Grants in South America

Fundo Socioambiental CASA

$50,000 to provide longterm support to Indigenous Peoples mobilizing to save their territories, including in response to the Amazon fires and 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. Indigenous communities have fought back on many fronts – forming Indigenous fire brigades to directly put out fires, continuing to confront and stop illegal activities on their territories despite the great security risks of doing so, organizing peaceful mass mobilizations in the region, and holding emergency Indigenous assemblies to strategize and plan courses of action. 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.

Amazon Frontlines

$10,000 to support bringing four Indigenous leaders from the Upper Amazon to the UN Climate Week in New York to raise awareness and support for the growing Indigenous movement to protect the Upper Amazon while forging connections with other Indigenous movements and civil society actors with the goal of strengthening Indigenous Peoples’ position in decision making around how to best protect the Amazon as Earth’s greatest defenses against climate change in light of recent devastating fires across the Amazon basin.

Pueblo Originario de la Nacionalidad Kichwa del Cantón Santa Clara (PONAKICSC)

$5,000 to support Kichwa Communities of Piatua towards mobilizing and food costs for 200 Indigenous men and women from impacted communities in the Ecuadorian Amazon to participate in a legal hearing and related activities challenging plans to build a hydroelectric dam that would irreparably affect 23 Indigenous communities and the headwaters of an important river that is part of the Llanganates–Sangay ecological corridor, considered one of the most biodiverse and endemic areas on Earth. The community won their legal case stopping the dam.

Associação das Mulheres Munduruku Wakoborun

$5,000 to support an assembly led by Munduruku women to strengthen alliances and plan to confront threats to defend collective territories in the Brazilian Amazon that are almost entirely covered with pristine forests despite the constant menace of illegal loggers, wildcat miners and other threats in the form of various concessions, as well as the assault on Indigenous rights that has occurred since the election of Brazil’s far-right President Jair Bolsonaro.

Instituto Internacional de Derecho y Sociedad (IIDS) supporting Federation of the Achuar Nationality of Peru (FENAP)

$5,000 to support a delegation of Achuar and Wampis Indigenous leaders to pressure GeoPark at its annual shareholders meeting in Santiago, Chile, to cancel their planned oil extraction project on Indigenous territory in the Peruvian Amazon. During the delegation GeoPark announced it is withdrawing its request for the environmental permit to drill for oil in Block 64. This was shortly after their plans were set back by roughly 6 months after the Achuar challenged the company’s Environmental Impact Study though a series of documented objections, to which GeoPark was forced to respond.

Amazon Watch in partnership with Asociación Latinoamericana para el Desarrollo Alternativo (Fundación Aldea) and Comisión Ecuménica de los Derechos Humanos (CEDHU)

$4,000 to support the Tejiendo Territorios: Encuentro de Defensoras de America Latino (Weaving Territories: Summit of Latin American Women Defenders), bringing together diverse frontline Indigenous women to share, learn, and build collective regional strategies for the defense of their territories and their rights within the new context of threats to their lives, lands, and cultures.

Amazon Frontlines in coordination with Indigenous Climate Action

$5,000 to support a delegation of First Nation leaders from Canada to travel to Ecuador to learn firsthand and support efforts by the Waorani people, who live in the upper headwaters of the Amazon river in Ecuador in one of the most biodiverse areas on earth, to secure a moratorium to block future efforts to drill for oil on their ancestral territory covering 2.5 million acres.

Amazon Watch (distributing funds to 5 Ecuador-based Indigenous organizations)

$5,000 to support the Women Defenders of the Amazon Against Extraction, an Ecuadorian Amazon based Indigenous women-led coalition, which has developed a 22-point Mandate detailing Indigenous rights violations primarily related to existing and proposed industrial extractive projects and met with the Ecuadorian President in 2018 securing commitments related to the Mandate. The coalition is commemorating International Women’s Day with cultural events and activities and actions/marches with women in their own communities to share the latest news, discuss new strategies and activities to implement the Mandate, and to strengthen the unification of Indigenous women defenders across the Ecuadorian Amazon and beyond.

Photo of Sapara leader Irene Toqueton Vargas by Santiago Cornejo

CONCONAWEP Federacion Waorani

$5,000 to support efforts by the Waorani people, who live in the upper headwaters of the Amazon river in Ecuador in one of the most biodiverse areas on earth, to secure a moratorium to block future efforts to drill for oil on their ancestral territory covering 2.5 million acres. After months of grassroots organizing and strategic litigation, the Waorani defeated the Ecuadorian government in court; protecting half a million acres of their rainforest territory from an oil and setting a precedent for other indigenous nations to do the same.

Alianza Ceibo

$5,000 to support 4 Indigenous leaders from the Ecuadorian Amazon (Kofán, Waorani, Siekopai, Siona) to attend and give a keynote speech at Bioneers and provide guiding wisdom to show what’s at stake for their rainforest territories, as well as attend other meetings and events in the Bay Area.