Indigenous mobility and forced immobility in the Brazilian Amazon: rights, livelihoods, and policy gaps under environmental change

Introduction

The Brazilian Amazon, the world's largest tropical rainforest, has long been shaped by the interplay between environmental change and human mobility. Indigenous peoples, who number approximately 1.6935 million and belong to 266 ethnic groups across Brazil (International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs [IWGIA], 2025), have historically served as ecological stewards whose territories have demonstrably reduced deforestation pressures. Yet in recent years, the region has experienced intensified environmental shocks—most notably the historic drought of 2023–2025 driven by El Niño and anomalous North Atlantic warming—alongside persistent institutional constraints on land rights and resource governance. These constraints have roots in the period after the 2016 political transition. Land conflicts in the Legal Amazon rose from an average of approximately 475 per year between 2012 and 2015 to 764 in 2016, with the annual average remaining elevated at around 682. The transfer of demarcation authority from FUNAI to the Ministry of Agriculture, combined with budget reductions and reduced enforcement capacity in FUNAI and IBAMA, led to a near-complete halt in new Indigenous Territory approvals during 2019–2022. This created enforcement gaps that allowed land appropriation to advance, setting conditions in which subsequent climate shocks could more readily translate into livelihood disruption and constrained adaptation choices.

This Perspective advances a single analytical argument: environmental shocks (extreme climatic events and resource degradation) and institutional constraints (insecure land tenure, federal fragmentation, and entrenched interest-group influence) jointly shape Indigenous adaptation choices, generating the coexistence of mobility and forced immobility. Climate-driven livelihood disruptions push some households toward temporary relocation in search of food, water, healthcare, or safety. At the same time, insecure land rights, deep cultural attachment to ancestral territories, and the threat of permanent dispossession by external actors create powerful incentives to remain, even under extreme conditions. The result is not a binary choice between “leaving” and “staying,” but a structurally constrained dilemma in which both mobility and immobility become forms of reactive adaptation rather than proactive resilience. This argument refines the meaning of climate justice in Indigenous contexts by showing how environmental and institutional factors co-produce vulnerability that cannot be reduced to either climate impacts or governance failures alone.

The 2023–2025 drought provides a stark illustration of these dynamics. River levels reached historic lows, disrupting transportation, fisheries, and access to drinking water and medical services across dozens of Indigenous territories. Official monitoring recorded 5,796 km² of deforestation in the Legal Amazon between August 2024 and July 2025—an 11.08% decline from the previous year (Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais [INPE], 2025)—yet extreme weather events continued to amplify ecosystem and livelihood vulnerability. Indigenous communities that rely on forest resources and river systems face compounded pressures: livelihood collapse encourages short-term movement, while the risk of losing territorial claims discourages permanent departure. Similar patterns have been documented in multiple territories, where partial population mobility coexists with widespread immobility rooted in land tenure insecurity and external threats. These dynamics are reinforced by insecure land rights, which are exacerbated during periods of weakened federal enforcement and mean that departure from traditional territories carries the risk of irreversible occupation by external actors. Cultural and spiritual ties to specific rivers, forests, and ceremonial sites further raise the social costs of leaving. External pressures, including illegal mining, logging, and agricultural expansion, intensify both the push toward mobility (through livelihood destruction) and the pull toward immobility (through the fear that absence will facilitate dispossession). The resulting pattern is one in which environmental shocks and institutional constraints reinforce each other, limiting the range of viable adaptation options.

We draw on political ecology and historical institutionalism to explain why environmental shocks and institutional constraints jointly produce the coexistence of mobility and forced immobility. Political ecology directs attention to relational power struggles through which external actors convert enforcement gaps into territorial advantages, while historical institutionalism highlights path dependence—how earlier reductions in agency capacity generate self-reinforcing patterns that make subsequent restoration progressively less likely. Their combination is appropriate here because it shows that climate-related (im)mobility in the Amazon is not produced by environmental degradation alone but by the interaction of shocks with historically sedimented institutional arrangements that narrow viable adaptation options.

