The number of indigenous peoples living traditional lives in the world’s rainforests are

becoming fewer and fewer. Within a few decades the last of these indigenous tribes may
have disappeared forever. What are the causes of this problem and what can be done to
prevent it from happening?

Young people from indigenous tribes hardly find their life chances associated with their
traditional activities at rainforests. This occurs as a consequence of the social changes of
the last decades. In fact, traditional economic activities have been subsumed under
industrialization and information technologies so, human migration usually flows up to
places where the predominant economical activities are being developed. As this macro-
social process unfolds its consequences around the world, there are two great factors that
catalyzes social change in indigenous tribes: life expectations of young people and public
policies of governments and political institutions.

Indeed, changes in the life expectations of young people from indigenous tribes makes
difficult that they would continue their traditional life associated to the rainforest. There
are several theoretical reasons that explains this process. In fact, every generation grows
upon the set of social relations that are part of the environment. As social and institutional
change the traditional ways of the life chances that peoples has in its environment, their
life expectations tend to be related to those institutions or organizations that produces
those new social dynamics. This is the place where governments have extremely
important responsibilities, not just with the promotion of public policies but also because
of their blind focus exclusively on cities and urban citizenship.

In fact, although governmental institutions are in charge of the infrastructure of public

services in every part of the national territory (such as water, electrical supply or
connectivity), most of their actions are focused on urban landscapes. There are a lot of
understandable reasons of these actions: there is a lot of people living in the city,
economic development is associated with innovative industries and, also, most of the
national budget is assigned to promote development and better life conditions in these
areas. Precisely, the importance of the city makes difficult that governments would invest
great quantities of efforts and money on those places where there is less people and less
profitable consequences they have.

In this sense, it is not merely a technical and a political problem, but a social problem. It is
imperative that governments could understand and afford their activities in cities, taking
into account the way how they could take care of rainforests tribes, so that young people
would find their life expectations would be associated to their traditional activities. So far,
social investment is, as it seems, the better way to bring these people new opportunities.