On what's working

Systematic monitoring is civil society's most powerful contribution when state protection is weak or threatened.

Opi built a structured, consistent system for tracking judicial and administrative threats to PIACI territories in near real time. The result was a set of dossiers and technical reports that equipped prosecutors, journalists, and the Federal Supreme Court to act, and five Indigenous Lands that the government targeted for reduction were protected. Fabio says that what made it work is not the size of the organization but the consistency of its technical production and the speed with which it could respond to judicial deadlines. "Having that capacity to monitor and meet deadlines within a judicial process is a huge advantage," he says, "because it allows us to achieve that reach in the long term." Opi has since expanded that model, maintaining a geographic information platform tracking threats and pressures on the lands of PIACI communities, supporting land regularization processes and the institutional strengthening of Indigenous organizations working on this issue.

Network-based organizing produces more than any organization can achieve alone.

Each project carried out by Opi is conducted in partnership with universities, Indigenous organizations, other NGOs, working groups, and coalitions. Organizations that compete for visibility and funding, Fabio argues, waste resources and fragment the field. Organizations that build networks can cover more ground, respond faster, and present funders with something more compelling than individual institutional ambition. "Organizations don't need to compete with each other," he says. Instead, Opi focuses on “strengthening the network-based movement." Fabio sees this networked model as one of the most transferable lessons from the Brazilian context, though he notes that it requires institutional culture, not just goodwill: organizations must be able to honestly assess their own limitations and divide work accordingly.

On barriers

The state's capacity to protect PIACI communities is structurally inadequate, and civil society's role as monitor is not yet fully institutionalized.

The number of registered isolated and uncontacted groups in Brazil, distributed across an enormous territory, is beyond what the small teams responsible for their protection can manage. Fabio frames this primarily as a structural problem: the scale of the task simply exceeds the capacity of the institution assigned to carry it out. Civil society and the Indigenous Movement need to be recognized as essential parts of the broader system, yet even supportive governments often see their monitoring roles as interference rather than a valuable complement to their own efforts.

The instability of civil society funding leaves critical gaps in protection.

For Opi, the most immediate practical barrier is funding instability. No one at the observatory has a formal employment contract or health insurance. There are regions of the Amazon where isolated and uncontacted peoples are known to live but where Opi cannot currently maintain monitoring presence. The gap between what the organization can see and what it knows exists is a direct function of resources.

On the intersection of climate and PIACI rights

Conservation policy and indigenous policy cannot be separated, but right now they often are.

Fabio describes an active and unresolved tension in Brazil between territorial rights of PIACI communities and conservation frameworks such as biodiversity corridors, extractive reserves, and state parks. In at least three cases he is aware of, conservation units were created without accounting for the confirmed or likely presence of isolated peoples, and when that presence was subsequently confirmed, competing legal claims arose that have not been fully resolved. The broader challenge is that neither environmental policy nor indigenous policy, operating independently, has the capacity to create a closed corridor or manage a shared area effectively. Dialogue between the two is essential, and it is not yet happening consistently.

On building effective alliances

Large convenings create connections, but smaller, bilateral, longer-term exchanges are what sustain them.

Fabio participated in the Indonesia convening and came away with a clear view of both its value and its limits. The convening brought together people doing similar work across very different contexts, and the connections made there have already generated concrete follow-up activity. But a meeting of this scale cannot, on its own, build the kind of sustained cross-regional infrastructure the field needs. What he calls "partial connections" — smaller, bilateral, grassroots-level exchanges — are what actually build the field over time.

On consolidating PIACI as a global category

The category is useful as a legal instrument, even where it does not fit perfectly.

Applying the PIACI framework outside South America is difficult, as the categories do not map cleanly onto groups in countries with different colonial histories, different relationships between Indigenous peoples and the state, and no recognized Indigenous territories. Fabio has observed the difficulty his counterparts in Indonesia have applying the same definition that is used in South America. However, he also saw a recognition that even an imperfect international legal category is valuable, because it creates a framework through which vulnerable populations can seek protection.