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4d ago

Study Links Protected Indigenous Amazon Lands to Lower Disease Rates

Researchers say the benefit depends on intact, legally protected forest.

FILE - Ashaninka's territory sits along the winding Amonia River in Acre state, Brazil, June 22, 2024. (AP Photo/Jorge Saenz, File)
An Indigenous Tikuna man in the Amazon Rainforest in Colombia. Some researchers oppose the idea that human cultures would have been limited and determined by the environment, and that supports the notion that human cultures have modified the environment as desired. Image by Rhett Ayers Butler/Mongabay.
FILE - A fisherman walks to his boat in Santa Rosa, Peru, an island on the Amazon River on Aug. 17, 2025. (AP Photo/Ivan Valencia, File)
FILE - Firefighters work to put out a blaze in the Amazon forest during a drought and high temperatures in the rural municipality of Careiro Castanho, Amazonas state, Brazil, Oct. 21, 2023. (AP Photo/Edmar Barros, File)

Overview

  • The peer-reviewed study in Communications Earth & Environment analyzed 2000–2019 data across nine Amazon countries, combining counts for 21 diseases with forest cover, fragmentation, fire rates and Indigenous territory coverage.
  • Regions containing an Indigenous territory with high forest cover—about 40–45% or more—recorded fewer fire-related respiratory illnesses and zoonotic diseases such as malaria, while degraded or fragmented forests weakened or reversed the association.
  • The disease-limiting association was stronger where Indigenous territories had formal legal protection.
  • Authors propose mechanisms including pollutant absorption by trees, reduced human–wildlife contact and higher biodiversity, while acknowledging these pathways need further confirmation.
  • Outside experts called the work robust but emphasized it is correlational and that the forest-cover threshold should be interpreted cautiously as policymakers consider implications before the UN climate summit in Belém in November.