Mining in the Amazon has terrible effects on the livelihoods and health of Indigenous peoples and frontline communities as well as the overall balance of the Amazon’s biological diversity. Yet, mining giants with well-known track records of devastation and rights violations are eyeing Indigenous and traditional communities’ lands and other protected areas in the Amazon.
Despite committing to withdraw from all mining interests in Indigenous lands, multinational companies continue to bulldoze through communities and their territories to complete their mining projects. Banks and asset managers are once again behind this extractive surge by financing these company’s projects.
Indigenous leaders who gathered at the U.N. Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues are demanding a decisive shift away from failed militarized responses toward rights-based approaches that center Indigenous territorial governance, autonomy, and community-led security systems in efforts to confront organized crime.
Whenever gold returns to the center of global geopolitics, the Amazon comes back into the crosshairs. The war between the United States and Iran has put the metal back on the radar of markets, investors, and the extractive industry.
In the context of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, Amazon Watch, together with allied organizations, presents the first report to analyze how illicit economies and repressive government responses threaten the rights, territories, and physical and cultural survival of Indigenous peoples.
An urgent message is traveling from the Amazon to the United Nations. This week, Amazon Watch will accompany a delegation of Indigenous leaders from Peru and Ecuador to New York for the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (UNPFII).
Thousands of Indigenous people marched in Brazil’s capital yesterday, during the second day of the 2026 Free Land Camp (ATL), the country’s largest Indigenous mobilization, to denounce land rights violations driven by large-scale mining, agribusiness, and logging projects.
One month into their occupation of the Altamira headquarters of Brazil’s National Foundation for Indigenous Peoples (FUNAI), Indigenous women from the Middle Xingu region led a peaceful action.
More than 140 Indigenous people have occupied the Brazilian federal Indigenous agency FUNAI’s regional office to demand the suspension of Belo Sun’s mining license for its “Volta Grande” gold mine on the banks of the Xingu River.
“We are already suffering the impacts of the Belo Monte dam.. If another project of this scale comes, the Volta Grande will not withstand it.”
Today the Indigenous occupation at Cargill’s grain terminal in Santarém entered its 20th day, deepening the movement’s standoff with the Lula administration over plans to dredge the Tapajós and privatize Amazonian rivers.
Indigenous Peoples from the Tapajós region blocked the main access road to Santarém International Airport today, escalating a mobilization ongoing since January 22.
On the 13th day blockading Cargill’s grain terminal in Santarém, Indigenous protestors are demanding in-person dialogue with Brazil's federal government, following its failure to send representatives to a meeting last week.
For the past week, Indigenous peoples representing 14 ethnicities from the Lower and Middle Tapajós River region have blockaded facilities operated by agribusiness multinational Cargill in Santarém, protesting industrial interventions designed to accelerate agro-commodity exports.
Despite clear warnings from research institutions, Brazil is moving closer to licensing a mega-project based on incomplete and flawed environmental studies.
The Amazon has reached an ecological tipping point. What happens in 2026 will help determine whether climate justice remains possible or becomes an empty slogan.
As climate denial gained renewed political traction and governments moved to restrict civic space, Indigenous peoples and grassroots movements across the Amazon advanced bold, collective visions for the future.
“Prior consultation is a binding requirement established by the Federal Regional Court and an indispensable condition for the environmental licensing process to move forward.“
“For us, the Wampis, autonomy means living in freedom and peace as we have inherited our territory. It means being free from pollution and deciding our own future, for ourselves, but also for all of humanity”.
Brazil’s largest Indigenous organizations warn that the amendment dismantles the country’s constitutional framework for territorial protection.
By rejecting Noboa’s militarized reforms, Ecuadorians chose solutions that protect life and dignity instead of policies based on repression.
Democracy Now! | The Brazilian government said, "We’re going to put a hold on Ferrogrão. We’re not going forward on this soy railway for Cargill and ADM and Bunge and all these multinational corporations to feed animals, not people. We’re not going forward with this without people’s consent.”
Open Global Rights | Belém can be remembered as a turning point – when the world stopped treating the Amazon as a victim and began dismantling the criminal economies driving its collapse.
The Kakataibo have made it clear to us: they will not give up. Their fight to reclaim and defend their ancestral lands has lasted more than two decades, and this is simply another chapter in a long struggle for survival and justice.
The Wampís’ fight is not just local, it’s global. Defending the Amazon means defending the planet.
“Mocoa is the most conserved territory, where the mountains hold the winds of the ancestors, which descend to embrace the Amazon.”
Associated Press | “The Amazon is not for sale. We will defend our territories because we have not been consulted – this is our home."
"These false authorizations not only legalize the advance of destruction, but also put our water, our health, and our food security at risk."
O Globo | On the eve of COP30, Raoni is also skeptical about the environmental meeting to be held in Belém.
"His arrest offers a welcome reprieve for the Amazon and its peoples by weakening the chance that his destructive agenda will return to the region,”
With COP30 in Belém just months away, Brazil had a chance to send the world a bold message about its commitment to climate justice. Instead, it delivered a mixed one.
