Indigenous Peoples Are Shaping the Future of the Putumayo-Içá River Basin

Flowing through the Amazon across Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Brazil, the Putumayo-Içá River connects one of the world’s most biodiverse regions across national borders. Known as the Putumayo in the upper and middle reaches and the Içá in Brazil, the river and its basin sustain an extraordinary diversity of ecosystems, species and human cultures.

Travelling along its waters also reveals a landscape where human life and nature have been intertwined for centuries. Across the basin, Indigenous Peoples have maintained deep relationships with rivers and forests, sustaining knowledge, cultural practices and systems of governance passed from one generation to the next.

Indigenous territories cover approximately 45 per cent of the basin, which is home to more than 30 distinct Indigenous Peoples living across more than 153 communities.

The future of this part of the Amazon cannot be separated from the people who have lived in and cared for these territories for generations.

As the world marks the International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples, the Putumayo-Içá basin offers an important reminder: effective conservation depends not only on protecting ecosystems, but also on recognising the rights, knowledge and leadership of the people whose lives are inseparable from them.

The GEF Integrated Management of the Putumayo-Içá River Basin Project works with Indigenous Peoples and other local communities across the four countries to strengthen the basin's integrated management. Rather than treating traditional knowledge as an addition to conservation, the project brings different knowledge systems together to shape decisions and solutions.

Today, 33 initiatives are being implemented with Indigenous communities and other local groups across the basin: 19 subprojects and 14 new Indigenous-led initiatives, alongside support for the Trinational Program for Conservation and Sustainable Development.

Together, these efforts are expected to directly reach more than 6,300 people, approximately 90 per cent of whom are Indigenous.

The initiatives respond to priorities identified in the territories themselves. They include strengthening livelihoods and food security, research by and for Indigenous Peoples, water-quality monitoring, sustainable fisheries, ecosystem restoration, and value chains based on non-timber forest products.

What connects these different efforts is a common principle: traditional knowledge is not simply part of the Amazon’s cultural heritage. It is a living body of knowledge that remains essential to understanding, managing and conserving the region.

“On this day, the GEF Putumayo-Içá Project recognises the vital role of Indigenous Peoples in conserving the basin and reaffirms our commitment to working alongside them on solutions for integrated basin management, biodiversity conservation and stronger livelihoods,”

said Roberto Gómez, Project Director.

Working with Indigenous Peoples requires more than inviting communities to participate in activities. It means ensuring that their priorities, rights, and governance structures are reflected in how those activities are designed and implemented.

The project follows the World Bank’s Environmental and Social Standards, WCS safeguards, and relevant national and international frameworks concerning Indigenous Peoples and traditional local communities. It also implements an Indigenous Peoples Planning Framework and develops Indigenous Peoples Plans together with directly involved communities.

These processes include consultation, continuous dialogue and joint planning with participating Indigenous organisations.

One example is the partnership with the Asociación de Cabildos Indígenas del Pueblo Awá del Putumayo (ACIPAP), which represents 48 Awá communities in Colombia. Together, ACIPAP and the project are supporting the creation of an Awá Indigenous Training and Research School designed to preserve and share knowledge on protecting water and territory.

For Awá leader Amílcar Chapuez, the initiative is also about strengthening self-governance.

“This project strengthens our own governance and the participation of traditional authorities. More concretely, it will allow us to establish a school where ancestral knowledge can come together with other forms of knowledge to strengthen the autonomy, cultural identity and decision-making of the Awá people.”

The example points to a broader lesson for conservation across the Amazon: durable solutions are stronger when Indigenous Peoples are not treated simply as beneficiaries, but as rights holders, partners and decision-makers.

For the team working across the Putumayo-Içá basin, collaboration with Indigenous Peoples has also required a reconsideration of how conservation knowledge itself is understood.

“Working with Indigenous Peoples is an exercise in humility: recognising that the wisdom of other knowledge systems is as useful and valuable as what we have traditionally called science,”

Gómez said.

Eduardo Villegas, the project’s Environmental and Social Standards Coordinator, describes it through an image rooted in the basin itself:

“It is like paddling in the same canoe, recognising that we are different, but that we can build together through mutual respect and the recognition of rights and responsibilities.”

For Dayana Reyes, the project’s Monitoring and Evaluation Specialist, the starting point is listening.

“It means understanding that there is no single way of inhabiting the world. It means learning to listen to memories and ancestral knowledge with respect and openness.”

These reflections matter because the Putumayo-Içá is changing. Climate change, pollution, ecosystem degradation, and growing pressures on natural resources are reshaping the conditions under which communities have lived for generations.

Against that backdrop, conservation cannot be separated from questions of rights, governance, culture, and knowledge.

The GEF-funded project, implemented by the World Bank and executed by WCS, currently works directly and in coordination with more than 30 Indigenous Peoples across Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru.

The objective is not simply to conserve a river basin. It is to strengthen the conditions in which the people who call it home can exercise their rights, sustain their cultures and livelihoods, and help determine how their territories will be managed in a changing Amazon.

For the Putumayo-Içá, that distinction is fundamental. Indigenous Peoples are not only guardians of the basin’s past. They are helping shape its future.

The GEF Putumayo-Içá River Basin Integrated Management Project is a five-year initiative aimed at promoting the integrated management of natural resources in the Putumayo-Içá River Basin, which is shared by Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru.

For more information, please contact Carla Martínez G (cmartinez@wcs.org).

Words by Carla Martínez.

Thumbnail by WCS.