On methodology

Locating and confirming previously uncontacted groups requires a combination of satellite imagery, community interviews, and overflights, and each tool has its limits.

Germán describes a methodology built on three pillars: interviews with communities living adjacent to isolated groups' territories, analysis of satellite imagery, and overflights. Interviews systematize evidence of presence (sightings, sounds, objects) and map it over time. High-resolution satellite imagery allows the team to identify communal houses and associated crops from above without disturbing communities. This methodology, he notes, is not universally applicable. The approach works best in the absence of tree cover and when the size of communal structures allows them to be visible from space. In this context, the absence of tree cover does not necessarily stem from extensive deforestation, but rather from clearings created by indigenous peoples living in isolation for the construction of dwellings, *malocas*, and domestic areas, as well as small subsistence farming plots; these create canopy openings that can be identified using high-resolution satellite imagery.

On what's working

Evidence-based advocacy can move policy when it is built from the ground up with territorial communities.

The most significant achievement Germán describes is the creation of an intangible zone in Puré River National Park and surrounding indigenous reserves: nearly a million hectares designated for the protection of isolated groups. That achievement was made possible by years of systematic monitoring. Satellite imagery showing the presence and continuity of isolated settlements gave decision-makers something concrete to act on. "Seeing is believing,” he says. “The images don't disturb the isolated communities, but they allow us to show the decision-makers that they are there."

Colombia's Decree 1232 of 2018 established three categories of recognition for uncontacted groups, culminating in state recognition of intangible and buffer zones, originating in field work conducted with neighboring communities. Through capacity-building processes supported by ACT and other partner organizations, neighboring communities developed skills in map reading, GPS use, and data collection; they now patrol access routes to these territories and negotiate management agreements with those attempting to enter.

A recent development that significantly strengthens this governance framework was the recognition—via a government decree issued in December 2025—of Indigenous Territorial Entities (ETIs) in the Colombian Amazon. This status establishes indigenous authorities as territorial governing bodies with their own competencies and direct access to public resources and coordination mechanisms with the national government, thereby reducing the intermediary role of departmental governments. Beyond improving resource allocation efficiency, ETIs represent a historic step toward the effective exercise of autonomy, self-government, and indigenous territorial management, enabling decisions regarding the use, management, and protection of ancestral territories to be made by the indigenous authorities themselves, in accordance with their own knowledge systems and forms of governance.

On barriers

Illegal mining is advancing faster than protection efforts can respond.

The most urgent threat Germán describes is illegal mining entering from the Brazilian side of the border. What began small has become industrial-scale extraction: 30-meter vessels that extract from riverbeds and deforest riverbanks, leaving lunar landscapes and severe mercury contamination. From 2019 to the present, more than 3,500 hectares have been deforested along the Brazilian side of the Puré River alone, with the Colombian side accelerating. Germán observed that the same dynamic is playing out in Indonesia, where legal nickel mining is displacing indigenous communities, polluting water sources, and destroying forest cover at a scale he describes as shocking. In both contexts, the speed and scale of extraction is outpacing the capacity of civil society and Indigenous organizations to respond.

On the intersection of climate and PIACI rights

Climate solutions that drive demand for minerals are creating new threats for PIACI, and few people are asking where the materials come from.

Germán draws a direct connection between the energy transition and the accelerating threat to PIACI territories. The global drive toward electric vehicles is fueling demand for nickel and other minerals, and that demand is driving the illegal and legal mining that is destroying the territories of isolated communities in Colombia, Indonesia, and beyond. For Germán, the solution is not to abandon the energy transition but to ensure that consumers, companies, and governments ask where the materials come from, and that supply chains carry certifications ensuring materials are sourced without harming PIACI territories.

On consolidating PIACI as a global category

Recognition of PIACI must start with governments officially acknowledging their existence.

For Germán, a big obstacle to consolidating PIACI as a global category is not legal or political but educational: people simply do not understand that isolated peoples exist, let alone that they have rights that must be protected. The Indonesia convening illustrated how far there is to go. Indonesia doesn’t have the institutional infrastructure that exists in Latin America — no organizations working directly with Indigenous peoples in isolation, no georeferenced territorial mapping, and a government that has little tolerance for dissent. The most transferable lesson from ACT's experience is not the specific methodology but the principle: start in the territory, work with neighboring communities, and build the evidence base that decision-makers need to act.