Workshop 'Collaborative management focused on Indigenous Peoples and local communities'
The Power of Connections project: Harvesting Lessons and Strengthening Coalitions for the Conservation of the Amazon
Organizers and collaborators
The Workshop
- A 4-day workshop created space for key conservation actors to exchange experiences and lessons-learned;
- Took place in Manaus (Brazil), from September 2 to 4, 2025;
- Led by the Tropical Conservation and Development Program and supported by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation;
- João Campos Silva (Juruá Institute, Brazil) and Galo Zapata Ríos (Wildlife Conservation Society, Ecuador) were key intellectual leaders.
Workshop objectives
- To build a community among practitioners of collaborative management (co-management).
- To share lessons learned from innovative co-management initiatives in the Amazon.
- To strengthen connections between community leaders, public agents, NGO representatives, and researchers, fostering lasting collaborations.
- To exchange practical and effective tools and principles for co-management with Indigenous Peoples and local communities.
- To share successful experiences that can be replicated in other territories and places.
- To define the next priority steps to advance the practice of co-determination.
Day 1 – Building Community
Day 2 – Setting the stage: territories, voices and realities
Day 3 – Practices in action: tools, good practices and collaboration
Day 4 – Commitments, alliances and the road ahead
Community-based management does work, it has positive impacts for conservation and human wellbeing.''
Galo Zapata Ríos
Research Director, WCS Ecuador
Collaborative management is a concept that comes from the understanding that indigenous peoples and local communities are no longer beneficiaries but the protagonists of a process. And that this understanding is increasingly entering other spaces, whether in government, in the third sector, or in academia.''
João Campos Silva
President, Juruá Institute
I wanted to understand how to connect with the Amazon beyond just the Brazilian context, and to explore how this experience could deepen and inform my environmental activism. I leave feeling stronger, reassured, and confident that I am not alone in this struggle."
Maria da Cunha Figueiredo
Local Communicator and Educator, Juruá Institute
I think that collaborative management means breaking traditional systems where it is usually thought that I or my group believes that I am the only one who does things well. For me, it is a model, an organizational mechanism where the enabling conditions, institutional arrangements, and the construction and execution of actions are prioritized."
Katan Jua Tuntiak
General Manager, IKIAM Flourish
I appreciated that the sessions focused on ways of doing things, and that from those discussions, organizing concepts emerged to help structure the information. I also valued the diversity of voices and the genuine opportunities for everyone to be heard."
Candy Vilela
Head of Interinstitutional Relations Center for the Development of the Amazonian Indigenous – CEDIA
I deeply value the enormous effort of the organizing team in bringing such a diverse group of people to Manaus to exchange experiences on issues to which we have dedicated our lives."
André Pinassi Antunes
Co-founder, RedeFauna
This workshop is the third of five distinct thematic workshops implemented in 2025-26 in the Amazon Basin under the Power of Connections project.
In a context of constant and unpredictable change in Amazonia, the Power of Connections project builds on pragmatic conservation insights from Pan-Amazonian Indigenous elders and youth, the private sector, researchers, funders, government officials, and legal practitioners. The project provides platforms and processes to share what has been working to consolidate and expand protections for Amazonian lands and people. Leveraging their collective intelligence and using their hard-won knowledge and coalitions, participants address the basin’s most pressing challenges and in ways that honor territorial and cultural integrity and foster pragmatic synergies between ancestral wisdom and contemporary contexts.
The Power of Connections Project is led by the Tropical Conservation and Development Program (TCD) within the Center for Latin American Studies at the University of Florida (UF). TCD is proud to partner with the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation who has funded this project and website
Questions and comments
Contact us
Contact: tcd@latam.ufl.edu
Website: https://amazonconservationconnections.com/
Photo credits:
@JorgePimentelRamos
@GabbyrSalazar