Grants in South America

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.

Amazon Watch

$5,000 to support a delegation from the Ecuadorian Amazon to the Global Climate Action Summit (GCAS), which presented itself as an “organizing moment,” with Indigenous and frontline communities from around the world converging for marches, mass protests and actions, while also convening a broad series of events, both inside and outside, to highlight the significance of grassroots climate leadership in meaningful climate action and emphasize the need to halt new fossil fuel extraction and infrastructure from California to the Amazon.

Coordinadora de las Organizaciones Indigenas de la Cuenca Amazonica (COICA), Alianza Mesoamericana de Pueblos y Bosques (AMPB), Articulação dos Povos Indígenas do Brasil (APIB)

$5,000 to each organization to support delegations from North and South America to the Global Climate Action Summit (GCAS), which presented itself as an “organizing moment,” with Indigenous and frontline communities from around the world converging for marches, mass protests and actions, while also convening a broad series of events, both inside and outside, to highlight the significance of grassroots climate leadership in meaningful climate action and emphasize the need to halt new fossil fuel extraction and infrastructure from California to the Amazon.

Pueblo Originario Kichwa de Sarayaku

$5,000 to support the Kichwa Indigenous peoples of Sarayaku in the Ecuadorian Amazon launch event of their pioneering Kawsak Sacha, or ‘Living Forest’ proposal to create a new category for permanent protection of native land free of natural resource extraction and further support their ongoing efforts that to date have kept an estimated 100 million barrels of oil in the ground and protected a de-facto no-go-zone beneath 330,000 acres of standing primary, roadless rainforest.

Amazon Watch supporting Pueblo Originario Kichwa de Sarayaku (Tayjasaruta) / Shuar Federation of Pastaza (FENASH-P) / Sapara Nation)

$2,500 to support 3 Indigenous-led organizations in the Ecuadorian Amazon (Sarayaku, Shuar and Sapara) that need short-term funding to hold assemblies and engage in community organizing to defend their traditional rainforest territories from fossil fuel development, logging and other threats.

Associação das Comunidades Montanha e Mangabal

$4,000 to support descendants of migrant rubber tappers, the river-dwellers of Montanha-Mangabal, along with Indigenous groups in the Tapajós region of the Brazilian Amazon (including Munduruku, Kaxuyana, Tiriyó, Xeréu, Wai Wai, Txikyana, and Apiaká peoples) holding an assembly regarding their collective territorial auto-demarcation processes and to discuss other shared priorities to protect their traditional territories.