A 191-page report by Survival International warns that up to 65 per cent of the world’s at least 196 uncontacted Indigenous groups face immediate threats from logging, 40 per cent from mining, and about 20 per cent from agribusiness, with the vast majority concentrated in the Amazon basin.
That is according to the London-based advocacy group, which says that these communities — deliberately isolated after generations of violence, slavery and disease — are under intensifying pressure from both legal and illegal incursions, and that half of the groups “could be wiped out within 10 years if governments and companies do not act.”
“These are what I would call silent genocides — there are no TV crews, no journalists. But they are happening, and they’re happening now,” said Fiona Watson, Survival International’s research and advocacy director.
The new tally reveals that the human crisis is a collision between commercial interests and communities that maintain autonomous lifeways through hunting, fishing, and small-scale cultivation. The groups are not “lost tribes” frozen in time, Watson said. “(Instead) they’re happy in the forest. They have incredible knowledge and they help keep these very valuable forests standing — essential to all humanity in the fight against climate change.”
Experts and advocates warn that the problem is exacerbated by government indifference and misconceptions. Because uncontacted peoples do not participate in formal politics and their lands are often coveted for timber, minerals, and agricultural expansion, they are frequently treated as politically marginal or seen through reductive stereotypes that either romanticise them or portray them as impediments to development.
“A simple cold that you and I recover from in a week … they could die of that cold,” said Dr Subhra Bhattacharjee, director general of the Forest Stewardship Council and an Indigenous rights expert, who last week was in Panama City for the FSC General Assembly, who said contact can destroy livelihoods, belief systems as well as health, and that international law’s requirement of free, prior and informed consent — FPIC — cannot be meaningfully satisfied for groups living in voluntary isolation. “No FPIC means no consent,” he said, adding that his organisation follows a strict policy: “No contact, no-go zones.”
Drivers of the recent surge in danger range from state-built infrastructure that opens frontier zones to settlement to the expanding reach of organised crime. Watson traced early threats to colonisation and state-led development projects, noting that highways built during Brazil’s military dictatorship “acted as a magnet for settlers,” followed by loggers and cattle ranchers whose incursions brought disease and violence that wiped out communities. Today, she warned, drug traffickers and illegal gold miners now penetrate deep into Indigenous territories across Peru, Brazil, Colombia, Venezuela, and Ecuador, bringing infectious disease and firearms to confrontations once fought with bows and arrows.
“Any chance encounter runs the risk of transmitting the flu, which can easily wipe out an uncontacted people within a year of contact,” Watson said. “And bows and arrows are no match for guns.”
Religious incursions have also had deadly consequences. Watson recalled that under former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, an evangelical pastor was placed in charge of the government’s unit for uncontacted peoples and was given access to their coordinates. “Their mission was to force contact — to ‘save souls,’” she said. “That is incredibly dangerous.” The stakes extend beyond the fate of isolated communities. Protecting uncontacted peoples, they argue, is also a frontline strategy for preserving carbon-rich forests. “With the world under pressure from climate change, we will sink or swim together,” Bhattacharjee said.
Policy failures and uneven enforcement make protection fragile. International instruments, such as the International Labour Organisation’s Convention 169 and the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, recognise the right to self-determination and to remain uncontacted; however, practical enforcement varies widely. Recent political developments illustrate the volatility: Peru’s Congress rejected a proposal to create the Yavari-Mirim Indigenous Reserve, which Indigenous federations say leaves isolated groups exposed, while President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s government in Brazil has sought to rebuild protections weakened under his predecessor by boosting budgets and patrols. The Inter-American Court of Human Rights recently ruled that Ecuador had failed to protect the Tagaeri and Taromenane peoples, who live in voluntary isolation in Yasuni National Park.
Recommendations from advocates include:
- Legal recognition and enforcement of territories — Governments should formally recognise and enforce Indigenous territories as off-limits to extractive industries, and prosecute crimes against isolated peoples.
- Cautious mapping and monitoring — Approximate mapping of territories can allow authorities to create protective buffers, but must be carried out from a safe distance to avoid risking the groups’ health or autonomy.
- Supply-chain accountability — Corporations should trace sourcing to ensure commodities such as gold, timber and soy are not produced on or near uncontacted territories; consumers and public pressure should reinforce corporate action.
Survival International is also calling for the immediate suspension of mining, oil, and agribusiness projects in or near these lands. Watson singled out logging as the biggest single threat and mining as close behind, citing the case of the Hongana Manyawa on Indonesia’s Halmahera Island, where nickel extraction for electric-vehicle batteries threatens an uncontacted people. “People think electric cars are a green alternative,” she said, “but mining companies are operating on the land of uncontacted peoples and posing enormous threats.”
In South America, illegal gold mining in Yanomami territory in Brazil and Venezuela continues to contaminate rivers with mercury, poisoning fish and undermining traditional livelihoods. “The impact is devastating — socially and physically,” Watson said.
Advocates argue that protecting uncontacted peoples requires a dual approach: stronger laws and enforcement are essential, but so is a shift in public perception, treating these communities as autonomous citizens of the planet whose survival impacts the global future. “Public opinion and pressure are essential,” Watson said. “It’s largely through citizens and the media that so much has already been achieved to recognise uncontacted peoples and their rights.”
- To learn more about the role of Indigenous peoples in managing the Amazon (and Atlantic forests) click on Wood Central’s special feature.
