The document, entitled Dossier Belo Monte – There are no conditions for an Operating License, and an accompanying collection of articles are intended to be instruments for local populations of urban areas, rural settlements, and Amazonian rivers to defend their rights at a late moment when accountability may still be demanded regarding...
Our fabulous friends The Yes Men have just released their third (and many say best) movie called The Yes Men Are Revolting. Of course, Amazon Watch has direct experience with the genius of The Yes Men. A couple years ago when Chevron launched its insulting “We Agree” ad campaign The Yes Men worked with us and our allies at the Rainforest Action...
On one side of the table a group embodying integrity, legitimacy, humility. Across from them on the other? The personification of cynicism, obfuscation and arrogance. That was the scene in Bogotá yesterday where the U’wa people took their fight into a meeting with the Colombian government, calling on it to live up to previously negotiated...
The Guardian | The Brazilian government has violated its own constitution and international law by developing hydroelectric power plants in the Amazon, according to an indigenous leader due to address the 29th United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva on Wednesday afternoon.
Geneva, Switzerland – In a stirring event at the 29th United Nations Human Rights Council, indigenous leader Ademir Kaba Munduruku denounced the Brazilian government's escalating rights abuses in its rush to build an unprecedented series of hydroelectric dams across the Amazon.
While the Pope’s Encyclical acknowledges both God and science and is expected to influence global politics, it is not a scientific or a political document. It is, rather, a definitive moral case for action on climate change calling on all of humanity to reject "capitalism at all cost" and to care for the environment and for people in need from a...
The Guardian | The US oil giant Chevron has attacked the British makers of a short art-house documentary film about oil pollution in the Ecuadorean Amazon featuring the actor Julie Christie reading a Pablo Neruda poem.
Associated Press | Construction of a massive hydroelectric dam is endangering the livelihoods of at least 2,000 families in Brazil’s Amazon jungle state of Para, according to federal prosecutors who recommend that efforts to move the residents be suspended.
When Brazilian energy planners proposed to choke the Amazon's Tapajós river and its tributaries with dozens of large hydroelectric dams, they underrated a formidable foe: the Munduruku people. The largest indigenous group in the Tapajós Basin, the Munduruku are proving to be sophisticated adversaries who are throwing a wrench in the dam industry's...
Amazon Watch is excited to announce that we are now accepting bitcoin payments for donations. As this payment method becomes more mainstream, we hope to continue to ensure that your donations are used most economically and effectively to protect the future of our planet.
Last month in direct violation of its own laws on "free, prior, and informed consultation" Ecuadorian government officials and oil company technicians entered oil blocks 74 and 75 in the heart of the Ecuadorian Amazon, without informing many of the communities whose ancestral territory the blocks overlap, in what appears to be part of a plan to...
In May, Chinese Prime Minister Li Keqiang visited South America and indigenous leaders from the Ecuadorian Amazon urged him not to drill for oil in their territory. In 2013, Li promised to use an "iron fist" to punish companies that destroy the environment. Support indigenous communities, ask Li to live up to his promise and to cancel China's...
The Nation | The American public is largely uninformed about this epic struggle, even though it's as important as the dispute over the Keystone XL oil pipeline. The mainstream US media, when it hasn't ignored the case, has often taken Chevron's side, implicitly (and sometimes explicitly) endorsing the company's view that an alliance of Ecuadoran extortionists...
The U'wa are an extraordinary people, paralleled by the amazing territory they call home. With this photo gallery – featuring images taken by the U'wa themselves – we hope to take you on a visual journey into the majestic lands they are defending. Not only are these breathtaking landscapes, each of these places holds a profound...
Council on Hemispheric Affairs | As Amazon Watch's Paul Paz y Miño's put the matter, "Chevron deliberately caused a lifetime of suffering and death by polluting the Ecuadorian Amazon to increase its already high profits to obscene levels. Chevron has also inflicted years of abusive lawsuits designed to leave affected communities defenseless and has tried to win by might what it...