This Perspective examines these interactions through four interconnected sections, situated within a broader historical trajectory beginning after the 2016 political transition. The following section traces the historical trajectory of land conflicts and institutional weakening since 2016, elaborating both the changes during the Bolsonaro administration and the 2023–2025 drought's interaction with them, showing how these jointly shape Indigenous adaptation choices. The subsequent section develops the conceptual framework of mobility and forced immobility, grounding empirical cases in established insights from environmental migration and political ecology scholarship. The third section analyzes policy and institutional responses since 2023, focusing on the mechanisms through which stated intentions are mediated by congressional veto points, federal–local tensions, and informal networks of influence. The final section discusses theoretical and policy implications for climate justice and sustainable adaptation in Indigenous territories.

On the interaction of environmental shocks, institutional constraints, and Indigenous adaptation strategies, this article moves beyond descriptive accounts of recent events in the Brazilian Amazon. It offers an integrated explanation of why mobility and forced immobility coexist, and why conventional policy approaches have struggled to resolve the resulting dilemmas. The Brazilian case thus provides broader lessons for understanding climate-related (im)mobility in contexts where land rights remain contested and institutional authority is fragmented.

Environmental shocks and institutional constraints in interaction: the historical trajectory of land conflicts

The 2023–2025 drought, outlined in the introduction as producing acute livelihood disruption across dozens of Indigenous territories, interacted with these path-dependent institutional weaknesses. Enforcement gaps that emerged after 2016 did not merely coincide with climate shocks; they amplified their effects by converting temporary livelihood pressures into structurally constrained choices between short-term mobility and forced immobility.

Land conflicts between Indigenous peoples and external interest groups in the Brazilian Amazon have a long history, and they intensified dramatically during the Bolsonaro administration from 2019 to 2022. The conflicts mainly manifested as illegal mining (garimpo), illegal logging, land grabbing, and large-scale livestock expansion. These activities led to the continuous encroachment of Indigenous Territories and frequent violent incidents, directly threatening the traditional livelihoods and cultural survival of Indigenous peoples. A transnational comparative analysis by Froese et al. (2022) of the southwestern Amazon region, including the Brazilian state of Acre, pointed out that the main drivers of land conflicts include unclear land tenure, competition for access to natural resources, changes in identity and lifestyles, and the interweaving of state-market-driven development agendas with networked illegal criminal activities. These factors not only exacerbate social-ecological vulnerability but also expose Indigenous peoples to systemic social exclusion.

Such conflicts reflect deeply unequal power relations in which external actors are able to appropriate land and resources at the expense of Indigenous territorial rights. At the same time, historical institutionalism highlights the path-dependent character of the institutional arrangements that enable these processes. Once agencies responsible for demarcation and enforcement experience reduced capacity or reoriented mandates, subsequent decisions and practices tend to reproduce and deepen the same patterns rather than correct them. In the Brazilian Amazon, the period after the 2016 political transition illustrates this dynamic. Institutional changes that weakened federal oversight created conditions in which environmental shocks could more readily translate into livelihood disruption while simultaneously constraining Indigenous communities' adaptation options.

As noted in the introduction, this institutional rollback after 2016 directly expanded enforcement gaps, accelerated land appropriation, and drove a sharp rise in deforestation both across the Legal Amazon and within Indigenous Territories (Comissão Pastoral da Terra, 2023; Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais [INPE], 2025). As Urzedo and Chatterjee (2022) observe, this deforestation model perpetuates historical injustices through violence against Indigenous peoples and land development logic, entrenching illegal mining and pasture expansion in the absence of effective regulation. The following cases illustrate how these path-dependent institutional weaknesses interacted with environmental pressures to shape constrained adaptation outcomes in specific territories.

The Yanomami Indigenous Territory offers a concrete example of how path-dependent institutional weakness interacted with environmental and livelihood pressures. This territory is Brazil's largest Indigenous reserve, covering approximately 97,000 square kilometers and home to about 30,000 Yanomami people. Between 2019 and 2022, around 20,000 illegal gold miners (garimpeiros) flooded into the area, bringing mercury pollution, malaria transmission, malnutrition, and violent conflicts. Reports indicate that the Bolsonaro government received formal notifications from health teams as early as 2020 about invasions, violence, alcoholism, and drug problems in the Kayanau village, yet it never took effective intervention measures. As a result, a severe public health crisis broke out in the territory, causing a large number of deaths. By the time the new government declared a public health emergency in early 2023, this crisis had been ongoing for several years. The combination of sustained institutional inaction and advancing resource extraction meant that environmental degradation intensified within the territory. For many families, the decision to leave temporarily in search of medical care or safety carried the heightened risk that vacated areas would be permanently occupied, thereby reinforcing the pressure to remain despite deteriorating conditions.

