Indigenous land back in Chile brings mixed bag of environmental outcomes: Study

A study in Nature Sustainability found that returning 217,716 hectares of ancestral land to Mapuche communities in southern Chile between 1994 and 2022 didn't increase native forest cover, biodiversity or carbon sequestration. Communities instead expanded grasslands for livestock and reduced non-native tree plantations, rejecting the commercial land uses tied to their historical dispossession.

Researchers say this challenges assumptions that Indigenous self-determination automatically produces conservation-friendly outcomes. The land Mapuche communities received was already heavily degraded by centuries of forced deforestation for wheat farming and pine plantations, leaving little native forest to begin with.

A Mapuche academic not involved in the study warned against judging land restitution by environmental metrics defined by outsiders, noting land was returned because of dispossession, not because communities promised a carbon score.

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