ASSOCIAÇÃO SOCIOCULTURAL YAWANAWA
Deep in the Brazilian Amazon, along the Gregório River in the state of Acre, the Yawanawá people have protected their territory for generations. Today, 188,000 hectares of intact Amazonian rainforest — an area larger than Rio de Janeiro — remain standing in large part because the Yawanawá are there. Not as symbols. As active, sovereign stewards.
The Yawanawá Sociocultural Association — ASCY — is the representative body of the Yawanawá people, founded and led entirely by the community itself. It oversees territorial monitoring, cultural education, food sovereignty, women’s empowerment, and the revival of spiritual and linguistic traditions. In 2023, after years of advocacy, ASCY celebrated the official demarcation of Yawanawá territory — a landmark victory in the ongoing fight to protect what belongs to them.
What makes ASCY remarkable is its integration of inner and outer dimensions of ecological care. The Yawanawá Life Plan — a community-designed framework for cultural, spiritual, and ecological sustainability — is not just a conservation strategy. It is a vision of what it means to live in right relationship with a place, guided by ancestral wisdom, transmitted through ceremony, song, and the Mariri Festival, where the Yawanawá open their territory to share their culture with the world.
Their pioneering Biodiversity Stewardship Units (BDSU) methodology, co-designed with Wildlife Works and Forest Trends, is now setting new global standards for indigenous-led conservation finance — ensuring that the people who protect forests are the ones who benefit from doing so.
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