A parallel feedback mechanism operated in the Apyterewa Indigenous Territory. Located in the state of Pará, this territory is one of the most heavily invaded areas in the Amazon. Between 2019 and 2022, approximately 70% of the territory was illegally cleared for pastures and mining areas, with the highest deforestation rate among all Indigenous Territories. Intense confrontations between invaders and Indigenous peoples over land occurred repeatedly. Here too, the path-dependent weakening of federal enforcement capacity allowed rapid territorial encroachment. Through policy drift, existing formal protections lost effectiveness as the surrounding environment of intensified invasion and resource pressure changed, without corresponding updates to enforcement practices. In heavily invaded territories such as Apyterewa, this drift manifested in a sharp decline in land embargoes and asset confiscations even as deforestation accelerated, while self-declared CAR entries were increasingly accepted as de facto claims over areas that retained formal Indigenous status on paper. The result was that statutory limits on occupation remained in force but ceased to shape on-the-ground outcomes in any meaningful way. As forests and water sources degraded under the combined pressure of invasion and climate-related shocks, livelihood options within the territory narrowed. At the same time, the same institutional conditions that permitted large-scale clearing made departure more costly, because leaving increased the probability of irreversible loss of land claims. The result was a reinforced cycle in which environmental shocks pushed toward mobility while institutional path dependence pulled toward immobility.

These empirical patterns can be further understood through a combined analysis of power relations and institutional dynamics. Land conflicts are not merely outcomes of resource competition but are produced and sustained through relational power struggles in which differentiated actors strategically weaken state enforcement capacity to advance processes of dispossession. External economic actors, including mining networks and agricultural interests, actively engage with federal and local institutions, exerting pressure that reduces enforcement presence and creates space for territorial enclosure. This strategic weakening is not a passive outcome but a relational process in which these actors convert institutional gaps into material advantages, while Indigenous communities are positioned with limited capacity to contest the resulting changes in land control. The outcome is the ongoing enclosure of Indigenous territories, where power operates through the selective application and non-application of state authority rather than through outright resource competition alone.

Following the 2016 political transition, institutional arrangements in the Brazilian Amazon became path-dependent through two interrelated mechanisms of increasing returns and institutional layering. At the federal level, sharp reductions in agency capacity created conditions for increasing returns. Between 2018 and 2019 the budget of FUNAI fell from 147.5 million reais to 85.1 million reais, representing a 27.2 percent decrease, while IBAMA experienced a 25 percent budget reduction in the same period. These cuts, accompanied by chronic understaffing, led to fewer field operations and environmental enforcement actions. The resulting decline in visible state presence generated positive feedback as actors who benefited from weaker oversight intensified political pressure against restoration of capacity, making subsequent increases in funding or personnel progressively less likely. Institutional layering compounded this dynamic when new administrative rules were added without altering the underlying formal legal framework. In April 2020 FUNAI issued normative instruction IN 09, which removed the indigenous designation from yet-to-be-demarcated lands in the official land registry regardless of whether indigenous communities or isolated groups continued to occupy them. This measure layered a restrictive bureaucratic practice onto existing statutory protections, allowing land claims to advance in areas that retained formal but unenforced status. At the state and local levels, similar layering occurred through the implementation of the Rural Environmental Registry. In several Amazonian states, self-declared CAR entries were accepted by licensing authorities as sufficient proof for issuing clearing permits even when the registered properties did not meet the legal reserve or permanent protection area requirements stipulated in federal law. This practice superimposed a flexible administrative procedure onto the more restrictive provisions of the Forest Code, enabling incremental occupation while the original statutory limits remained on the books.

Taken together, these dynamics demonstrate that once path-dependent institutional arrangements take root, they generate self-reinforcing enforcement gaps that enable land appropriation to intensify even as environmental conditions deteriorate. Climate-related shocks do not operate in a neutral institutional vacuum; these gaps amplify their livelihood impacts while simultaneously raising the long-term risk of dispossession associated with departure. This institutional-structural context lays the foundational conditions under which short-term mobility and forced immobility emerge as interconnected, rather than opposing, adaptation outcomes.

