YSE Associate Professor Paulo Brando co-led a workshop with Indigenous leaders and community-based organizations in the Xingu Indigenous Territory in western Brazil in July 2025. Credit: Paulo Brando
COP30, which opens next week in Belém, Brazil, is expected to have an unprecedented focus on the essential role of Indigenous peoples in driving a sustainable global climate response. Associate Professor Paulo Brando, an internationally recognized expert on tropical forest ecology, recently spoke to YSE News about the urgent need to connect ancestral knowledge with scientific methods to monitor and protect the health of threatened Amazon ecosystems.
This year’s annual U.N. climate summit in Belém, Brazil, is expected to set a record for Indigenous participation. About 3,000 Indigenous leaders from around the world will attend COP30 — 1,000 of whom will participate in official negotiations in the Blue Zone. Among their top priorities is the integration of Indigenous knowledge and traditional land management practices into official climate policies and national determined contributions (NDCs). This past summer, Paulo Brando, associate professor of ecosystem carbon capture, co-led a workshop to exchange knowledge and empower Indigenous communities with scientific tools to monitor ecosystem change in the Xingu Indigenous Territory in western Brazil. At least 16 distinct Indigenous groups live in Xingu, which at approximately 2.6 million hectares is nearly twice the size of Connecticut. The protected area, however, is facing significant environmental challenges, including deforestation, increased fire risk due to climate change, and illegal fishing, mining, fragmentation, and logging. Funded by the Yale Center for Natural Capture Carbon (YCNCC), and co-organized with the Indigenous community-based organization Associação Terra Indígena Xingu (ATIX) and the Amazon Environmental Research Institute (IPAM), the workshop followed two major crises in the territory: a massive fish mortality event in one of the region’s lakes and widespread loss of forest health due to forest fires, logging, and fragmentation.
YSE News recently spoke with Professor Brando, a leading expert on tropical ecosystems and a member of YCNCC’s scientific leadership team, about the initiative and the importance of improving monitoring capacity in the area by combining Indigenous and scientific indicators.
Q: Could you tell us about the relationship that the Indigenous peoples who live in Xingu have to the environment — and about some of the threats facing the area’s ecosystems?
In many ways, that relationship represents what the environmental movement aspires to achieve in terms of sustainability in our own society. The people living in the Xingu consider the environment an inseparable part of their identity, culture, and well-being. The rivers, lakes, forests, and animals are not simply resources — they are living systems that sustain food, materials, culture, spirituality, and social life. The health of these ecosystems directly reflects the health of their communities. Their relationship is deeply reciprocal: Caring for the environment is caring for themselves and for future generations.
The region faces a range of interconnected threats. Deforestation and industrial agriculture around the park have altered warmed the entire region and reduced water availability during the dry seasons. The conversion of land in the headwaters of the Xingu River to agrochemical-intensive uses has degraded water quality. Inside the park, new roads have disrupted river systems, while uncontrolled fires and illegal logging continue to threaten forests and biodiversity. Political pressures — including weak territorial protection and limited representation — further compound these environmental risks.
Q: On the first day of the workshop, Indigenous leaders and participants shared their perspectives on and concerns about environmental degradation the territory. What were some of the common themes?
A central theme shared by Indigenous leaders was that “everything is changing.” Participants described hotter conditions, declining fish populations (their main source of protein), and growing difficulties in cultivating traditional crops such as cassava. Many also expressed concern that younger generations are becoming more disconnected from traditional knowledge. The most urgent issue raised was the recent mass fish mortality in one of the Xingu’s main lakes — a visible sign of ecosystem distress that deeply affected the communities.
Looking ahead to COP30, there is cautious hope: the Xingu experience shows that solutions already exist on the ground, but global and national frameworks must evolve to recognize, resource, and scale these Indigenous-led strategies.”
Q: Why is to so critical to accurately monitor ecosystem changes in Xingu? What were some of the ideas for combining scientific tools with Indigenous knowledge and practices?
Monitoring ecological change in the Xingu is vital not only for conservation but also for Indigenous rights, cultural preservation, and regional climate stability. This vast territory holds some of the last intact forests in the region. Accurate monitoring provides evidence to support claims for protection and resources and to communicate with government agencies that rely on quantitative and scientific data. The most promising approach discussed was to combine Indigenous ecological knowledge with scientific tools such as forest inventories, biodiversity acoustic monitoring, satellite imagery, and thermal drones — not to replace or teach one another, but to translate observations across systems of knowledge.
Q: The final day of the workshop was dedicated to reviewing and learning from an action plan developed by Indigenous participants. What are some of the key components of the plan?
The plan they developed was comprehensive and forward-looking. It includes training a new generation of Indigenous leaders able to navigate both ancestral and scientific worlds; establishing a “situation room” to monitor illegal activities and environmental changes in real time; creating pathways for Indigenous scientists to engage in research and policy; and expanding educational efforts to inform agricultural producers about the downstream impacts of their practices. It also emphasized the importance of strengthening women’s leadership in environmental governance and increasing Indigenous representation in decision-making processes at local and national levels. The leaders who shared this vision demonstrated extraordinary strategic thinking and organizational capacity. I left inspired by their ability to integrate cultural, technical, and political dimensions into a coherent long-term strategy.
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Our discussions with some of the Xingu leaders also showed that the scientific community can contribute meaningfully by supporting their efforts to build scientific and technical capacity, co-developing monitoring tools, and aligning our research with their priorities. But ultimately, our role is to follow their lead — working in partnership and respect for their vision of conserving the Xingu’s ecosystems and communities.
Q: While there have been efforts in Brazil and globally to support Indigenous peoples in managing and protecting their territories and integrate traditional knowledge into climate policy and decision-making, many would argue that results haven’t lived up to expectations. How hopeful are you that these efforts will yield meaningful results in Xingu or at COP30?
Despite limited and often inconsistent support, Indigenous peoples continue to play a disproportionately large role in conserving forests, biodiversity, and the ecosystem services that sustain millions of people across the Amazon. Their resilience and stewardship of their lands in the face of major challenges are remarkable. But it is difficult to imagine a future that they can continue to play such an important role in stopping deforestation, degradation, and associated emissions without a far more inclusive and equitable strategy — one that places Indigenous peoples at the center of decision-making and ensures that resources, policies, and scientific collaborations truly strengthen their territorial governance.
Looking ahead to COP30, there is cautious hope: the Xingu experience shows that solutions already exist on the ground, but global and national frameworks must evolve to recognize, resource, and scale these Indigenous-led strategies.
