Skoll Entrepreneur(s): Mark Plotkin and Liliana Madrigal
Change(s) Addressed: Environmental Sustainability

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DESCRIPTION:

Mark and Liliana, a husband and wife team, have spent much of their lives preserving the Amazon rainforest and the knowledge and culture of its indigenous inhabitants. Liliana and Mark recognized that the loss of the forest and the destruction of tribal culture were inextricably linked and that one could not thrive without the other. Together, they created ACT to preserve the cultures of indigenous peoples of the Amazon and empower them to protect their rainforest homes.

KEY ACCOMPLISHMENTS AS OF 2010

• In partnership with local indigenous groups, ACT has completed ethnographic and land-use mapping for over 60 million acres of Amazonian rainforest lands. Doing so has laid the groundwork for the eventual protection of those lands by providing the basis for forest management plans designed by the very people who inhabit them, with 38 million of those acres already better monitored against illegal incursions.
• Through a course recognized by the International Ranger Federation, ACT has trained over 125 indigenous persons as park guards, providing their communities with the technical capacity and communication skills to work directly with state and national government environmental agencies to protect their forests.
• ACT has facilitated the national registration of 10 indigenous associations in 3 Amazonian countries, providing the associated indigenous groups with the legal entity and autonomy required to build partnerships with governments in the protection of their forest lands.