Coexistence of population mobility and forced immobility: conceptual framework and empirical elucidation

In this section, the terms population mobility and forced immobility are used in a specific sense. Population mobility refers to short-term or temporary movements undertaken by individuals or households in response to sudden or severe livelihood disruption, typically involving relocation to urban peripheries or other areas in search of food, water, healthcare, or physical safety. Forced immobility, by contrast, describes situations in which individuals or communities remain in their territories despite acute environmental and livelihood pressures, not primarily out of free choice but because structural conditions render departure excessively costly or risky. These conditions include insecure land tenure, the threat of permanent dispossession, deep cultural and spiritual attachments to place, and the risk of violence during or after movement. The central argument of this section is that environmental shocks and institutional constraints interact to produce these two phenomena simultaneously rather than as alternative outcomes. Because earlier institutional weakening created conditions in which enforcement gaps could reproduce themselves, temporary livelihood disruptions become self-reinforcing traps: leaving carries a high probability of permanent loss of claims, while staying exposes people to ongoing resource depletion and intimidation.

Under the dual pressures of climate change and environmental degradation, Indigenous communities in the Brazilian Amazon experience both population mobility and forced immobility. The historic drought of 2023–2025 severely disrupted river transportation, food supplies, and healthcare systems, compelling some communities to engage in short-term or temporary relocation. At the same time, many families and groups remained in their territories, either by necessity or because the costs of leaving were prohibitive. A systematic analysis of Indigenous peoples in the Amazon biome by Severo et al. (2025) points out that climate change-induced food insecurity, rights violations, and land grabbing have directly led to disease transmission, forced displacement, and cultural loss. The study emphasizes that droughts and wildfires not only destroy traditional livelihoods but also exacerbate Indigenous peoples' vulnerability in terms of food, drinking water, and healthcare, thereby driving partial population mobility.

Real-world examples clearly illustrate the pressures toward mobility. During the 2024 drought, the Kokama Indigenous community of São José do Urupretama village in Coari municipality, Amazonas state, was a case in point. Of the 22 households in the village, only 3 chose to stay during the peak of the drought. The rest were forced to move to urban peripheries to seek medical care, food, and security due to dried-up rivers, disrupted transportation, food shortages, and health risks. Similar situations have repeatedly occurred in the eastern Amazon region. In a thematic report released on January 28, 2025, Brazil: Drought Impacts in the Brazilian Amazon and 2025 Outlook, the international humanitarian analysis agency ACAPS noted that at least 42 Indigenous Territories were directly affected by the drought, with more than 2,850 households facing isolation and livelihood collapse. The Coordination of Indigenous Organizations of the Brazilian Amazon (COIAB) also confirmed in its 2025 Climate Collapse Bulletin for Amazon Indigenous Territories (2023–2025) that between 2023 and 2025, some Indigenous families made temporary moves to urban centers such as Manaus as a result.

Alongside these instances of mobility stands the widespread reality of forced immobility. Many Indigenous groups find it difficult or unwilling to completely leave their territories even under extreme environmental conditions. Uncertainty over land tenure constitutes the most immediate barrier: once families depart, territories are likely to be permanently occupied by illegal invaders, and traditional rights may be lost entirely. Deep cultural identity and emotional ties to ancestral lands further raise the social and existential costs of migration. Rivers, forests, and ceremonial sites function not only as material resources but as the core of collective identity and continuity. In addition, external threats of violence make departure hazardous. Illegal mining and land grabbing activities are frequently accompanied by armed intimidation, and the journey itself may expose people to greater danger than remaining in place, however difficult conditions have become. These barriers do not operate in isolation. Because earlier reductions in enforcement capacity created conditions favoring actors who benefit from weak state presence, the gaps themselves become self-reinforcing: temporary absence increases the probability of irreversible occupation, locking communities in place even as livelihoods collapse.

A case study of climate migration among Indigenous and Quilombola women by Lugo-Morin (2026) highlights that women often bear a double burden in these situations. They are frequently the primary drivers of short-term mobility decisions while also serving as the main caregivers for those who remain. This gendered vulnerability intensifies the tension between mobility and immobility, as women must navigate both the immediate pressures to leave and the long-term risks associated with staying or departing.

