“The destruction of the Amazon rainforest is a threat to humanity and to the natural systems on which it depends. Indigenous Peoples are the best protectors of the Amazon, and we will continue to defend our rights and our territories from the extractive industries and threaten Indigenous Peoples and the rainforest.”
Climate Change
Citigroup AGM: Bank Called Out for Amazon Oil Financing
Report shows bank’s role in funding oil companies with ties to corruption, rights violations, pollution, and deforestation in the Amazon. Indigenous leaders, alongside human rights and environmental campaigners, calling for Citigroup to exit Amazon oil and gas.
“Oil drilling in our Amazon has brought contamination, disease, deforestation, destruction of our cultures, and the colonization of our territories. It is an existential threat for us and violates our fundamental rights as Indigenous peoples. We are calling for an end to all new extraction on our lands, and as our ancestors and science now affirm...
Stand.earth and Amazon Watch Deploy 75-foot Banner Demanding Gavin Newsom End Amazon Destruction
Massive banner drop in Sacramento spotlights California and Amazon oil connection and calls on Governor Newsom to take action
Sacramento, CA — Today, activists from Stand.earth and Amazon Watch deployed a 75-foot banner from Sacramento’s iconic Tower Bridge to demand California governor Gavin Newsom stand up to Big Oil and end California’s role in the destruction of the Amazon Rainforest.
2020-2021 Annual Report
It has been a groundbreaking and historic year in our work to protect and defend the Amazon. 2019 saw the devastation of the deforestation fires, which in turn brought a groundswell of support in defense of the Amazon. On the heels of this historic tragedy, and overwhelming support, we increased capacity and responded with renewed vigor in the...
Celebrate Earth Day with Amazon Watch!
This Earth Day is perhaps the most important in human history. If we hope to avert the worst of the climate crisis, we must act now. With the Amazon at a tipping point, we must permanently protect the rainforest and make this moment a turning point for the future of our planet.
Amazon Watch is building on more than 25 years of radical and effective solidarity with Indigenous peoples across the Amazon Basin.
Climate Finance Groups Call on Financial Institutions to Heed IPCC Report Urging World to Stop Using Fossil Fuels
Report comes ahead of shareholder votes on fossil fuel expansion at six largest U.S. banks and major insurance companies
“The latest IPCC report affirms what Indigenous peoples in the Amazon and across the world have been saying for decades: colonialism caused the climate crisis, and colonialism continues to worsen it today."
Protect the Amazon, Protect the Planet!
Last year, the International Energy Agency released the most comprehensive and groundbreaking study yet, outlining requirements to meet the Paris Agreement goal of keeping global warming below 1.5°C. It argued that if we are to meet those goals, there can be no development of new oil and gas fields and no new coal-fired power stations or coal...
Human Rights and Chinese Business Activities in Latin America
New report by the Collective on Chinese Financing and Investments, Human Rights and the Environment examines 26 cases of rights violations perpetrated by Chinese companies and financiers across Latin America, over half of which are in the Amazon
As part of the 49th session of the UN Human Rights Council, more than 60 civil society organizations released a new report that evaluates 26 projects backed by Chinese companies and capital across nine Latin American countries. The investigation found a pattern of failure to comply with international standards on human rights and the environment...
Meet the Artist and Business Power Behind Our Movement to Protect the Amazon
In many ways, Amazon Watch's community reflects the expansive ecosystem we work to protect, showing up in endlessly diverse ways to amplify Indigenous rights and resistance.
What Are Carbon Offset Markets Selling? Not Solutions to Amazon Destruction
The world’s most notorious corporate greenwashers are once again targeting the rainforest to avoid actually reducing emissions
Corporate polluters have used offsets as an excuse to keep emitting, but there’s little evidence that offsets are actually slowing climate change. What’s more, offset programs have enabled land-grabbing and violations of Indigenous rights in the Amazon.
Portraits of Women Defenders Uniting Across the Amazon
Indigenous women across the Amazon are coming together like never before to protect and defend our lives, rights, bodies, and territories in the face of ever-increasing threats.
From Wall Street to the Amazon: Big Capital Funds Mining-driven Deforestation
Mongabay | Major investment managers including BlackRock and Capital Group are among more than a dozen U.S. and Brazilian institutions heavily financing mining companies that are destroying Indigenous reserves and their inhabitants’ way of life in the Amazon.
U.S. Financial Institutions Are Complicit in the Destruction of the Amazon
New report exposes how mining companies and international investors drive Indigenous rights violations and threaten the future of the Amazon rainforest
“There must be a general understanding that Indigenous lands, traditional territories, and protected areas in the Amazon are not available for mineral exploration, nor should they be, both because there must be respect for our constitutional right to self-determination as Indigenous peoples over our territories, and because of our lands’...
BlackRock, Vanguard Among Financiers That Poured Billions into Companies Mining in Amazonian Indigenous Territories
New report by the Association of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil (APIB) and Amazon Watch reveals main investors of eight large mining companies notorious for human rights violations and environmental pollution, including Vale, Anglo American, and Belo Sun, wish to explore Indigenous territories in Brazil.
Brasília, Brazil – Today the Association of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil (APIB), alongside environmental and human rights organization Amazon Watch, launched Complicity in Destruction IV: How mining companies and international investors drive Indigenous rights violations and threaten the future of the Amazon.
Complicity in Destruction IV
How Mining Companies and International Investors Drive Indigenous Rights Violations and Threaten the Future of the Amazon
In the latest edition of the Complicity in Destruction series, research by APIB and Amazon Watch found that international financiers, including BlackRock, Vanguard and Capital Group, poured USD $54.1 billion into eight large mining companies, including Vale, Anglo American, and Belo Sun.
