More About COVID-19

COVID-19 Threatens Indigenous Lives in the Amazon

The COVID-19 pandemic has created an additional crisis for indigenous and traditional peoples across the Amazon Basin. Amazon Watch is working on a variety of urgent initiatives in response to emerging needs. The global pandemic puts their lives in even more danger as governments fail to appropriately address the crisis. Across the Amazon, indigenous peoples are already on the front lines of the climate crisis, facing mounting threats including deforestation, fires, industrial extraction, agribusiness expansion, and increased violence against Forest Guardians. More

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Jane Fonda, Carlos Santana, Morgan Freeman and Peter Gabriel to Headline Global Livestream Event Supporting COVID-19 Relief in the Amazon

Artists United for Amazonía is livestream event for the benefit of the Amazon Emergency Fund, an indigenous-led effort providing rapid response grants across the Amazon to address the pandemic

May 23, 2020

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.

Oxygen for Ucayali: The Global Crises Exposed by COVID-19

May 20, 2020

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 oxygen to sustain our survival.

Investor Eye on the Amazon

A primer for shareholders concerned about rainforest protection and human rights

Spring 2020

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.

COVID-19: Is GeoPark Contaminating Amazon Communities?

May 12, 2020

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 continuing to visit communities as part of a divide-and-conquer strategy to fraudulently manufacture consent for oil operations.

COVID-19: Inaction and Lack of Funds Threatens Over Three Million Indigenous People and Over 400 Ethnic Groups in the Amazon

Given the inaction of governments in the face of the humanitarian crisis due to the expansion of COVID-19, Amazon's COICA launches an urgent global call to raise essential resources while waiting for the governments of the region to take immediate action

May 6, 2020

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 leadership of COICA warned that these funds are only an "absolute minimum to begin operation" and that many more funds will be needed to respond to the pandemic in the region.

COVID, Crude, and Climate: Crisis and Opportunity in the Ecuadorian Amazon

"In this time of multiple crises, we are invisible, yet again. But they're planning to open up our territories the second this is over. And we won't let that happen."

April 30, 2020

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 without homes or crops.

Indigenous Peoples of Ecuador's Amazon File Lawsuit Against Government and Oil Companies in Wake of Disastrous Oil Spill

Indigenous communities that rely on the river for fresh water and food now face an additional crisis during COVID-19

April 29, 2020

"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."

Indigenous Peoples Across the Amazon Issue Demands in Response to Coronavirus Pandemic

225 international organizations announce their solidarity with indigenous demands during the coronavirus pandemic, including an Amazon-wide moratorium on all industrial activity

April 20, 2020

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.

Statement in Solidarity With Amazonian Indigenous Peoples Facing the Novel Coronavirus

April 2020

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 activity that includes the entering of foreign persons into indigenous territories, the development of mining activities, logging, oil exploration and extraction, industrial agriculture, religious proselytization, or increased militarization, especially in transborder territories under pressure from armed actors and organized crime.

International Organizations Amplify Indigenous Peoples' Demands in Response to Coronavirus Pandemic

Among the demands, indigenous peoples call for an Amazon-wide moratorium on all extractive activity on their territories

April 8, 2020

COVID-19 poses a mortal threat to Amazonian indigenous peoples. As of April 7th there have already been at least 1,868 cases of the disease in the region and 59 deaths. Those numbers are likely to explode in the coming weeks, and we need to take action now to prevent more deaths.