Land conflicts and the violence that accompanies them are not incidental to environmental change but are central mechanisms through which power relations shape who can move and who cannot. When enforcement institutions are weak, as documented in the previous section, external actors can advance into Indigenous territories with relative impunity. This process does not simply degrade resources; it actively restructures the choice architecture facing communities. The threat of violence functions as both a push factor toward mobility and a powerful deterrent against it. Leaving may offer temporary relief from immediate environmental hardship, yet it simultaneously exposes families to the risk of losing territorial claims through occupation. Staying, while preserving formal or de facto claims, subjects people to ongoing violence, resource depletion, and health risks. In this sense, violence operates as a structural force that narrows the space between mobility and immobility, turning both into constrained rather than voluntary responses.

The concept of environmental immobility, particularly the notion of trapped populations, provides a useful lens for understanding why many Indigenous groups remain despite severe shocks. This perspective directs attention to the conditions under which people who may need or wish to move are nevertheless unable or unwilling to do so. In the Amazonian context, insecure land rights function as a key trapping mechanism. Because departure carries a high probability of permanent dispossession, the decision to stay is often less an expression of cultural preference alone than a strategic response to the institutional environment. Cultural identity and attachment to place interact with this institutional reality rather than operating independently of it. When territories embody both material survival and collective memory, the threat of losing them does not merely add emotional weight to immobility; it transforms immobility into a form of territorial defense under conditions of structural violence. Land rights insecurity and the threat of violence thus stand in a mutually reinforcing relationship rather than as separate factors. Violence in land conflicts is rarely random. Specific actors, such as illegal mining networks and land grabbers operating in territories like Yanomami and Apyterewa, actively employ violence as a tool to consolidate control over resources and intimidate communities into abandoning claims, thereby turning enforcement gaps into lasting territorial advantages. When communities face both the gradual erosion of livelihoods through environmental degradation and the acute risk of violent expulsion, the two pressures compound each other. The result is a situation in which mobility becomes risky precisely because of the institutional failure to protect land rights, while immobility becomes a defensive posture against the same institutional failure. This dialectic helps explain why environmental shocks do not produce uniform out-migration but instead generate the simultaneous presence of mobility and forced immobility within the same territories and often within the same extended families.

Cultural identity plays a distinctive role within this configuration. Far from being a residual or purely subjective factor, attachment to territory operates as a political and material force. In contexts where land rights remain contested and state protection is unreliable, cultural and spiritual connections to specific places become resources for collective persistence. They provide the normative justification and social cohesion necessary to maintain presence on the land despite hardship and threat. At the same time, these attachments can intensify the costs of mobility, because leaving severs not only economic ties but also the practices through which identity and authority are reproduced across generations. In the Amazonian context, attachment to specific rivers, forests, and ceremonial sites becomes a site where external actors contest Indigenous presence, using cultural erasure through invasion and resource depletion as a means to undermine collective claims to territory.

Gender further differentiates the experience of these structural pressures. Women frequently bear disproportionate responsibility for both immediate survival strategies and the maintenance of cultural continuity. When violence threatens territories, women may face heightened risks of sexual violence and intimidation during confrontations or while traveling. At the same time, their central role in caregiving and food production means that decisions about mobility or staying carry direct consequences for dependents. Land rights insecurity can also affect women differently, particularly in contexts where formal title or customary authority remains male-dominated. These gendered dimensions do not create entirely separate dynamics but rather reveal how the same intersecting mechanisms operate in practice: self-reinforcing institutional gaps raise the long-term costs of departure more sharply for those responsible for dependents, while relational power struggles intensify vulnerabilities to violence and intimidation during movement or in confrontations over resources.

The coexistence of population mobility and forced immobility therefore emerges as the product of interacting environmental, institutional, and cultural processes rather than as a simple aggregate of individual choices. Environmental shocks generate livelihood pressures that push toward mobility, while path-dependent institutional weaknesses—particularly insecure land rights and the threat of violence—simultaneously generate powerful counter-pressures toward immobility. These pressures are produced through relational dynamics in which external actors convert enforcement gaps into territorial advantage, and they are experienced unevenly because institutional self-reinforcement and power relations intersect with existing social differences, including gendered responsibilities. Cultural identity and gendered responsibilities mediate these pressures but do not stand outside them. The resulting pattern is one of constrained adaptation in which both leaving and staying become structurally produced responses. This understanding moves beyond descriptive accounts of who moves and who stays to examine the conditions under which environmental change and institutional arrangements together limit the possibilities for sustainable and voluntary adaptation.

