The Americas

BELIZE:

• 3rd year of funding. Building local capacity to secure land rights and manage natural resources. This is a continuation of the 2007 project focusing on the Maya communities' efforts to secure rights to their land. Our support helped lead to a recent landmark Supreme Court judgment affirming Maya customary land tenure. With this recent decision, the demarcation process will start and planning for land and natural resources management needs to take place. Project monitored by Rainforest Foundation US.

BOLIVIA:

• 2nd year of funding. Contributing to the integrated development of the Tsimane community of Puerto Yucumo and Yaranda. Those communities are the poorest and most marginalized peoples in the area and the budget is focused in the work and is led by the Comunidad Viva organization, which has shown competence and careful attention to the costs in the three years since we started supporting their projects.
  

 BRAZIL:

• North Eastern Region - 2nd year of funding. Defending cultural indigenous rights in public policies. This project addresses the challenge of maintaining cultural traditions and practices and overcoming internal divisions in order to promote collective interests among the Wayapi, Tiriyo and Kaxuyana tribes who have obtained collective land rights but still experience internal divisions based on age, factionalism and manipulation by external factors.

• Yanomami Region (North) - 3rd year of funding. Supporting Yanomami advocacy. It is the continuation of last year efforts to strengthen the capacity building of the Hutukara association which is crucial to the Yanomami people's ability to be secure within their territory and environment. Project monitored by Rainforest Foundation US.

• Roraima State - 2nd year of funding. Crafts project aimed at the women in the State, helping them to strengthen their role in community decision making and resource management. Project monitored by Rainforest Foundation US.

•  Xingu Park - Creating an external campaign for communities of the Xingu Indigenous Park, affected by construction of hydroelectric projects in the Xingu River Basin. Project monitored by ACT (Amazon Conservation Team). 

NICARAGUA:

•  3rd year of funding. Legal defense and natural resources management for the Mayangna indigenous community of Awas Tingni. The project involves efforts to secure its traditional lands in a heavily forested area of the country's Atlantic coastal region. Project monitored by Rainforest Foundation US and the School of Law of the University of Arizona.

PANAMA:

•  2nd year of funding. Protecting indigenous forest and coastal territories in Panama related to the Kuna peoples. The importance of this project lays in the fact that it is centered on free, prior informed consent, enshrined in the ILO convention 169 on indigenous peoples and in the United Nations Declaration on Indigenous Peoples, aiming at making sure that indigenous communities are informed in advance and can make their input in any development program concerning their lands. Project monitored by Rainforest Foundation US and the School of Law of the University of Arizona.

The Americas 2008