Indigenous territories are widely recognized as vital for conserving the environment and biodiversity, but far less is known about their role in protecting human health.

Only recently have researchers begun to fill in this knowledge gap and investigate how the protection of these areas can provide health benefits as well as ecosystem services. Now, a new paper analyzing the relationship between Indigenous territories and the occurrence of 21 diseases in the Amazon biome over 20 years suggests that healthy forests on protected Indigenous territories can help reduce disease incidence and risks to human health.

“Indigenous forests act as a sort of shield for health,” said study lead author Júlia Rodrigues Barreto, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of São Paulo in Brazil. Published in Communications Earth & Environment, the study is the first of its kind to look at all nine Amazonian countries. Its main contribution, according to Barreto, is to convey the importance of guaranteeing land rights for Indigenous peoples across the Amazon.