Policy and institutional responses: from intentions to mechanisms

Since taking office in January 2023, the Lula administration has pursued a clear shift in Amazon and Indigenous policy. This shift is first reflected in institutional restructuring and policy frameworks. Immediately upon assuming power, the government established the Ministry of Indigenous Affairs, with Sônia Guajajara serving as minister. At the same time, Lula signed multiple decrees on his first day in office, restarting the Amazon Fund and restoring financial support from international donors such as Norway and Germany. He also relaunched the fifth phase of the Action Plan for the Prevention and Control of Deforestation in the Legal Amazon (PPCDAm), covering 2023 to 2027, and placed its coordination under the Civil Office of the Presidency. These measures have directly driven tangible results: according to INPE PRODES data, deforestation in the Legal Amazon fell to 5,796 square kilometers in 2025 (August 2024 to July 2025), an 11.08% decrease from the previous year. In addition, territory demarcation has accelerated significantly. Between 2023 and November 2025, the government formally recognized approximately 20 new Indigenous Territories, including several announced during COP30. While formal demarcation can reduce the immediate risk that departure will result in permanent loss of territorial claims, thereby easing one key driver of forced immobility, persistent implementation gaps and local power dynamics often limit the extent to which these formal gains translate into expanded adaptation space on the ground. These developments have the potential to expand the range of viable adaptation options by strengthening territorial security, thereby reducing some pressures that previously pushed communities toward forced immobility when departure risked permanent dispossession, while implementation gaps continue to limit the extent of such expansion on the ground.

Iocca and Fidélis (2023) analyzed the participation mechanisms of traditional peoples and Indigenous communities in Brazil's climate and environmental policies and noted that while policy texts increasingly acknowledge the critical role of Indigenous peoples in forest conservation, actual governance frameworks still suffer from insufficient participation and inadequate rights protection. This observation remains relevant under the current administration. Although the government has emphasized the contribution of Indigenous Territories to carbon storage and biodiversity conservation through PPCDAm and the Amazon Fund, and has directed a portion of funds to sustainable livelihood projects, direct consultation mechanisms with Indigenous organizations in policy implementation still need to be strengthened.

Nevertheless, these positive intentions have encountered considerable resistance at the congressional level. In May 2023, the House of Representatives passed Bill No. 490/2007 by a majority vote, known as the “Time Frame” bill, which stipulates that Indigenous peoples can only claim lands they traditionally occupied at the time of the promulgation of the 1988 Constitution. Although the Lula administration has repeatedly expressed opposition and attempted to mitigate it through administrative means, Congress has repeatedly pushed forward similar bills and has overturned or diluted presidential vetoes multiple times. This game between the legislative and executive branches reflects how agricultural and rural interests, embedded in long-standing institutional arrangements, convert legislative majorities into mechanisms that redirect and dilute federal policy intentions, thereby sustaining existing patterns of land control and limiting the structural conditions under which Indigenous communities can pursue less constrained adaptation choices. These veto points are not temporary obstacles but part of path-dependent legislative arrangements that have long privileged rural and agribusiness interests. When the executive advances measures to strengthen Indigenous land rights or environmental enforcement, these proposals frequently encounter structural resistance that limits their scope and effectiveness.

Interactions with local governments further widen implementation gaps. Under Brazil's federal system, the nine Amazonian states play a critical role in PPCDAm and territory protection. However, significant tension exists between central policies and local practices. In agriculture-dominated states such as Pará and Mato Grosso, state-level environmental enforcement and the Rural Environmental Registry (CAR) have progressed slowly; some state laws even indirectly facilitate the regularization of small farms, a process frequently exploited by illegal invaders. Moreira and França (2024) highlight this structural friction in federal–local relations, noting that local autonomy and economic priorities frequently dilute federal conservation efforts, resulting in fragmented governance. These gaps are not merely administrative. State-level authorities and local economic actors in agriculture-dominated jurisdictions often reinterpret or selectively implement federal conservation and Indigenous rights measures, allowing informal land occupation to advance while formal national commitments remain in place. In doing so, these actors actively participate in the construction of scale, treating federal Indigenous territorial protections as negotiable or secondary at the local level rather than as binding constraints. This scalar politics enables the persistence of informal practices that filter and dilute national policy intentions, turning what appears as an implementation gap into a mechanism through which local power configurations continue to shape land control on the ground and sustain the structural conditions that produce constrained mobility and immobility for Indigenous communities.