The Science Based Targets Initiative's Proposed FLAG Targets are a Corporate Gift to Big Agribusiness
The inclusion of carbon offset schemes and carbon intensity-based targets for commodity producers poses grave threats to Indigenous rights, forest ecosystems, and the climate, groups warn
Oakland, CA – Today, Amazon Watch and allied organizations submitted their opposition to the Science Based Targets Initiative’s (SBTi) newly-proposed Forests, Land, and Agriculture (FLAG) emissions targets. The proposed FLAG targets are incompatible with the action necessary to address the climate crisis.
Citigroup Fails to Rein in Oil and Gas Expansion to Address Amazon Rainforest Crisis
Oakland, CA – Yesterday, finance giant Citigroup released an outline of its latest plans to achieve net zero in its energy and power portfolios. Despite these new commitments, Citi remains a major bankroller of oil and gas expansion in the Amazon biome – as it is the top financier of state-owned oil companies in the Amazon. This reality is...
2021 Was a Year to Reflect, Reclaim, and Reconnect
2021 was full of highs and lows as we entered our second year in physical isolation from one another. We celebrated 25 years as an organization with our community, in deep solidarity with Indigenous peoples. We reflected on all that we have accomplished together and what challenges remain ahead.
All the Ways You Can Support Amazon Watch
When you make a tax-deductible donation to Amazon Watch, you can count on your contribution being put to work effectively and immediately. As we work to achieve climate justice and a just transition for all, we always center Indigenous voices in the movement.
New Investigation Reveals California Fueling Amazon Rainforest Oil Drilling and Destruction
COSTCO, American Airlines, Amazon.com, FedEx, and other major corporations revealed in chain of custody research
“Oil extraction in our Ecuadorian Amazon has brought pollution, diseases, deforestation, destruction of our cultures, and the colonization of our territories. It is an existential threat to us, and it violates our fundamental rights as Indigenous peoples."
Crude Reality: One U.S. State Consumes Half the Oil from the Amazon Rainforest
As oil companies carve up more of the rainforest, a new study says no place in the world uses more oil from beneath the Amazon than California
NBC News | Waorani leader Nemo Guiquita has been fighting the expansion of oil drilling in her tribe’s ancestral homeland for years. She said her grandmother, Nayuma, was the first Waorani to make contact with the outside world 60 years ago. “The rainforest for us is home,” Guiquita said. “It’s our life, our pharmacy, our everything.”
Linked Fates
How California's oil imports affect the future of the Amazon rainforest
“Oil drilling in our Amazon has brought contamination, disease, deforestation, destruction of our cultures, and the colonization of our territories. It is an existential threat for us and violates our fundamental rights as Indigenous peoples.”
Linked Fates: Ending Amazon Crude Will Benefit Us All
New research shows that California is the world’s largest consumer of oil from the Amazon rainforest. California converts 50% of the Amazon oil exported globally into fuel for airports, corporations such as Amazon.com, trucking fleets such as PepsiCo, and retail gas giants such as COSTCO. This new investigation expands upon our previous research...
Amazon in Focus 2021
The Amazon is at a tipping point. It is not near, it’s here. To reverse/halt this tipping point, we have joined the call from Indigenous peoples and global scientists to protect 80% of the Amazon by 2025. Not 2030 and definitely not 2050. The time to act is now!
We Will Continue to Unite and Organize for the Amazon and Climate Justice, Despite COP26
After two intense weeks in Glasgow for COP26, we are back home reflecting on the outcomes. While the Glasgow Pact does not meet the action needed to address the climate emergency, the civil society presence was truly inspiring. Indigenous peoples, frontline communities, women, and youth attended in full force organizing for climate justice and...
“Alternative Development” in the Peruvian Amazon: Deforestation, Drugs, and Death
Over the last few decades, the Peruvian Amazon has become a hotspot for coca cultivation. Drug traffickers in the region have shown a willingness to destroy the rainforest and kill anyone in the name of profit. Indigenous leaders working to protect their Amazonian communities from land invasions, deforestation, and violence come into the cross...
Brazilian Indigenous Leader Faces Renewed Attack Upon Returning from the COP26 Summit
Oakland, CA – Last Saturday, Brazilian Indigenous leader Alessandra Korap Munduruku had her house invaded in the Amazonian city of Santarém, days after returning from the COP26 summit in Glasgow.
COP26 Agreement Fails to Address Climate Emergency, Take Necessary Steps to Protect Amazon and Respect Indigenous Peoples’ Rights
Fossil fuel lobby outnumbered Indigenous representation two to one, nations struck deal on international carbon markets despite Indigenous opposition to carbon pricing
Glasgow, UK – Undermining global hopes for meaningful action, the 26th annual Conference of Parties (COP26) climate summit in Glasgow concluded over the weekend without successfully addressing key drivers of the climate crisis, among them the destruction of the Amazon rainforest and the role of fossil fuels.
The Real Reason Behind Bolsonaro’s Climate Promises
Without proper enforcement mechanisms, nationalist leaders will continue to drive climate change with impunity
The Atlantic | So far, Bolsonaro’s actions have spoken louder than any of the Brazilian delegation’s words. Back in Brazil, he lambasted a youth representative of Brazil’s indigenous community for going to COP26 only to “attack Brazil.” Surely she should have realized that the easiest way to hurt the country would have been to not attend the summit at all.
