Grants in 2020

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Amazon Emergency Fund

$50,000 to support the Amazon Emergency Fund, a newly-formed donor collaborative working in close coordination with COICA (Coordinating Body of Indigenous Peoples of the Amazon Basin) and its 9 national Indigenous organizations, as well as partners and allies across the Amazon and around the world, to support emergency COVID-19 response for Indigenous and forest communities and organizations facing COVID-19 in the Amazon Basin. The Amazon Emergency Fund provides rapid response grants for urgent and immediate prevention and care; food and medical supplies; emergency communications and evacuation; protection and security for Forest Guardians; and food sovereignty and community resilience.

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Nuevo Ponderosa and Nueva Alianza Shawi Villages

$2,000 to support a project coordinating efforts between Shawi villages in the Peruvian Amazon and regional health officials to train 4 Shawi youth leaders and to establish 2 Community First Aid Health centers in communities vulnerable due to the presence of outsiders around their territory, incorporating traditional and western medical supplies and providing education and necessary health protocols to keep COVID-19 from spreading among the villages and from there deeper into Shawi territory.

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Kelompok Studi dan Pengembangan Prakarsa Masyarakat (KSPPM)

$5,000 to support work with Indigenous Tano Batak families in the Lake Toba region in Northern Sumatra, Indonesia, impacted by Toba Pulp Lestari, a US$600 million pulp company, through local organizing and facilitated discussions to raise awareness regarding collective community rights to customary forests as well as using drones to have complete documentation, videos and aerial photographs of forest cover and land use for participatory mapping of customary areas.

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Ceibo Alliance

$20,000 to support Indigenous storytellers with the tools, platforms and support they need to share their stories and ideas with the world. This initiative was launched in response to the 2019 fires across the Amazon region and with the current threat posed to Indigenous communities by the potential spread of COVID-19, efforts to elevate Indigenous perspectives are needed now more than ever.

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Amazon Frontlines in collaboration with Ceibo Alliance and Organización Regional de los Pueblos Indígenas del Oriente (ORPIO)

$20,000 to support a concerted push towards securing land title for three key communities in Peru—an area over 500,000 acres of rainforest—through this process the Siekopai can realize a bi-national biological, social and cultural corridor for their people of over 1.4 million acres and knock down barriers to land titling for dozens of other Indigenous Nations across the country, as well as eliminate the Permanent Production Forest designation over their lands.

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CONCONAWEP Federacion Waorani

$25,000 to support using the Waorani’s legal precedent against the Ecuadorian government’s proposed auction of their ancestral territory to the international oil industry to defend 7 million additional acres of rainforest threatened by oil auction. This project is also supporting efforts to strengthen women’s leadership through capacity building and real world experience in implementation of projects in support of their communities and will develop alternative education pilot projects across Waorani communities with a vision to expand the model into communities of other Indigenous Nations.

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Amazon Frontlines

$30,000 to support efforts with Indigenous partners in the Ecuadorian Amazon to slow the spread of coronavirus in the region through immediate action in two phases: prevention through communications in Indigenous languages and the creation of an emergency response fund. With devastating fires that raged across the Amazon in 2019 and governments that actively push to open the last remaining tracts of primary forest to resource extraction, and now with the addition to the currently COVID-19 crisis, strengthening Indigenous peoples’ autonomy and capacity to resist has never been more urgent and this grant will also support efforts to strengthen women’s movements in the western Amazon over the next year.

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Pueblo Originario Kichwa de Sarayaku

$10,000 to provide emergency aid to support Kichwa Indigenous peoples of Sarayaku in the Ecuadorian Amazon after extreme flooding of the Bobonaza river on their territory has caused hundreds of families to lose their homes and also severely damaged their crops. This is the worst flooding seen in the region, almost certainly connected to climate change and deforestation outside Sarayaku territory, and is coming at a time when Indigenous people in the Ecuadorian Amazon are fighting to prevent the spread of coronavirus on their territories.

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Amazon Women Defenders of the Rainforest

$5,000 to support the Amazon Women Defenders of the Rainforest leading a major mobilization to coincide with International Women’s Day, including bringing 100 women from Indigenous communities in the Ecuadorian Amazon to the capital city of Quito to meet with and hold accountable government representatives to investigate rights abuses and provide greater protection of Indigenous women’s rights with a particular focus on the extractive industries.

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Instituto Internacional de Derecho y Sociedad (IIDS)

$5,000 to support the Indigenous community of Tres Islas in the Peruvian Amazon, which has been involved in a long struggle to protect their territory from invasion, principally by mining concessions authorized by the Peruvian government. This grant would support sending the Tres Islas community president and a legal advisor from IIDS to Haiti to attend a working meeting before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights along with representatives from the Peruvian government regarding monitoring and accountability towards the implementation of the Precautionary Measure and other IACHR decisions calling for the cancellation of the mining concessions and protecting Tres Islas’ 75,000 acres of traditional territory in the Peruvian Amazon.