Indigenous communities have responded with a complex and mixed set of reactions. Organizations such as the Articulation of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil (APIB) and the Coordination of Indigenous Organizations of the Brazilian Amazon (COIAB) recognize the Lula administration's efforts, including the territory demarcations announced during COP30. At the same time, these organizations have repeatedly expressed dissatisfaction through mobilization activities such as the Free Land Camp (ATL), criticizing the slow pace of demarcation. Indigenous leaders have also strongly protested the government's compromises on infrastructure projects such as oil exploration and port expansion, arguing that these decisions contradict the commitment to “zero deforestation by 2030.”

Economic barriers remain a core constraint on policy implementation. In his political ecology analysis of jurisdictional REDD+ programs in Acre state, da Silva (2022) emphasized that environmental justice depends not only on legal frameworks but also on sustainable economic alternatives to support Indigenous livelihoods. Although the Lula administration has promoted forest-based economic transformation through the Amazon Fund and bioeconomy initiatives, the scale and coverage of funding remain limited. Pont De la Torre (2025), in a legal study of climate fund cases, further notes that mechanisms such as the Amazon Fund have strengthened Indigenous participation in institutional design, but face persistent implementation challenges related to funding transparency, cross-level coordination, and long-term financial sustainability. These economic and institutional obstacles directly hinder the translation of policy intentions into tangible outcomes for Indigenous communities.

At the international level, reactions to Brazil's Amazon and Indigenous policies during COP30 in Belém reflected both recognition of progress and ongoing demands for deeper change. The Brazilian government formally recognized new Indigenous Territories and advanced demarcation procedures during the conference. The International Organization for Migration (IOM) co-hosted a side event on “Climate Justice and Human Mobility,” emphasizing the need to place climate-affected Indigenous and local communities at the center of action. Organizations such as the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) and Human Rights Watch also acknowledged progress in territory demarcation. However, Indigenous groups, including the Munduruku, directly pointed out shortcomings through peaceful protests, blocking the conference entrance and demanding an end to oil exploration, mining expansion, and infrastructure projects that threaten traditional territories. In their closing statement, they emphasized that “the Amazon is our home, yet it is becoming the world's oil frontier.”

Osborne et al. (2024) provide a useful framework for assessing these international dynamics. They argue that current REDD+ mechanisms, while intended to mitigate deforestation, often overlook Indigenous self-determination and climate justice principles. They propose alternative principles that include strengthening formal recognition of territories, ensuring direct Indigenous participation in fund allocation, avoiding the reduction of conservation to a carbon trading tool, and prioritizing community-led sustainable livelihood models. These principles echo the voices raised by Indigenous peoples during COP30 and highlight the limitations of international responses that focus primarily on deforestation data and territory announcements while paying insufficient attention to the domestic institutional mechanisms that continue to constrain Indigenous adaptation options.

Overall, although the Lula administration has achieved visible progress in deforestation control and territory demarcation, its policy intentions continue to confront multiple structural constraints. These constraints operate through congressional veto points, federal–local implementation gaps, informal patronage networks, and short electoral cycles. These mechanisms are path-dependent and have proven resilient across administrations. Through conversion, formal rules and commitments established at the federal level were redeployed by subnational actors in ways that sustained existing power configurations rather than transforming them. This process of redirection allowed path-dependent arrangements to persist even as new policy frameworks were introduced. By filtering and diluting federal intentions, these arrangements limit the extent to which policy shifts can alter the structural conditions and on-the-ground territorial outcomes that produce constrained adaptation choices for Indigenous communities. These institutional arrangements are embedded in power relations over land and resources, through which differentiated actors maintain influence via congressional veto points, state-level implementation practices, and patronage networks. By converting policy openings into continued constraints, these relations limit the extent to which even renewed federal commitments can alter the structural conditions that simultaneously generate pressures toward short-term mobility and powerful disincentives against permanent departure. These dynamics mean that even visible progress in demarcation and deforestation control coexists with persistent structural conditions under which Indigenous communities continue to face constrained choices between temporary movement and defensive immobility. Until these mechanisms are more directly addressed, the gap between policy intentions and changes in the lived conditions of Indigenous communities is likely to persist.

