The Amazon Defenders Fund (ADF) is an activist-led solidarity fund built upon Amazon Watch’s multi-decade track record as a trusted partner to Indigenous nations and local organizations. Guided by Amazonian people’s agenda of sovereignty and self-determination, the ADF is a liberatory framework responding to the historical anti-colonial struggle to defend land and territory.
The Fund is guided by the principles and cosmology of Indigenous peoples – solidarity, accountability, interconnectedness, relationality, and reciprocity – which celebrates the regeneration of life’s natural cycles. It is committed to fostering long-term change processes while addressing emerging crises. To rapidly mobilize direct solidarity funds for Amazonian communities, the ADF engages a broad network of philanthropic partners, harnessing collective resources to strengthen our efforts.
Formalized by Amazon Watch in 2019, the ADF grew out of a decades-long practice of regranting funds to Indigenous partners, dating back to the organization’s founding. It continues to advance the Amazonian Indigenous agendas of autonomy, sovereignty, and self-determination. Crucially, it also provides solidarity funds for defenders at risk, ensuring immediate measures for protection and care in times of crisis.
The ADF provides critical solidarity funding accompaniment to communities confronting fires, flooding, violence, and other urgent threats, and practices decolonized philanthropy that strengthens community resistance against extractive industries. It supports advocacy, mobilizations, and direct actions to oppose harmful projects while contributing to the long-term resilience of Indigenous communities. By funding governance initiatives, self-demarcation efforts, cultural and spiritual revitalization, and regenerative economies, the ADF is accompanying autonomous, thriving Indigenous nations.
