The U'wa Indigenous Guard, active in the cloud forest of Colombia near the border with Venezuela, were formed to nonviolently defend U'wa territory from a multitude of external threats from extractive companies and unwanted "eco-tourists". In the era of COVID-19 – known to U'wa spiritual elders as "The Demon" – the Guard's mission has expanded to...
Roraima State, Brazil – In a new global campaign led by a coalition of Yanomami and Ye'kwana organizations, Indigenous leaders define the #MinersOutCovidOut campaign as "a cry for help against an old nightmare which has turned even more deadly." Launching internationally today, the campaign demands that the Brazilian government immediately remove...
Mongabay | Five of the biggest financial institutions in the world invested a combined $6 billion in oil extraction projects in the western Amazon between 2017 and 2019. According to Moira Birss of Amazon Watch, only pressure from civil society can stop the extraction of these natural resources without guaranteeing the conservation of the environment and the...
The New York Times | Since coming to office, President Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil has enabled increased razing of the Amazon rainforest. Now, the coronavirus has accelerated that destruction. Illegal loggers, miners and land grabbers have cleared vast areas of the Amazon with impunity in recent months as law enforcement efforts were hobbled by the pandemic.
We at Amazon Watch condemn police brutality and express our solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement in the United States and around the world. We share the collective grief and are incensed by the recent police killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade, Steven Taylor, and too many more. We will not be silent and complicit with...
When the novel coronavirus first began to emerge as a global pandemic, its spread also carried centuries of collective memories of the diseases that previously decimated Indigenous peoples across the Americas. Indigenous peoples across the Amazon began to ban outsiders from their territories and disperse preventative information and resources in...
Chevron's annual shareholder's meeting took place online this year due to the global coronavirus pandemic. Ironically, by holding a virtual meeting, Chevron opened itself up to greater participation in what is usually a closed-door ticketed event. Nobel Peace Prize winner Jody Williams and world-renowned actor and producer Alec Baldwin both stood...
On May 28, 2020, Jane Fonda, Morgan Freeman, Carlos Santana, Peter Gabriel, and numerous other artists will join Indigenous leaders, scientists, and a broad coalition of NGOs in hosting Artists United for Amazonía: Protecting the Protectors, a global livestream event.
Reuters | Indigenous leaders are calling for help to stop oil companies drilling in the headwaters of the Amazon river in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, warning that encroaching on their homelands would destroy a bulwark against climate change.
Our Indigenous brothers and sisters in Peru remind us that access to oxygen and healthcare must be guaranteed right in a just economic system. Our partners shouldn't have to choose between purchasing oxygen or paying their bills or feeding their families. COVID-19 is showing us the face of the global food and health crisis and demanding literal...
After an immense legal battle – twenty long years – with the multinational fossil fuel giant, Donziger was successful in helping the Indigenous people of the region win a massive $9.5 billion judgment. This is the largest known amount in damages in an environmental case from a trial. The funds were awarded to remediate decades of toxic...
JPMorgan Chase's February announcement of new, limited restrictions on its financing of certain kinds of fossil fuels in certain highly controversial extraction sites was a step in the right direction, but like many other financial institutions' commitments, it falls short. Notably, the bank's climate policy fails to outline measurable commitments...
The Investor Eye on the Amazon newsletter serves as a resource for socially-responsible investors, industry analysts, and researchers looking to better understand the risks associated with financing climate-damaging industries in the Amazon, and what they can do to protect the region.
The Wampis Nation, one of the most organized Indigenous peoples in the Peruvian Amazon, is calling out Chile-based oil company GeoPark for putting their communities at risk of the COVID-19 contagion. Leaders of the Wampis Nation have received information that GeoPark community-relations workers are violating Peru's national quarantine by...
Arbildo Meléndez Grandes, leader of the Cacataibo Indigenous community of Unipacuyacu, is the latest Indigenous leader of the Peruvian Amazon to be murdered for defending his Indigenous territory. He was a defender of his community – demanding that the government provide a land title – and had received death threats from land-grabbers and narco...
Given the inaction of governments of the Amazon basin to meet the needs of Indigenous peoples in the face of the expansion of COVID-19, the Coordinator of Indigenous Organizations of the Amazon Basin (COICA) have launched today a campaign to raise at least three million dollars for emergency and essential funds for the next two weeks. However, the...
Ecuador is grappling with a trifecta of tragedy never before seen despite its tumultuous history. The country not only has one of the highest numbers of COVID-19 cases in the world, but it is also facing a pipeline rupture that has contaminated Amazon rivers and historic flooding that has devastated local communities and left hundreds of families...
"We are already suffering from various illnesses caused by oil contamination, and now we are also facing this pandemic. We face discrimination as the government has failed to include us in its emergency plans yet again. This is why the families, represented by FCUNAE, decided to join this lawsuit: we don't want this to happen ever again."
"If Goldman truly wants to be a 'sustainability' leader, it must end corporate financing for fossil fuel expansion in the Amazon and around the world – particularly when that expansion happens on Indigenous territories."
"If HSBC truly wants to live up to its responsibility to communities and its pledge to a low-carbon economy, it must end corporate financing for fossil fuel expansion in the Amazon and around the world – particularly when that expansion happens on Indigenous territories."
Impunity cannot be brought to an end solely by increasing indictments and convictions against low-level henchmen. Instead, those who benefit and profit from these acts of violence must also face consequences, including the companies that benefit from illegal land grabbing and Amazon deforestation, like mining, agribusiness and logging.
"If Citi truly cares about being a leader on climate and Indigenous rights, it must end corporate financing for fossil fuel expansion in the Amazon and around the world – particularly when that expansion is planned for the territories of Indigenous peoples."
Hundreds of human rights, environmental, and social justice organizations around the world demanded in an open statement issued today that governments and other entities enact urgent policies to ensure that the COVID-19 virus does not result in massive deaths within Indigenous communities.
The Guardian | Twenty-nine Nobel laureates have condemned alleged "judicial harassment" by Chevron and urged the release of a US environmental lawyer who was put under house arrest for pursuing oil-spill compensation claims on behalf of Indigenous tribes in the Amazon.
We must stand together to call for justice for Ecuadorians, because if we do, corporations like Chevron will never win. We know Chevron's ultimate goal is to divide and conquer, but this growing upswell of support from celebrities, Nobel laureates, and international activists affirms that Ecuadorians are not alone in their pursuit for justice.
Courthouse News Service | "Environmental activism in many countries results in murder," the petition from the prize winners states. "Chevron's strategy is death by a thousand cuts through the manipulation of a legal system it has managed to stack in its favor. Its goal is to intimidate and disempower the victims of its pollution and a lawyer who has worked for decades on...
"Chevron's strategy is death by a thousand cuts through the manipulation of a legal system it has managed to stack in its favor. Its goal is to intimidate and disempower the victims of its pollution and a lawyer who has worked for decades on their behalf."
This spill could not have come at a worse time for Indigenous peoples and communities near the river, as they are working to protect themselves from the spread of COVID, and securing access to basic food, sanitary supplies, and potable water.
In solidarity with Indigenous organizations, federations and nationalities of the Amazon who have expressed deep concern about the impending threat of COVID-19 in their ancestral territories and communities, we demand integrated, effective, and culturally adequate state responses to this crisis. This begins with an immediate moratorium on any...
