$6,500 to support Yurua communities within the 10 million acre Alto Purús Landscape, one of the largest intact ecosystems in the upper Amazon is Southeast Peru, through providing accurate information on potential impacts of a major road construction project, while also working to ensure that the government complies with all relevant laws related to Indigenous input and approval, protected areas, and isolated tribes.
$6,000 to support installing solar and shortwave radio communications systems in 5 Shiwiar communities in their territory in the Ecuadorian Amazon located near the border with Peru, covering an area of over 500,000 acres of intact roadless rainforest that has been defended by Shiwiar from being opened up to oil development. The project was initiated at the request of the communities to help address the Covid crisis currently impacting them and will also support future coordination between communities as they continue to defend their rights and traditional territories.
$100,000 to provide long-term support to Indigenous Peoples mobilizing to save their territories, including in response multiple ongoing threats, including Covid-19, increased fires and, in Brazil, the ongoing threat tied to Brazil’s Bolsonaro government slashing environmental protections, human rights standards, and the rule of law to benefit the very actors destroying the rainforest. CASA provided 69 grants at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic to Indigenous and forest communities mobilizing to share information and prevent the spread of Covid-19 on their territories, as well as for food, medicine and other basic needs. Funds also supported the Munduruku Campaign to fight the spread of Covid-19 impacting Munduruku in the Tapajos Basin. RAN has worked with CASA to help distribute funds raised during the 2019 Amazon fires – CASA has an existing and robust network of local advisors across different parts of the Amazon and are able to get funds to Indigenous communities that are underfunded, as well as provide rapid response support to address threats to Indigenous leaders.
$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.
$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.
$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.
$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.
$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.
$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.
$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.
