Indigenous governance and relationality have effectively avoided forest loss in the Southwest Amazon

Abstract Advanced geospatial analyses have underscored the effectiveness of Indigenous territories in avoiding deforestation, particularly across the tropics. However, the factors that shape such avoidance and their social-ecological contexts are still poorly understood. By using matching methods coupled with community-based and ethnographic approaches, we offer a contextual measure and understanding of deforestation avoidance of Indigenous territories in Southwestern Amazonia. Our counterfactual analysis of 19 Apurinã territories in Brazil over a 20-year period (2001–2021) in different municipalities showed that, even if Indigenous territories are by no means immune to forest loss, they have avoided significant levels of deforestation. Their effectiveness in mitigating deforestation is largely associated with distinct land-based governance, resilient leadership, as well as temporal perspectives and socio-bioeconomies inclusive to more-than-human beings.