The Instituto Socioambiental (ISA) is a Brazilian non-profit civil society organization, whose mission is to propose integrated solutions to social and environmental issues, with a central focus on the defence of social, collective and diffuse environmental and social rights and assets, cultural heritage, human rights and indigenous peoples, quilombolas and traditional peoples. Founded in 1994, ISA was accredited as a public interest civil society organization (OSCIP) in 2001. Organised around regional and national programmes, ISA’s principal purpose is defence of socio-environmental rights, through monitoring and proposing public policy alternatives, research, dissemination, documentation of information, development of participative models of sustainability and institutional strengthening of local partners.
ISA was one of the organizations that succeeded the Ecumenical Documentation and Information Centre (CEDI), continuing its far-reaching work of analysis and dissemination, which constituted the most complete collection on the recent history and current status of indigenous peoples living in Brazil. Although ISA’s public image is often associated with indigenous peoples and their lands, activities regarding Conservation Areas (UCs) predates the founding of ISA. CEDI had housed the embryo of the programme that today monitors, systematizes, analyses and disseminates daily information about UCs.
In 1993, the CEDI Indigenous Land Monitoring Project team began to monitor other federal special use areas in the Brazilian Amazon, including federal Conservation Areas. As a result, many cases of overlaps between indigenous lands and other federal areas were found. The monitoring found that about half the cases of overlap were between Indigenous Lands and Conservation Areas, including fully homologated Indigenous Lands. This analysis anticipated by years a challenge now commonly found in he planning and territorial management of protected areas: that of resolving the impasse of overlaps over and above the simple clash of legal status, necessarily implying the recognition of the importance of Indigenous Lands in the context of a wider political strategy for the preservation and conservation of the Amazon region and taking into account the constitutional right to exclusive use by indigenous groups of the territories they traditionally occupy.
In 1995, in a partnership born of an agreement with the SOS Mata Atlântica Foundation, the status of the remaining areas of the Atlantic Forest began to be evaluated more precisely and, as regards Conservation Areas. In 2007, ISA launched its Characterization of Conservation Areas in the Brazilian Amazon site, making publicly available a set of information. This was recognized as one of the ten best environmental sites in Brazil (Época Magazine 2008). It was this site that gave rise to online portals on Conservation Areas in the Brazilian Amazon in 2011 and in the whole of Brazil the following year, with approximately one million views a year.
The main objective continues to be to produce and disseminate reliable information that positively influences public policies and the actions of the state and civil society concerning the defence of collective rights, environmental protection and conservation, as well as contributing to societal control of collective natural heritage. The new portals provided basic information on each Conservation Area, federal and state, regarding its management, environmental characterization, location, overlap with Indigenous Lands and the sequence of its legal documentation, as well as providing available local and national news. Besides basic introductory texts and in-depth treatments of some themes, it provides a cartographic interface to provide information on different themes and at different scales, enabling a rich contextualization of the Brazilian territory.
Who is here and who has helped along the way...?
Who is here?
Overall coordination
Antonio Oviedo
Monitoring and production of content
Fany Pantaleoni Ricardo
Tiago Moreira dos Santos
Tainá Aragão
Giovanna Costanti de Lima
Beatriz Moraes Murer
Clara de Assis Andrade
Jade Vieira Cavalhieri
Yasmim Kananda Cavalcante
Joana Traldi Bomfim
Victor da Silva Araujo
Development and coding
João Ricardo Rampinelli
Silvio Carlos
Geoprocessing
Cícero Augusto
William Pereira de Lima
Michelle Araujo de Lira
Translations
Alfredo Zea
Anthony R. (Tony) Gross
Who has helped along the way?
Alana Almeida de Souza
Alex Piaz
Alexandre Degan
Alicia Rolla
Bruna Dell Agnolo
Bruno Marianno
David Rodgers
Daniele Leal de Araújo
Eduardo Ultima
Eliseu Teixeira Neto
Francisco d'Albertas Gomes de Carvalho
Harold Martin Wright III
Helena Chiaretti Leonel Ferreira
Ítalo Rocha Freitas
Jackson dos Santos Brito
Letícia Braga Aniceto
Lia Taruiap Troncarelli
Luana Lopes de Lucca
Marcelo Lopes Oliveira
Marina Spindel
Nurit Rachel Bensusan
Paula Zaterka Giroldo
Paulo Henrique Aguiar
Rosely Alvim Sanches
Rosimeire Rurico
Silvia de Melo Futada
Thais Bucci Francisco
Thomas Gallois
Colaboradores
Adriana Ramos, Ana Paula Leite Prates, Caroline Jeanne Delelis, David Leonardo Bouças da Silva, Enrique Svirsky, Gabriella Contoli, Henry Philippe Ibanez de Novion, Juliana Santilli, Kelly Bonach, Maurício Mercadante, Michele de Sá Dechoum, Nádia Bandeira Sacenco Kornijezuc, Patrícia Pinha, Raul Silva Telles do Vale, Sônia Wiedmann and Thiago Mota Cardoso
Thanks to all the photographers who collaborated by ceding photos and whose credits appear next to each image.