Volume 5, Number 7, July 2008

The Amazon Conservation Team (ACT) has received an award of $1,015,000 US dollars to be awarded over a period of 3 years.¹ One of the 11 Social Entrepreneurship awards presented by the Skoll Foundation in 2008, this award is intended to help protect 100 million acres of the rainforest by expanding the biocultural conservation efforts in this area through mapping and management.

Founded in 1996, ACT is a nonprofit organization that works with indigenous people to conserve the biodiversity, traditional culture, and health in Amazonia. Currently ACT has joined forces with 28 tribes of indigenous peoples creating an area of environmental and cultural conservation that spans more than 40 million acres of the rainforest. ² ACT’s goal is to double that to 80 million by 2011.³ In the past ACT partnered with the Brazilian government to help 14 tribes of the Xingu reserve to map their land of over 7.5 million acres of rainforest. The partnership with the Brazilian government validates the mapping project as a legal document and gives the indigenous people leverage to protect their lands against illegal activity.  An article published in HerbalGram 62,⁴ explained that the indigenous persons made sketches of their ancestral lands, and were then supplied with satellite photographs and portable global positioning systems (GPS) to map their territories accurately.

The ethnographic mapping process enables the participating indigenous groups to exert greater influence over the future of their lands as confirmed local experts on key conservation areas and areas at risk, particularly with regard to border protection. Their representative associations become the obvious choice to develop and implement effective forest management policies and to keep national environmental enforcement agencies well informed on illegal incursions and ecologically destructive activities.

“Indigenous peoples know, manage, and protect the rainforest far better than we do,” said Mark Plotkin, PhD, co-founder and president of ACT, in a press release.¹ “If you want to protect the rainforest, why not enlist the assistance of the people who actually live there?”

“[ACT] is a tremendous addition to the community of Skoll entrepreneurs who have demonstrated, through their inspiration and creativity, courage and fortitude, that solutions do exist for some of the world’s intractable problems,” said Skoll President and CEO Sally Osberg in an ACT press release.¹ “We believe their work has the potential for transformational benefit to indigenous cultures and forests of the Amazon and we’re honored to support their continued commitment to systemic change at the grassroots level.”

The Skoll Foundation was created by Jeff Skoll (ebay’s first president) in 1999.⁵ Its goal is to connect, invest in, and celebrate social entrepreneurs.

—Kelly E. Saxton

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