The Changing Demography of Indigenous Populations and the Environment in Amazonia

Richard E. Bilsborrow, University of North Carolina
Rosa Victoria Salinas, Consultant

How fast are indigenous populations in the Amazon region growing? Why? What are current trends? What is happening with land use and deforestation, climate change, hydrology, and biodiversity? Are there linkages, at the level of the Amazon basin, country, and lower levels, from available data sources? We focus on the demographic data, mostly censuses and and specialized household surveys, especially for Ecuador. We provide data on population trends in the Amazon country regions, and for indigenous populations, followed by fertility levels and trends. For Ecuador we draw mostly on the recent censuses of population (2010, 2022) and household survey panel data on five ethnicities in 2001-2012. We find very high fertility and population growth up to 2012 and a remarkable reduction in fertility since, though population growth is still double the overall country growth. Meanwhile, indigenous populations that traditionally lived nomadically via slash and burn/mulch have become settled by governments, reducing inter-ethnic warfare and facilitating vaccination campaigns, both reducing mortality and leading to high population growth. So what are current trends in their use of environmental resources, and what are the possible solutions, and the considerable barriers?

Keywords: The Demography of Indigenous Populations, Population, Environment, and Climate Change, Fertility, Population and Development

See extended abstract.