Thanks to CREDO members, Rainforest Foundation is tackling biodiversity loss, climate change, and human rights violations

Our grantee partners at Rainforest Foundation US support indigenous peoples of the world’s rainforests in their efforts to protect their environment and fulfill their rights. Global tropical forests are absolutely vital to combating the worst impacts of the climate crisis.

In June 2021, CREDO members voted to distribute $53,250 to help Rainforest Foundation US ensure that tropical forests can keep capturing and storing carbon, while also producing fresh air and clean water for generations to come.

Here are a few of the organization’s accomplishments, thanks to CREDO’s financial support:

Rainforest Foundation US accomplishments

In partnership with the Amerindian People’s Association (APA), Rainforest Foundation US published an evidence-based report on indigenous peoples’ land tenure in Guyana. As a culmination of eight years of participatory research, the report identifies key threats to indigenous people’s territories. The report will be key in the battle for greater territorial recognition, as well as the battle against illegal land-grabbing. By documenting the historic occupation and sacred significance of these landscapes, we are helping build a case for continued and expanded territorial recognition.

The organization also expanded Rainforest Alert, a technology-based forest patrol program to 21 new communities in 2021. That’s 573.6 square miles protected, and 63 new community-based forest patrollers trained.

New initiatives by Rainforest Foundation US

Together with the Mesoamerican Alliance of Peoples and Forests, Rainforest Foundation US launched a new project to bolster sovereignty of local indigenous peoples’ organizations in Central America. The project will help AMPB register as a legal entity, allowing it to better support threatened national indigenous leaders — a problem that pervades the indigenous peoples’ rights movement in the region. It will also provide support to channel finance to territories, enhance women’s coordination, and strengthen capacities for territorial governance.

From October 8-12 2021, nearly 200 women representing indigenous peoples across the Amazon Basin gathered in Cundinamarca, Colombia for the first-ever Indigenous Amazonian Women’s Summit. Indigenous Amazonian women play a critical role as caretakers, territory-defenders, guardians of knowledge, activists, scholars and seed-keepers of the forest, critically contributing to the greater battle against climate change. Hosted by the National Organization of Indigenous Peoples of the Colombian Amazon and Coordination of Indigenous Organizations of the Amazon Basin, the summit featured workshops, panels and traditional rituals focused on advancing women’s livelihoods, rights, community resilience and pandemic mitigation. This historic summit laid the groundwork for future gatherings for Amazonian women to strategically align and coordinate as they continue their work defending the future of the Amazon.

If you’d like to learn more or get involved with Rainforest Foundation US’s important work, please visit their website, or follow them on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.