Resumen:
Abstract: Landscapes settled by indigenous communities represent nuanced inter-relationships
between culture and environment, where balance is achieved through Indigenous Knowledge
Systems (IKS). Through IKS, native peoples worldwide live, farm, and consume resources in a manner
that is responsive to natural systems and, as such, their lands present less deforestation and more
sustainable production per capita than is exhibited by non-indigenous practices. In Bolivia, the Origin
Farmer Indigenous Territory (TIOC) communities of Yaminahua-Machineri and Takana-Cavineño,
located in the North Amazon, are facing external threats of non-indigenous anthropogenic land use
change, such as road-building and industrial-scale resource extraction. In order to understand the
potential environmental and cultural loss to these territories, the present work seeks to determine
the present, base-line conservation state within these Bolivian communities, and forecast land
use change and its consequences until the year 2030. This was undertaken using a three-stage
protocol: (a) the TIOC communities’ current forest-based livelihoods, characteristics and management
were determined using on-site observation techniques and extensive literature review; (b) the
historical land use change (LUC) from natural vegetation to anthropogenic use was estimated using
multitemporal satellite imagery; and, finally, (c) geographically explicit non-indigenous anthropogenic
land-use change threat was extrapolated until 2030 using the GEOMOD modeler from the TerraSet
software. Preliminary results show that both TIOCs case-sites are fairly conserved due to their forest
dependence. However, deforestation and degradation could be evidenced, particularly within TIOC
areas not officially recognized by the central government, due to pressures from surrounding, new
non-indigenous settlements, road infrastructure, connection to markets, and the threat of the oil
exploitation. Projected LUC suggest serious threats to the unrecognized TIOC areas if community
governance is not reinforced, and if extractivist and non-indigenous development patterns continue
to be promoted by state and central government.
