I walk a small path, surrounded by an infinite number of trees, plants and the scent of flowers. My lungs fill with pure, fresh air when I take a deep breath. My bare feet touch the ground, damp from yesterday's rain. This is my home. This is where I grew up. This is what I want to share with my children one day.
Oakland, CA – Today, the Board of Directors of Amazon Watch announced that Leila Salazar-López will become the new Executive Director of the international environmental and human rights organization effective immediately.
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...
O Globo | The construction of mega-dams involves grave human rights violations as well as other disastrous socio-environmental impacts. Belo Monte, for example, was described by Thais Santi, a Federal Prosecutor, as "an indigenous ethnocide in a world where everything is possible" taking place within the rule of law of a democratic state.
Observing the mountains on a sunny afternoon in the Amazon, my home, I began to reflect on the past few months I have spent on the road as an active voice advocating for the defence of indigenous territories, our rights and the rights of the future generations who have an inherent right to live in a healthy world. We all do.
Amazon Watch is proud to partner with indigenous women from across the Amazon basin to support their work to protect their ancestral territories from oil extraction and destructive mega-dam projects. These women are true leaders in the growing movement to protect the rainforest and all life.
Brasilia, Brazil – This week, imprisoned executives from one of Brazil's largest construction firms, who are implicated in an unprecedented corruption scandal involving the parastatal oil company Petrobras, promised to expose a parallel scheme of massive fraud surrounding hydroelectric dams in the Amazon.
New Scientist | Deforestation in the Amazon has skyrocketed in the past half a year, according to analysis of satellite images issued by Brazil's non-profit research institute, IMAZON.
It costs only $.03 per acre per year to support Amazon Watch's work with indigenous peoples to protect more than 60 million acres of rainforest from oil development and mega-dams. Please join us!
VICE News | "We're concerned that deforestation will continue unabated despite the fact that [Castanha]'s been arrested," Christian Poirier, said the Brazil-EU Advocacy Coordinator for the forest and indigenous rights protection group Amazon Watch. "There've been arrests made. There've been some serious attempts to break up these [deforestation] mafias. But...
Yes! Magazine | Sarayaku lies in southern Ecuador, where the government is selling drilling rights to a vast swath of indigenous lands – except for Sarayaku. The community has become a beacon of hope to other indigenous groups and to global climate change activists as it mobilizes to stop a new round of oil exploration.
Amazon Watch, allies, friends and wee ones joined some 8,000 mostly Californians in downtown Oakland over the weekend to call for an end to the state’s use of fracking and to demand stronger leadership on combating climate change within a climate justice framework.
VICE News | As reservoirs shrink and taps run dry in Brazil's worst ever water crisis, some scientists are making a connection between Amazonian deforestation and the monster drought.
Munich, Germany – Dozens of protestors from a coalition of German and international organizations converged today on the shareholder meeting of leading German corporation Siemens to condemn the company's role in egregious human rights violations from Brazil to Mexico.
As 2015 kicks off, it's important to reach out to our supporters and followers and to take a moment to assess our work last year and take a peek at the year to come.
Ecuador's President Correa was well-rewarded for his trip last week to China, but this could have grave impacts for the Amazon and the people who live there.
Amazon Watch and 13 other environmental and human rights organizations urged the Ecuadorian government to ensure a just, transparent, and expeditious investigation into the murder of indigenous leader and anti-mining activist José Tendetza. We also condemned the SWAT team raid on José Tendetza’s house and urge the investigators to refrain from...
Fusion | Determined to defend their territory in the city as well as the jungle, several hundred indigenous activists trekked from the Amazon to Ecuador's capital this week to start an extended occupation of a building that has served as their urban political center for more than two decades.
The Society Pages | Yesterday, in Quito, Ecuador, hundreds of Indigenous people from around the country, including those from the Amazon, the Sierra and the Coast, gathered outside the offices of CONAIE, in the north of the city, to continue the fight against a government plan to close the organisation's headquarters.
The Guardian | Over the last few months – as Peru helped guide the United Nations climate negotiations – five separate oil spills along a main oil pipeline through the Amazon have spewed thick black clots of crude across jungle and swamp and carpeted local fishing lagoons with dead fish.
Earlier this month, the world's eyes were on Lima as 196 nations debated what to do about climate change at the UN COP20 climate summit. While world leaders debated, negotiated, signed and didn't sign agreements, Amazon Watch and our allies sounded the alarm on the critical importance of the Amazon rainforest and indigenous ancestral territories...
Rolling Stone | On the morning of December 5th, a dark piece of news began circulating at the U.N. climate talks in Lima: The body of José Isidro Tendetza Antún, a leading Ecuadorian indigenous-rights and anti-mining campaigner, had been found in a riverside grave near his village, his remains bound in rope, showing signs of beating and torture.
Huffington Post | I walk a small path, surrounded by an infinite number of trees, plants and the scent of flowers. My lungs fill with pure, fresh air when I take a deep breath. My bare feet touch the ground, damp from yesterday's rain. This is my home. This is where I grew up. This is what I want to share with my children one day.
The Guardian | From the Amazon to the Andes, thousands of activists marched through the streets of Lima on Wednesday to demand a just solution to climate change. The march through the traffic-choked streets put a human face on the United Nations climate negotiations, a process largely confined to suited bureaucrats working behind the high walls of a military...
Amazon Watch and indigenous allies joined thousands of marchers yesterday in defense of the rainforest and territorial rights and to demand that voices from the Amazon be heard at the United Nations COP20 climate negotiations.
"When we lose the Amazon, we not only create emissions, but we lose the climate stabilizing function of the forest," Amazon Watch founder Atossa Soltani told Democracy Now! at the "Women Leading Solutions on the Frontlines of Climate Change" event hosted by WECAN around the UNFCCC COP20 climate summit currently taking place in Lima, Peru. "We're...
The Guardian | "[REDD gives] permits to pollute," Smithie told the Tribunal. "[It means] forests of the world acting as a sponge for northern industrial countries' pollution. They can pollute if they grab forests in the global south."
Yesterday hundreds of indigenous peoples from communities across the Amazon joined together on a beach in Lima, Peru to create a massive "human banner" image to promote awareness about territorial rights for indigenous peoples in the global climate conversation. Beneath the heat of the sun and to the sound of beating drums, indigenous peoples and...
The Guardian | The body of an indigenous leader who was opposed to a major mining project in Ecuador has been found bound and buried, days before he planned to take his campaign to climate talks in Lima.
