Amazon Watch is delighted to announce Leila Salazar-López as our new Executive Director! Leila, who previously served as Program Director, brings over 15 years of experience, passion and dedication to defending the world’s rainforests.
Read the press release in English, Spanish, or Portuguese.
A few words from Leila as she rises to lead Amazon Watch on the next chapter of this critical journey:
Twenty years ago I traveled to the Ecuadorian Amazon and my life was forever changed. As a volunteer at the Jatún Sacha Biological Station, I learned the basics of tropical ecology and became quickly fascinated by the interconnectedness of all life. I also witnessed the devastation caused by oil spills, firing me up to take action and to design a campaign at Amazon Watch seeking to pressure Chevron to clean up its toxic legacy in the rainforest. In 2010, I returned as Program Director, overseeing the organization’s campaigns to defend the Amazon and advance indigenous rights.
Today, I am honored to step up as Executive Director. I accept this responsibility with great passion and commitment to our work, our partners and our phenomenal network of supporters around the world. I am humbled and inspired to lead this organization at a critical time for the Amazon, indigenous peoples’ rights and the global climate crisis.
Just a few months ago in Lima at the UN COP 20 climate summit, a reporter asked me why we would create a human banner focusing on indigenous rights and forests.
“If we want to defend our global climate, we must defend the Amazon. If we want to defend the Amazon, we must support indigenous rights and territories!”
I naturally responded, with deep confidence and pride in the work that we do.
As governments prepare to sign a binding agreement on how to address climate change at the end of this year, we must recognize the biological, hydrological and cultural importance of the Amazon – the largest and most bio-diverse tropical rainforest on Earth, the lungs and the heart of our planet.
The Amazon is at great risk due to climate change and human-driven industrial development, including dams, mining, agribusiness and fossil fuel extraction. The results of a 30-year study released in mid-March show that it is actually losing its capacity to absorb carbon from the atmosphere.
But WE can do something about this!
For all life on this one and only planet that we have – our Mother Earth – let’s be visionary, let’s be BOLD!
Today I rise with Amazon Watch and our partners to:
- Defend Indigenous peoples’ rights & territories
- Support community managed forests
- Stop deforestation! Zero deforestation by 2020
- Challenge drivers of deforestation
- Reforest and rehabilitate the Amazon
- Support conservation corridors
- Keep fossil fuels in the ground
- Stop mega-dams in the Amazon
- Support and promote renewable energy
- Promote solutions!
We must work together to challenge destruction and promote solutions. We must listen to and support the visions of the elders, the voices of women and the statistics of scientists and unite to keep fossil fuels in the ground, starting in the Amazon. We must debunk the myth of large dams as clean energy while promoting renewable energy and solutions that promote life, not destroy it. We must work for climate justice!
As a Chicana-Latina woman, mother of two girls, and like all women inherently connected to Pachamama – to Mother Earth – I am deeply concerned about our future, and the future of generations to come. From the Arctic to the Amazon, we are all connected and we must take action to defend this planet that we share.
Please join me as I rise with Amazon Watch to defend the Amazon and advance the rights of indigenous peoples whose ancestral territories are threatened by deforestation, destructive development and climate change. Under new leadership and as we embark on the internal development of a strategic plan for the next five years, we invite you to share your visions and ideas, to partner with us and to invest in our work.
We can’t do this – I can’t do this – without YOUR support. Thank you! Gracias! Muito Obrigada!
For the Amazon and our shared future,
Leila
