[MEXICO CITY, SciDev.Net] As world leaders gather for the COP30 climate summit in Belém, Brazil, indigenous peoples and local communities across the world are uniting to demand recognition of their territorial rights, direct access to climate finance, and stronger protection for environmental defenders.

Their call follows the release of a report by the Global Alliance of Territorial Communities (GATC) and Earth Insight, which provides detailed global maps illustrating how industrial extraction—from oil and gas to mining, logging, and large-scale agriculture—is threatening tropical forests and the 35 million indigenous people who live within them.

“For the first time, we have global and comparable evidence confirming what indigenous peoples have been saying for a long time,” said Juan Carlos Jintiach Arcos, executive secretary of GATC and a member of the Shuar people of the Ecuadorian Amazon.

“They can no longer say that we made these things up. The data clearly shows the pressures and threats that our territories face.”

The report maps the locations where extractive industries are encroaching on the world’s largest tropical forest regions—in the Amazon, Congo Basin, Mesoamerica, and Southeast Asia—revealing the scale of environmental pressure on indigenous lands.

In Mesoamerica—a historic and cultural region that spans southern Mexico and parts of Central America—oil and gas projects threaten 3.7 million hectares of indigenous and community lands, while mining concessions cover another 18.7 million hectares, according to the report.

These pressures are compounded by deforestation, drug trafficking, infrastructure megaprojects, and weak governance in countries such as Mexico, Honduras, and Nicaragua.

In the Amazon, 250 million hectares are inhabited by indigenous peoples and local communities, according to the report. It says 31 million hectares are threatened by oil and gas, 9.8 million by mining, and 2.4 million by logging.

Extractive industries are present in all Amazonian countries—Brazil, Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Guyana, Suriname, and French Guiana—though the type and intensity of threats vary across borders.

According to Florencia Librizzi, deputy director of Earth Insight, the new maps are “a powerful tool for visibility”.

“They make clear, urgent, and comparable what is usually hidden in technical reports or scattered databases,” she said.

In response to these findings, indigenous organisations are urging governments and global institutions meeting at COP30 to recognise their territorial rights and ensure “free, prior, and informed consent” for all projects affecting their lands.

“Too often, companies or governments arrive in our territories without understanding our internal processes, without respecting our forms of governance and decision-making, or worse, deceiving communities to obtain a signature or authorisation,” Jintiach Arcos said.

He stresses that true consent means affirming the sovereignty of indigenous communities, so that “we are the ones who decide what enters and what does not enter our territories”.

Another major demand concerns direct access to climate finance.

“We’re not just talking about the money reaching communities,” said Levi Sucre Romero, director general of the Mesoamerican Alliance of Peoples and Forests.

He explains that indigenous groups want to see new financing models among companies, governments and multilateral organisations that strengthen indigenous governance and include monitoring mechanisms tailored to local realities.

Independent experts say the report offers a clear picture of where forests are under threat—including areas inhabited by peoples in voluntary isolation.

“For most people, the rainforest remains an empty space where there is no population,” said Iván Brehaut, program director at Peru’s ProPurus Association, a non-profit focused on forest conservation and indigenous rights, which was not involved in the report.

“Showing the overlap between indigenous voluntary isolation areas and extractive initiatives helps to see the level of impact on people’s lives caused by extractive industries.”

But Brehaut warns that halting deforestation and extractivism requires tackling global economic dependence on fossil fuels and viewing forests “as more than commodities”.

Despite the sobering data, the report also points to solutions that are working. Where indigenous and local community rights are legally recognised, deforestation rates fall significantly and ecosystems are protected, it says.

“One example is the Maya Biosphere Reserve in Guatemala, where the overlap with concessions is much lower, to the point that deforestation in community areas is more than seven times lower than the national average,” said Librizzi.

For Olo Villalaz, a member of the Mesoamerican Alliance of Peoples and Forests, this has to do with the way in which communities understand how to care for forests.

“We understand that Mother Earth is a single home where we all live and on which our lives depend. Its protection is based on respect, spirituality, and decisions made collectively, where every voice of women, youth, elders, and authorities has its place,” he told SciDev.Net.

Indigenous leaders agreed that, while there seems to be no way to stop extractivism in the region, there is cause for optimism.

“We no longer speak alone,” said Jintiach Arcos.

“Today the world is beginning to understand that without indigenous peoples there is no possible future.”

Librizzi highlights the growing collaboration among indigenous organisations in the three major tropical basins: the Amazon, the Congo Basin, and Southeast Asia.

“This is generating a stronger and more coordinated collective voice,” she said.

Jintiach Arcos added: “Hope lies in the organised strength of the people, in our capacity to propose, resist, and build.

“We don’t ask to be included—we demand to be equal allies, because without us, regeneration is impossible.”

This article was produced by SciDev.Net’s Latin Americal and Caribbean edition.