Protecting the Amazon and our climate in solidarity with Indigenous peoples

The Amazon is critical to global climate stability and home to more than 500 Indigenous nations. But fossil fuel extraction, mining, agribusiness, and organized crime are pushing the rainforest towards irreversible destruction.

Amazon Watch partners with Indigenous peoples through campaigns to defend their rights, resist extractive industries, and demand corporate accountability. Through our programs, we stand in deep solidarity with Indigenous peoples across the Amazon, advancing their leadership, security, and sovereignty to protect their rights, cultures, and rainforest territories.

Campaigns

End Amazon Crude

Partnering with Indigenous allies to make the Amazon a no-go zone for oil drilling.

Mining Out of the Amazon

Amplifying Indigenous calls to end industrial mining in their territories.

Secure Indigenous Land Rights

Advancing Indigenous demands for legal recognition of their territories.

Amazon Crime

Forging strategies with Indigenous partners to combat the rising threat of organized crime.

Programs

Amazon Defenders Fund

Delivering timely, flexible resources to Indigenous leaders and organizations, empowering them to defend their rights, territories, culture, and autonomy in the face of repression and violence.

Women Defenders

Supporting Indigenous women leaders safeguarding the rainforest by enhancing their security, advancing their leadership in advocacy spaces, and promoting their cultural and economic initiatives.

Power to the Protectors

Equipping Indigenous communities with solar power, communication tools, and the skills to maintain them, enabling better monitoring of territories and strengthening their ability to protect the Amazon.

How we work

For nearly 30 years, Amazon Watch has practiced radical and effective solidarity with Indigenous peoples across the Amazon Basin. Our unique expertise is a combination of on-the-ground experience and long-term relationships with Indigenous communities, in-depth reporting and media capacity, global advocacy, and campaigns to challenge and change the policies of the governments and corporations responsible for the Amazon’s destruction.

Corporate campaigns targeting emblematic companies pursuing destructive projects, exposing legal, financial, and reputational risks for corporate shareholders and investors.
Global communications and media support using media outreach, storytelling, nonviolent direct action, protests, delegations, and other mechanisms to elevate Indigenous solutions.
Legal defense, strategic advice, and accompaniment supporting partners’ legal cases to address personal and community-level threats and to advance land rights, justice, and respect for human rights.
Research and publications to expose threats to Indigenous rights and territories; propose solutions; and hold countries, companies, and investors accountable.
Direct solidarity funding through the Amazon Defenders Fund to support frontline communities and advance their autonomy and self-determination.
International advocacy and partner accompaniment at key spaces including the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, UN Human Rights Council, UN Conferences of the Parties (COP) for the Climate and Biodiversity, and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.

Impact

Since 1996, Amazon Watch and our partners have won significant victories that have protected millions of acres of bio-culturally diverse rainforest and mobilized international support for more than 1,000 Indigenous-led projects in Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru.

6 million hectares of rainforest defended by partners

Directly partnered with organizations and communities representing 250,000 Indigenous people

26 oil and mining mega-projects stopped or delayed

13 legal victories won in defense of the rainforest

$8.7 million mobilized through the Amazon Defenders Fund from 2020-2024