Funding from CREDO Mobile supports Amazon Watch in its fight to protect the Amazon rainforest

The Amazon is on the brink. A record drought is drying up rivers and killing irreplaceable wildlife like rare freshwater dolphins. Megafires are burning the rainforest by the square mile. Mega-development, extractive industries and agribusiness are adding to the destruction.

But thanks to long-term resistance and organizing by Amazonian peoples, we still have a chance to protect the remaining rainforest. For over 28 years, Amazon Watch has worked to protect the rainforest—and our climate—in solidarity with in solidarity with Indigenous peoples. Amazon Watch carries out campaigns for human rights, corporate accountability and the preservation of the Amazon’s vital ecological systems in partnership with Indigenous, forest and traditional peoples throughout the Amazon Basin.

To do all this, Amazon Watch needs support—and CREDO Mobile provides it. In August, our customers and community members voted to send a significant grant to Amazon Watch and it will enable the group to continue its mission to defend the rainforest.

Here’s a report from our friends at Amazon Watch that describes the many ways our donation is making a difference.

Recent victories

One of the key ways CREDO Mobile supports Indigenous peoples is through Amazon Watch’s Amazon Defenders Fund (ADF). The ADF is built on nearly three decades of trusted partnership with Indigenous nations and local organizations.

Amazon Watch’s team receives requests from partners in many forms — from WhatsApp messages and voice memos to larger proposals — and mobilizes solidarity funds quickly, sometimes in as little as an hour. Nimble, effective responses are critical to assisting Earth Defenders at risk, uplifting Indigenous leadership, protecting land rights and driving solutions.

Here are some of the recent solidarity funds we’ve mobilized to Amazonian partners to advance their autonomy and self-determination, with CREDO Mobile’s generous support.

• Legal support for Indigenous rights in Brazil. We mobilized funds to the Association of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil (APIB) to bolster its legal department. With Brazil’s shifting political landscape and strong mining and agribusiness lobbies, APIB’s legal presence in the capital of Brasília has become crucial to securing Indigenous land rights in the country.

The legal department aims to enhance its capacity for political advocacy and legal action as it works to protect the Yanomami peoples who are facing a humanitarian crisis caused by illegal mining in their territories and battles to defeat the Marco Temporal “time limit trick,” which would undermine Indigenous territorial rights.

• Protection of Indigenous territories from mining and oil in the Western Amazon. The Amazon Defenders Fund supported the Kutukú Shaimi Protective Forest Committee’s fight against mining with funds for solar power that, among other benefits, enables internet access, which is crucial for timely communication in hard-to-reach communities in the Ecuadorian Amazon.

Funds were also mobilized to support the Sápara peoples’ 2023 assembly, which emphasized the importance of unity and coordination among the Sápara nation’s 23 communities in defending their territories against oil exploration and extraction.

• Amplification of advocacy by Peru’s Indigenous communities. The ADF mobilized solidarity funds to the Interethnic Association for the Development of the Peruvian Rainforest, Peru’s national Indigenous federation, for its strategic advocacy and communications to combat deforestation and protect territorial rights defenders. Additional support was provided for gender equity work to strengthen the power of Amazonian women leaders.
• Support for Mining Out of the Amazon. In addition to the solidarity funding and accompaniment described above, with CREDO Mobile’s funding, Amazon Watch is ramping up our campaign to get Mining Out of the Amazon. Legal and illegal mining cause major environmental and human rights abuses in the Amazon.

  

Together with Indigenous partners and allies, Amazon Watch is strategically campaigning to halt mining in the Amazon basin by: publishing risk alerts exposing the disastrous impacts of major mining companies’ operations to their shareholders and investors; coalition-building with Canadian First Nations leaders resisting the same corporations; advancing Indigenous land rights so that Amazonian peoples can say no to mining in their territories; accompanying legal processes for justice; supporting Indigenous leaders’ presence at mining industry events and climate conferences; and much more.

Thanks to CREDO Mobile’s support, we’re making progress. Brazilian federal prosecutors are now suing to annul Canadian mining company Belo Sun’s dubious contract aimed at opening what would be Brazil’s largest open-pit gold mine in the heart of the Amazon. Belo Sun filed a retaliatory lawsuit that unjustly targets community leaders, environmental defenders, researchers and Amazon Watch staff (while not positive, this demonstrates just how impactful our actions are). Belo Sun’s stock tanked over the course of these actions, which shows the impact and progress of our #MiningOutoftheAmazon campaign.

New initiatives

Amazon Watch has a number of important new projects in progress.

• Amazon Underworld and related activities. On November 22, 2023, Amazon Watch, in collaboration with Amazon Underworld and the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime, released “Amazon Underworld: Illegal Economies in the World’s Largest Rainforest.” This groundbreaking report covers the expansion of organized crime in the Amazon and makes the necessary case that any efforts to contain organized crime must be rooted in Indigenous land rights, territorial governance and communal economies.

Solutions must protect Indigenous peoples who resist organized crime from violent retaliation. These solutions offer an essential alternative to existing policies favoring repression and militarization without addressing the factors contributing to organized crime’s expansion. In conjunction with the report’s release, Amazon Watch has convened meetings with Indigenous partners, allies, embassies, UN departments and government officials in Peru, Ecuador, Colombia and Panama to address the research and concerns raised in the report and advance Indigenous-led solutions.

• Amplification of Indigenous voices against the Ferrogrão. Right now in Brazil, Munduruku, Kayapó and Apiaká peoples and their allies are resisting the development of a mega-railroad known as the Ferrogrão (“grain railroad”), which would violate their right to consultation in their territories and imperil the Amazon.

The Ferrogrão is a priority of Brazil’s agribusiness lobby and major commodity traders like Cargill and would have a devastating human rights and environmental footprint. The complete infrastructure package could destroy over 285,000 football fields of natural vegetation (which would emit 75+ million tons of carbon), cause serious biodiversity loss, reduce vital ecosystem services and impact 16 Indigenous territories. In 2021, project development was suspended via an injunction but, last May, Brazil’s Supreme Court authorized the resumption of studies on the Ferrogrão.

Next month, the Supreme Court will issue a new ruling on whether the project should advance or if the original injunction should stand. Amazon Watch is coordinating closely with Indigenous peoples and local communities affected by the Ferrogrão. This includes: coordinating strategic communications and advocacy among diverse movement partners; amplifying the rights of Indigenous communities, like the right to free, prior and informed consultation (FPIC) regarding activities in their territories; advancing campaigns to officially recognize Indigenous land rights; educating the public about the complicity of companies like Cargill in the destruction of the Amazon and the violation of forest peoples’ rights; and increasing popular resistance to the Ferrogrão.

In December, more than 100 Munduruku, Kayapó and Apiaká people disrupted a hearing on the Ferrogrão to make clear that the project violates their rights to FPIC in their territories.

If you’d like to learn more or get involved with Amazon Watch, please visit AmazonWatch.org.