Discussion and conclusion

This Perspective illustrates that the coexistence of population mobility and forced immobility among Indigenous communities in the Brazilian Amazon arises from the interaction between environmental shocks and historically sedimented institutional constraints, rather than from environmental shocks alone. By tracing land conflict trajectories, analyzing adaptation choices under pressure, and examining how post-2023 policy intentions are mediated by domestic institutions, the study shows that environmental change and institutional arrangements jointly narrow the space within which Indigenous communities can pursue sustainable adaptation. This finding synthesizes insights from political ecology and historical institutionalism to highlight how path-dependent institutional structures contribute to the production of constrained rather than voluntary responses in climate-related mobility.

Theoretically, the analysis contributes to political ecology by illustrating how institutional constraints shape the operation of power in contexts of environmental change and contested land rights. It further engages with scholarship on environmental immobility by showing that insecure land tenure and the threat of dispossession function as structural mechanisms that limit both the possibility and the desirability of movement. Rather than treating immobility as a residual category or a failure of adaptation, the study positions it as a structurally produced response to the interaction between environmental degradation and institutional path dependence. This perspective helps show why environmental shocks in the Amazon generate simultaneous pressures toward mobility and immobility, rather than uniform patterns of out-migration.

International responses to Amazonian environmental and Indigenous issues, including those articulated during COP30, have largely focused on territorial recognition and deforestation reduction. While these efforts reflect growing recognition of Indigenous rights in global climate governance, they encounter significant limitations when confronted with Brazil's domestic institutional realities. International platforms can endorse policy intentions and provide financing, yet they possess limited leverage over the legislative and subnational structures that continue to filter and constrain those intentions. As a result, international support risks remaining disconnected from the domestic mechanisms that determine whether policy shifts translate into expanded adaptation space for Indigenous communities. This gap highlights the need for international engagement to move beyond declarative support toward more targeted attention to the institutional conditions that shape environmental and territorial outcomes on the ground.

Policy implications follow directly from this analysis. The most pressing priority is to enhance Indigenous participation in the decisions that determine land rights, environmental enforcement, and climate adaptation strategies. Current institutional arrangements systematically limit the influence of Indigenous organizations and communities in these processes. Strengthening substantive participation requires moving beyond formal consultation toward reforms that increase Indigenous voice in legislative and administrative decision-making. Such reforms could include measures to improve representation in relevant legislative bodies and the creation of more authoritative institutional channels capable of upholding territorial rights against competing economic interests. Without addressing these structural barriers to participation, policies aimed at supporting Indigenous adaptation will continue to be undermined by the same institutional dynamics that have historically constrained their effectiveness.

Ultimately, the persistence of constrained adaptation choices among Amazonian Indigenous communities reflects deep-seated institutional features of Brazilian environmental and land governance. Shifts in federal policy since 2023 have generated new openings, yet a change in political leadership alone is unlikely to alter established trajectories when congressional veto points and state-level implementation practices continue to obstruct deeper reforms. Unless accompanied by greater electoral success capable of modifying these institutional arrangements, the concrete outcomes of renewed federal commitments are likely to remain limited and uncertain. Addressing the coexistence of mobility and forced immobility therefore requires not only stronger policy commitments but also a more fundamental reckoning with the conditions that continue to determine whose interests receive protection and whose adaptation possibilities stay constrained. Until Indigenous communities secure more effective influence over the decisions that govern their territories, environmental shocks will continue to produce reactive and structurally limited forms of mobility and immobility rather than enabling proactive and self-determined adaptation.

Generative AI statement

The author(s) declared that generative AI was used in the creation of this manuscript. The author's native language is not English. DeepSeek and Grok were used solely to assist with translation and language polishing, all ideas, analysis and arguments are entirely the author's own.

Any alternative text (alt text) provided alongside figures in this article has been generated by Frontiers with the support of artificial intelligence and reasonable efforts have been made to ensure accuracy, including review by the authors wherever possible. If you identify any issues, please contact us.

Publisher's note

All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

Footnotes

Edited by: Goran Miladinov, Independent Researcher, North Macedonia

Reviewed by: Stephen Perz, University of Florida, United States

Helder Ferreira Do Vale, Catholic University of Brasilia (UCB), Brazil