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First students graduate from
Amazon Indigenous Training Center
15 indigenous students return to native lands with new environmental management skills

CAFI First Graduates, Amazon, Indigenous, Brazil
CAFI's first graduating class
© Margaret Francis/TNC

One of the first graduates of the Amazon Indigenous Training Center (known locally as CAFI), Andréia Naique Taukane, from the Bakairi indigenous group, says that amongst her future plans she hopes develop a database to monitor the environmental impacts of mechanized agriculture on indigenous territories in her home state of Mato Grosso in the Brazilian Amazon. “I hope to be able to pass along the techniques learned at CAFI to my people. This is important in order for us to strengthen our autonomy and sustainably manage our lands.”

On December 20, 2006, Andréia and 14 other indigenous students from the nine states of the Brazilian Amazon celebrated their graduation from the first five-month course in Ethno-environmental Management offered at the Amazon Indigenous Training Center, located in the city of Manaus, Brazil.  CAFI is a pilot initiative being led by the Conservancy and partner COIAB, the largest indigenous federation in the Amazon. The goal is to promote the conservation of indigenous lands in the Amazon Basin, which comprise an area the size of Texas, California, New York and Florida combined.

Traditionally, indigenous people of the Amazon have sustainably managed natural resources for their communities. However, increasing internal and external pressures for natural resources, including illegal logging, poaching, and over-fishing, threaten indigenous lands. In order to counter these threats, indigenous people identified the need for increased, culturally-appropriate technical assistance in sustainable land management. Out of this scenario, CAFI was born and inaugurated in August, 2006. CAFI’s mission is to strengthen local and regional indigenous organizations by training indigenous technicians to work in land management in their own territories.

The next group of students will begin classes at CAFI in February, 2007, in a course centered on Project Management specific to indigenous lands. According to Lúcio Terena, CAFI’s director, himself from the Terena people, “the experience gained with this first class was very positive and allowed us to learn, analyze and perfect our actions in order to better receive the next group of students.’’

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Learn more about CAFI and other initiatives The Nature Conservancy is developing in the Amazon.