Sentimos una tristeza profunda en Amazon Watch al ver el desalojo y la quema de los campamentos solidarios en Standing Rock. Como muchos de ustedes, los habíamos visitado y habíamos rezado, manifestado, y alzado la voz en apoyo a su territorio y su agua.
At Amazon Watch, we felt a profound sadness last Wednesday when the protests camps at Standing Rock were fully evacuated and destroyed. But the Standing Rock struggle, and the movement of indigenous peoples across the continent to defend their land and the environment, is nowhere near over.
The impacts of new drilling in the Amazon rainforest have been dire both for its world-renowned biodiversity and its indigenous peoples, many of whom have long rejected controversial drilling plans on their lands.
Despite its professed commitment to protection of Mother Earth and to placing sustainable living over profits, Ecuador under Correa has pursued a resource extraction strategy that prioritizes short-term revenue generation over environmental protection and indigenous territorial rights.
"We believe that justice has been done, and we will continue to work with the same courage and strength to defend the rights of nature and the rights of the people as we have been doing for 30 years," said Alexandra Almeida, the group's president.
Just this past spring, in a move that shocked the international conservation community, Ecuador began trucking the first barrels of crude out of Yasuní. Is this the beginning of the end for one of the world’s most biodiverse ecosystems?
The United Nations criticized the government of Ecuador on Friday for ordering the closure of a land rights advocacy group that supports an indigenous community protesting mining plans in land they claim as their ancestral home.
We are grateful for the solidarity of the Ecuadorian people and indigenous peoples' organizations, human rights throughout Latin America and the world, and call on the international community to be alert and vigilant to what happens in Ecuador, especially with our sisters and brothers of Shuar Nationality whose territory, life, and survival are in...
Ecuador became an even more difficult place to be a defender of indigenous rights and the environment in recent days. You would think a country with constitutionally-enshrined protections for Mother Nature would support and encourage indigenous and environmental rights defenders, but sadly that is not the case, and it has implications for the...
Ecuador's Environment Ministry announced yesterday its intention to shutter Acción Ecológica, the country's leading grassroots environmental organization. The move is a clear reprisal to the group's efforts to raise awareness about environmental and indigenous rights concerns over a planned mega-copper mine on the lands of the Shuar indigenous...
Acción Ecológica denounces the request made to set in motion an administrative procedure that would dissolve our organization on the grounds that we have deviated from the aims for which we were constituted.
Amazon Watch is concerned about the escalating tensions between the Shuar community of Nankints, the government, and the Chinese mining consortium EXSA (Ecuacorriente and Explorcobres).
We reiterate our request to national and international human rights organizations to collaborate in protecting the rights, life and integrity of the Shuar community and of all [people] involved in this situation, and we call for the solidarity of the people to demand the demilitarization and a cease of the violent actions that benefit the Chinese...
"If we can't manage to protect places that are this important,"" says Kevin Koenig, Ecuador program director for Amazon Watch, "then it seems unlikely that we'll be able to protect the rest of the planet. Depending on what happens here, we could be at the beginning of what could turn out to be a very tragic story."
Check out one of the stunning new films recently released about the Amazon and the heroic environmental defenders protecting it and defending us from climate change.
Four years after the historic verdict in their favor from the Inter-American Court on Human Rights of the Organization of American States, the Kichwa community of Sarayaku was back in San Jose, Costa Rica today facing off with the Ecuadorian government, which has failed to comply with the most critical components of the Court's landmark 2012...
On the occasion of a public compliance hearing at the Inter-American Court of Human Rights today, members of the indigenous Kichwa community in Sarayaku exposed the Ecuadorian State's failure to comply with the 2012 judgement issued by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, using a new interactive digital story-map to demonstrate how the...
We will not let Trump or anyone else stand in our way of defending our climate, our rights, or the Amazon. Join us in calling for an end to Amazon crude and to keep all fossil fuels in the ground to avert climate chaos!
Developed jointly by the pair after experiencing first-hand the pressures faced by indigenous people in the Ecuadorian Amazon during 2015, the project was launched with the primary aim of raising international awareness of some of the key threats currently faced by the Sápara and Kichwa communities of Ecuador, specifically their long-running...
In recent weeks, the first wells inside the Yasuni fields have come into full commercial operation. According to Amazon Watch, the oil from the Yasuni fields is being pumped to California, where it is processed at US refineries.
In spite of their frequent exclusion from the debate, indigenous communities are proposing innovative solutions to the international community regarding environmental protection and climate change.
According to Leo Cerda, Ecuador field coordinator of the group Amazon Watch and member of the Kichwa tribe, the plight of indigenous land rights in the face of corporate resource extraction is a global phenomenon. Cerda, who hails from the Ecuadorean Amazon, traveled with a group of four all the way to North Dakota to show solidarity with the...
Thank you to all our friends and supporters who joined us at our 20th Anniversary Gala on Wednesday in San Francisco, where we shared food, music, dancing, and inspiring words about our last 20 years and our vision for the years to come supporting indigenous peoples and protecting the Amazon.
Last Wednesday Amazon Watch received a very disturbing call: the headquarters of CONFENIAE, the regional organization of eleven indigenous peoples which represents nearly 1,500 communities in the Ecuadorian Amazon, was being taken by storm.
Crude oil imported to the U.S. from the Amazon, most of which gets refined in California, is driving expansion of oil operations into the rainforest, according to a new report.
With your help we will end destructive oil extraction in the Amazon. Our climate can't afford it and the indigenous communities fighting to save their homes and cultures need us to unite behind them today.
The analysis, done by Amazon Watch, a nonprofit working to protect the rainforest, is the first to document the extent to which Amazon rainforest crude oil is present in the United States. Not only does this oil contribute to local air pollution and global climate change, but the expansion of fossil fuel extraction in the Amazon Basin threatens...
U.S. imports of crude oil from the Amazon are driving the destruction of some of the rainforest ecosystem's most pristine areas and releasing copious amounts of greenhouse gases, according to a new report conducted by environmental group Amazon Watch.
Oakland, CA – A new report entitled From Well to Wheel: The Social, Environmental and Climate Costs of Amazon Crude released Wednesday by Amazon Watch reveals the extent to which U.S. imports of crude oil from the Amazon – most of which are refined in California – help drive the ongoing expansion of oil operations into some of the Amazon...