The circus of lies, denial and propaganda videos that has become the Chevron annual shareholder meeting took place at Chevron's San Ramon, California headquarters once again yesterday. Not surprisingly, Chevron's lies about its Ecuador fiasco were recycled from years past – many of which seem to be nearing their expiration date.
San Ramon, CA – Chevron CEO John Watson could not escape public outrage and shareholder dissent about his mishandling of the massive $9.5 billion environmental disaster in the Ecuadorian Amazon at the company's Annual General Meeting of shareholders today.
Alianza Arkana Blog | The last few days have seen the start of a process to decide the future of a territory that has been subjected to oil exploration for the last 40+ years – namely, oil block 192 (formally called 1AB) that spans three river basins (Tigre, Corrientes, Pastaza) and is home to over 100 indigenous communities.
Amazon Watch is proud to once again support Humberto Piaguaje, a longtime indigenous partner and courageous leader of the Secoya people in Ecuador, and a growing coalition of communities affected by Chevron's operations in denouncing the company's atrocious pattern of human rights abuses, environmental destruction and attacks on democracy at their...
San Ramon, CA – On May 27th, at Chevron World Headquarters, representatives of communities affected by Chevron's environmental destruction and disregard for human rights will return to Chevron's Annual Shareholders Meeting in San Ramon, CA. Attendees are from a growing network of organizations confronting Chevron on its corporate misdeeds and...
Al Jazeera America | “We live along the banks of the river,” Madolfo Perez Chumpi, president of the Organization for the Economic Development of Awajun Communities on the Marañón (ODECAM), told me. “Where are we going to plant our manioc? Our plantains? Our maize? Where will we find the fish that swim upriver? This is scary for us, for our children. For the government...
Al Jazeera America | Environmental activists hope that São Luiz do Tapajós will not follow the same course as the Belo Monte, the Xingu River dam that is now nearly complete. Some tribal leaders opposed to that dam were bought off by the government, according to Maíra Irigaray, the Brazil coordinator of the group Amazon Watch. She fears similar tactics will be used...
San Francisco, CA – An ever growing coalition of local, national and international environmental and human rights rights organizations are demanding Chevron Corp be held to account over its environmental and human rights abuses in the Amazon rainforest, Nigerian Delta, and across the bay at its Richmond refinery.
Boston, MA – Today, just two weeks before the Bonn Climate Change Negotiations of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), a coalition of environmental and corporate accountability organizations announce a turning point in the climate change movement: a campaign to protect climate policymaking from interference by the...
VICE News | "As with road projects, railways open access to previously remote regions, bringing a flow of migrant workers inevitably followed by deforestation mafias and cattle ranchers, creating a perfect storm of pressures upon the forest and forest peoples," said Christian Poirier, Brazil-Europe Advocacy Director of Amazon Watch.
San Francisco, CA – On May 26th, at the headquarters of the Sierra Club, representatives of communities affected by Chevron environmental destruction and disregard for human rights will announce plans to return to Chevron's Annual Shareholders Meeting the following morning in San Ramon, CA.
The Guardian | "We don't accept, and we will not accept, the exploitation of oil in our territories because our vision of the world, our ideas about development, has no place for it," said Manari Ushiga, an indigenous Sapara leader from the Amazon in Ecuador. "It would be better if the Chinese company gave up on these lots. We are not going to accept the end of...
The Independent | "This proposed bill ignores the international commitments made by Brazil to guarantee the rights to participation of indigenous populations in the decision-making process related to the exploitation of the natural resources on the areas they traditionally occupy," said Maira Irigaray, Brazil coordinator for Amazon Watch. "In this sense, this bill...
An indigenous assembly held in April on the banks of Brazil's Teles Pires River, an Amazonian waterway currently being strangled by a cascade of hydroelectric dams, produced the following manifesto of resistance from the Kayabi, Apiaká, Munduruku and Rikbaktsa peoples.
