When we hear the word deforestation, most of us picture falling trees, fleeing animals, or rising carbon levels. But we don't always picture the people. The Indigenous families whose ancestral lands are bulldozed. The rural villagers breathing in smoke from forest fires. The communities living closest to the land but furthest from the boardrooms where decisions are made.
In 2024, the world lost 6.7 million hectares of tropical primary forest, an area almost the size of Ireland. Those losses released 2.9 billion tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, about as much as India emits from fossil fuels in a year. But the damage isn't spread evenly. It lands hardest on the people who've had the least say: Indigenous communities, low-income families, and rural residents who depend on the forest to survive but are rarely included in the decisions that put it at risk.
In Brazil's Amazon, illegal logging, cattle ranching, and mining have returned with alarming speed. Nearly half of recent forest loss occurred in areas affected by fire, many of which were intentionally set to open land for agriculture. Much of that land overlaps with Indigenous territories like the Trincheira/Bacajá and Yanomami regions.
Over in Peru, it's oil and gas companies that are encroaching. In 2024, journalists uncovered oil slicks coating forest leaves and seeping into once-pristine streams. The pollution threatens not just wildlife, but uncontacted Indigenous groups who rely on the forest for food, water, medicine, and cultural identity.
In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, charcoal production and slash-and-burn agriculture are eating away at the Congo Basin, the second-largest tropical rainforest in the world. Entire communities rely on the forest, but without access to sustainable alternatives or energy infrastructure, they're trapped in a cycle that's hard to break.
Although they make up just 6% of the global population, Indigenous peoples manage land that houses about 80% of Earth's remaining biodiversity. Studies show that forests under Indigenous management have lower deforestation rates, better biodiversity outcomes, and stronger climate resilience than those controlled by outside governments or corporations.