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...
A year has passed since the assassination of Indigenous Earth Defender Arbildo Meléndez, a leader of the Cacataibo people in the Peruvian Amazon. On Sunday, April 12, 2020, Arbildo went into the rainforest to hunt and never returned with food for his family. The next day his wife, Zulema Guevara, went searching for him and found his body. In...
The Guardian | Indigenous communities in Peru’s central Amazon are experiencing an increase in violence, threats and harassment as drug gangs target their land to grow coca, the plant used to make cocaine. COVID-19 restrictions have made the remote region even more vulnerable by slowing state efforts to protect land and eradicate illegal coca cultivation.
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...
Over the last seven years the Indigenous community of Unipacuyacu – inhabited by members of the Kakataibo people within the central region of the Peruvian Amazon – has lost five of their people at the hands of land-grabbers, who are linked to drug networks. This is the price they have paid for not ending their pursuit to secure legal titles for...
El Comercio | Eight Indigenous leaders from Ucayali and Huánuco have received threats for months from narco-trafficking mafias, land invaders, and illegal loggers. Several days ago, they were in Lima demanding protection from the Peruvian government. They fear for their lives.
One Amazonian nation that has prioritized addressing collective needs in their community during the pandemic has been the Ese Eja. It is now a young nation with a clear political vision, solid organizing, and communal ties. With a direct grant from the ADF, the Ese Eja have equipped their health posts with oxygen concentrators in each of their...
Today, we celebrate a major victory after years of collaboration and hard work to fend off another multinational oil company that was supported by the world's largest investment firms and powerful governments.
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.
"GeoPark's departure from Block 64 is a testament to the vision and persistence of the Achuar people and Wampis Nation. Let this be the final nail in Block 64's coffin," said Andrew Miller, Advocacy Director at Amazon Watch.
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...
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...
On May 28, 2020, Jane Fonda, Morgan Freeman, Carlos Santana, Peter Gabriel, and numerous other artists will join Indigenous leaders, scientists, and a broad coalition of NGOs in hosting Artists United for Amazonía: Protecting the Protectors, a global livestream event.
Reuters | Indigenous leaders are calling for help to stop oil companies drilling in the headwaters of the Amazon river in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, warning that encroaching on their homelands would destroy a bulwark against climate change.
Our Indigenous brothers and sisters in Peru remind us that access to oxygen and healthcare must be guaranteed right in a just economic system. Our partners shouldn't have to choose between purchasing oxygen or paying their bills or feeding their families. COVID-19 is showing us the face of the global food and health crisis and demanding literal...
JPMorgan Chase's February announcement of new, limited restrictions on its financing of certain kinds of fossil fuels in certain highly controversial extraction sites was a step in the right direction, but like many other financial institutions' commitments, it falls short. Notably, the bank's climate policy fails to outline measurable commitments...
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.
The Wampis Nation, one of the most organized Indigenous peoples in the Peruvian Amazon, is calling out Chile-based oil company GeoPark for putting their communities at risk of the COVID-19 contagion. Leaders of the Wampis Nation have received information that GeoPark community-relations workers are violating Peru's national quarantine by...
Arbildo Meléndez Grandes, leader of the Cacataibo Indigenous community of Unipacuyacu, is the latest Indigenous leader of the Peruvian Amazon to be murdered for defending his Indigenous territory. He was a defender of his community – demanding that the government provide a land title – and had received death threats from land-grabbers and narco...
Given the inaction of governments of the Amazon basin to meet the needs of Indigenous peoples in the face of the expansion of COVID-19, the Coordinator of Indigenous Organizations of the Amazon Basin (COICA) have launched today a campaign to raise at least three million dollars for emergency and essential funds for the next two weeks. However, the...
"If Goldman truly wants to be a 'sustainability' leader, it must end corporate financing for fossil fuel expansion in the Amazon and around the world – particularly when that expansion happens on Indigenous territories."
"If Citi truly cares about being a leader on climate and Indigenous rights, it must end corporate financing for fossil fuel expansion in the Amazon and around the world – particularly when that expansion is planned for the territories of Indigenous peoples."
Hundreds of human rights, environmental, and social justice organizations around the world demanded in an open statement issued today that governments and other entities enact urgent policies to ensure that the COVID-19 virus does not result in massive deaths within Indigenous communities.
COVID-19 poses a mortal threat to Amazonian Indigenous peoples. As of April 7th there have already been at least 1,868 cases of the disease in the region and 59 deaths. Those numbers are likely to explode in the coming weeks, and we need to take action now to prevent more deaths.
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...
"As humanity faces a global pandemic, Indigenous peoples of the Amazon are among the planet's most vulnerable to the COVID-19 virus. We call on allies around the world to amplify the messages from Indigenous peoples across the Amazon basin who are, once again, fighting for survival. We must mobilize to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus...
