Indigenous and tribal people in Latin America and the Caribbean are the best "guardians of their forests," fighting deforestation, protecting biodiversity and reducing CO2 emissions, the FAO said on Thursday.

"Indigenous and tribal peoples and the forests in their territories play vital roles in global and regional climate action and in fighting poverty, hunger and malnutrition," said the UN Food and Agriculture Organization's regional representative, Julio Berdegue.

In Brazil, Colombia and Bolivia alone, indigenous people contributed to avoiding between 42.8 and 59.7 million metric tons of CO2 emissions a year: "the equivalent of taking between nine and 12.6 million vehicles out of circulation for one year," the FAO said in a report.

The report was based on a review of 300 studies conducted over two decades.

In those three countries, deforestation was between two and 2.8 times lower in indigenous woodlands than outside, according to one study.

"Deforestation rates are significantly lower in Indigenous and Tribal territories where governments have formally recognized collective land rights," said the report, which was jointly funded by the Fund for the Development of Indigenous Peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean (FILAC).

Indigenous territories cover 28 percent of the Amazon Basin but only generated 2.6 percent of the region's gross carbon emissions.

"Their territories contain about one third of all the carbon stored in the forests of Latin America and the Caribbean and 14 percent of the carbon stored in tropical forests worldwide," said Berdegue.

The effect on biodiversity is also considerable.

"Brazil's indigenous territories have more species of mammals, birds, reptiles, and amphibians than in all the country's protected areas outside these territories, while in Bolivia two-thirds of the country's vertebrate species and 60 percent of its plant species can be found in the Tacana and Leco de Apolo indigenous territories," the report said.

The best results were seen in areas where indigenous people had been granted collective legal titles, the report said.

However it warned that indigenous people's "protective role is increasingly at risk, at a time when the Amazon is nearing a tipping point, with worrisome impacts on rainfall and temperature, and eventual repercussions for food production and the global climate."

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