On methodology

You cannot protect PIACI peoples without first understanding and supporting the communities that live alongside them.

For Adamo, effective protection of PIACI communities begins with the communities that live around them. These neighboring communities have daily awareness of the territory that no outside professional or organization can replicate. This insight shapes CITRMD's approach. The organization works at three interconnected levels: the territorial level, where community members are the irreplaceable source of on-the-ground knowledge; the regional level, where CITRMD advocates for PIACI rights within Bolivia and across borders with neighboring organizations in Peru and Brazil; and the regional level, through participation in GTI-PIACI.

On what’s working

Building legal recognition takes decades, but each layer creates a foundation for the next.

Bolivia's path to recognizing PIACI rights has been slow, incremental, and hard-won. Between 2006 and 2010, the Indigenous movement in Bolivia succeeded in incorporating Article 31 into the nation’s constitution, which established the right to non-contact, territorial rights, and legal protection for PIACI. Law 450, passed subsequently, addressed the specific rights of highly vulnerable peoples.

These were significant achievements, requiring sustained effort from grassroots organizations, NGOs, and indigenous movements. But for years, recognition existed only on paper. The turning point came in 2015, when a state oil company conducting seismic exploration in the Tacana II territory encountered PIACI communities in the field. CITRMD was well positioned to respond, pressuring the national government to take precautionary measures and driving the process of formal recognition. That process culminated in 2025, when the Tacana people's territorial claim was finally granted. But Adamo is clear that this milestone is only a beginning.

On barriers

Territorial recognition is not just a legal challenge; it is a political one.

Bolivia presents a particularly acute version of a challenge that exists across the region: the question of who has rights to land and territory when PIACI communities are acknowledged in a system already stretched to its limits. According to Adamo, 90% of the distributable land in Bolivia is already in someone's hands, and there are more than nine isolated or initially contacted peoples in the country whose territorial rights remain unresolved. Recognizing those rights inevitably creates conflict with existing landholders, extractive industries, and state policies oriented toward economic development. "It is no longer enough to simply identify a people in isolation or to demarcate a territory,” he says. “Communities that now have legal representation before the Bolivian state can go and claim their rights, but they aren't being heard."

Compounding this is the challenge of visibility: a significant portion of the national population remains unaware that isolated communities exist at all. Building awareness among urban populations and state institutions is as important as building legal frameworks, and neither happens quickly.

On the intersection of climate and PIACI rights

Linking PIACI rights to climate and conservation opens necessary but difficult conversations.

Adamo sees the connection between PIACI rights and climate and conservation agendas as real and important. Protecting PIACI territories contributes directly to conserving the Amazon and mitigating climate change. But bringing PIACI communities' territorial rights into conversations about climate or conservation does not simplify the political challenge; it adds another dimension to an already complex debate about land tenure, resource access, and state priorities. "Answering this question contributes to changing the policies of any state or country on this continent, and this positive change could safeguard urban life in the face of climate change,” he says. “But nothing will be easy."

On consolidating PIACI as a global category

The experience is transferable, but it has to be adapted, not transplanted.

Adamo sees value in sharing Bolivia's experience with counterparts in other regions, particularly the long process of building constitutional and legal recognition for PIACI. But he is careful not to overstate how directly transferable that experience is. The cultural, political, and geographic contexts are different enough that the lessons must be adapted rather than imported wholesale. "In Asia, the cultures and their way of appreciating things may be different,” he says. “All of that has to be addressed on the ground."

On the funding landscape

Strengthening grassroots organizations is the next priority.

Having territorial recognition on paper is a milestone, but it does not automatically translate into protection. What is needed now is the strengthening of grassroots organizations — the community-level bodies that are closest to the territory and the isolated peoples within it — so that they can sustain the daily work of monitoring, advocacy, and relationship-building that formal recognition alone cannot provide. State institutions also need strengthening. In Bolivia, the General Directorate of Indigenous Peoples (DIGEPIO) needs greater capacity to fulfill its role. For Adamo, the work ahead requires a two-pronged effort: building from the ground up through community organizations, and pushing from the outside in through state institutions.