In honor of Amazon Watch's 25th anniversary, our 2021-2025 Strategic Plan builds upon 25 years of work to protect the Amazon rainforest and defend the rights, lives and territories of Indigenous peoples. We commit to work in solidarity with Indigenous peoples and a growing global movement calling for urgent action to permanently protect the...
New York, NY – Prompted by the recent alliance in Colombia between the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and GeoPark, an oil company credibly accused of human rights and environmental malfeasance in the Amazon rainforest, an international group of more than forty organizations wrote to the UNDP Executive Board on Friday, June 4. The...
"As long as the world's largest investors choose to place profits over people by continuing to pour money into the fossil fuel industry in the Amazon, our entire planet is at risk. BlackRock, State Street, and Vanguard must end their complicity in Indigenous rights abuses, forest destruction, and climate chaos," said Moira Birss, Climate and...
The “Big Three” manage trillions of dollars of investments for individual and institutional investors all over the world, including pension funds and university endowments. Together they control nearly 20 trillion dollars. By investing in oil companies with horrific environmental and human rights records, they are not only flagrantly ignoring...
Three of the world's largest asset managers – BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street – with trillions of dollars under their control, invest in oil companies with horrific environmental and human rights records across the Amazon Basin. Right now, these asset managers hold a large amount of risk by actively contributing to Indigenous and human...
Amazon Watch expresses our solidarity with Colombian civil society and popular movements facing violent repression by state security forces, riot police (ESMAD), and the national army, since the national strike began on May 28. We are deeply concerned by reports of over 1,000 cases of violence, over 700 arbitrary arrests, at least 37 deaths...
"The oil companies are operating in the Amazon anyway, and we can help make sure they abide by human rights standards." Such was the rationale presented by the head of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in Colombia, Jessica Faieta. The UNDP managed to get itself into quite a pickle and found itself in the uncomfortable position of...
"Partnerships between UN agencies and oil companies seriously undermine the United Nations’ moral authority on climate and environmental issues. But UNDP Colombia isn’t just partnering with your run-of-the-mill oil company polluting the Amazon Rainforest. In Colombia, the UNDP is working with GeoPark which local communities have consistently...
On April 20th, Sandra Liliana Peña Choqué, governor of the La Laguna Reserve in Siberia of the Caldono municipality in the department of Cauca, was cowardly murdered in her home. Sandra Liliana emphatically led the assemblies and traditional authorities determined to self govern her ancestral territory which was gravely attacked by regular and...
Amazon Watch is celebrating 25 years of radical and effective solidarity with Indigenous peoples across the Amazon Basin! What started with our founder, Atossa Soltani, confronting Fernando Cardoso, then the president of Brazil, face-to-face on March 11, 1996, is now a powerful organization building upon that legacy and deepening our commitment to...
The Amazon and our global climate are in crisis. Following rampant deforestation and fires that ravaged the Amazon rainforest last year, the Amazon is now facing a tipping point of ecological collapse. The Amazon is also facing a humanitarian crisis with the COVID-19 pandemic that is spreading exponentially across the region.
After years of pressure from shareholders and legislators, BlackRock finally seemed ready to acknowledge the climate crisis in January, when it announced it would "place climate at the center of its investment strategy." On the surface, the move seemed to send a clear message that business as usual was over. Yet, it has been far from clear what...
BlackRock's Big Problem | In light of BlackRock's commitments to center climate in its investment strategy and the responsibilities it has stemming from its continued financing of deforestation-linked commodities, the BlackRock's Big Problem campaign urges BlackRock and other asset managers to adopt policies on Forests, Land, and the Human Rights of Indigenous Peoples and...
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...
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...
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...
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.
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...
TriplePundit | "The Amazon rainforest is crucial to climate stability, and oil drilling expansion is one of the greatest threats to it," said Moira Birss, campaign director of the finance program at Amazon Watch.
In our newest report, Investing in Amazon Crude, and activist guide, Building People Power to End Investment in Amazon Crude, Amazon Watch details the ways that five of the world's most powerful financial institutions – Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, HSBC, and BlackRock – actively contribute to climate change by providing debt and...
E&E News | Major U.S. financial institutions are funneling billions of dollars into crude oil expansion in the western Amazon rainforest, according to a report released today that underscored Indigenous peoples' long-standing opposition to fossil fuel extraction on ancestral lands.
Oakland, CA – A report released today by Amazon Watch shows how five American and British financial institutions are actively accelerating climate change and human rights abuses by providing billions of dollars in debt and equity financing for crude oil extraction projects in the western Amazon. Already, millions of acres of the western Amazon...
Building People Power to End Investment in Amazon Crude is a 4-page refresher for activists who want to better understand the role that major financial institutions play in escalating the climate crisis. It includes detailed data from the latest Amazon Watch research on the total debt and equity financing provided by five major firms to companies...
This report outlines in detail the ways that five of the world's most powerful financial institutions are actively contributing to climate change by providing debt and equity financing for crude oil extraction projects in the Amazon. It highlights key examples of on-the-ground Indigenous resistance to oil extraction, which is not only terrible for...
Protecting and restoring the Amazon, indigenous rights, and the climate, requires greater unity across movements. Accomplishing the required transition from fossil fuels and protection of indigenous stewards of vital forests is the most urgent task we face today. We hope that you will join us in partnership this year and for many years to come.
We cannot simply offset our way to a climate stable world. We need real climate action that addresses the primary cause of climate change: fossil fuel extraction and commodity-driven deforestation, and calls for climate justice.
Amazon Watch’s expertise and history as a principled ally to indigenous peoples uniquely positions the organization to help shape the global narrative on why and how we must defend the Amazon.
The Investor Eye on the Amazon provides an update on our campaigns targeting corporations with ties to dirty industry in the Amazon, and it aims to serve as a resource for socially-responsible investors, industry analysts, and researchers looking to better understand the risks associated with investment in extractive industries - and their own...
Thank you to all our friends and supporters who joined us on October 5th, 2018 for our annual gala - Amplify! A celebration of voices from the Amazon.
