Posted on July 2, 2021
Our June grantees thank you for your support
Each month, CREDO members vote on how we distribute funding to three incredible nonprofits. Those small actions add up – with one click, you can help fund groups working for LGBTQ rights, climate justice and public land conservation. In June, CREDO members voted to distribute our monthly donation to Freedom For All Americans, Rainforest Foundation US and Trust for Public Land.
These donations are made possible by CREDO customers and the revenue they generate by using our services. The distribution depends entirely on the votes of CREDO members like you. And for that, our April grant recipients thank you.
Freedom For All Americans
$47,600
“Thank you! We know 8 in 10 Americans want their LGBTQ neighbors protected from discrimination. With help from CREDO members like you, we can activate every single one of them to support the Equality Act and get this critical legislation passed.” – Kasey Suffredini, CEO & National Campaign Director
To learn more, visit www.freedomforallamericans.org.
Rainforest Foundation US
$53,250
“Thank you for your contribution! By counting on the support of passionate people like yourself, Rainforest Foundation US is able to help indigenous peoples protect the tropical forests we all depend on.” – Suzanne Pelletier, Executive Director, Rainforest Foundation US
To learn more, visit rainforestfoundation.org.
Trust for Public Land
$49,090
“Thank you for being a part of this transformational change. By donating to The Trust for Public Land, you are an essential contributor to the parks, trails, schoolyards, and open spaces that are strengthening neighborhoods and helping people thrive.” – Diane Regas, President and Chief Executive Officer, Trust for Public Land
To learn more, visit tpl.org.
Now check out the three groups we are funding in July, and cast your vote to help distribute our donations.
CREDO members who use our products are the reason why we are able to make these donations each month. Learn more about CREDO Mobile, the carrier with a conscience.
Posted on July 1, 2021
The Top 5 Phone Tips of 2021 So Far: Blocking robocalls, scanning documents, extending your phone’s battery & more
Are you still getting annoying spam and robocalls on your phone? Having trouble securely keeping track of all your passwords? Or is your phone’s battery dying a lot sooner than it should?
We’ve got you covered. Today, we want to share with you the top 5 best phone tips of 2021 so far in case you missed them the first time around. Enjoy!
#5: 8 easy ways to extend your phone’s battery life
If your smartphone is a little older, you know what it’s like when your battery dies unexpectedly. It’s the side effect of having a powerful yet tiny computer in your pocket.
Luckily, there are some easy ways to preserve and extend the battery life of your smartphone. Here are 8 tips to keep your phone running a little longer.
#4: How to securely erase your phone before selling or trading in
If you’re planning to sell, trade in or give away your current phone, there are a number of steps you should take to prepare your phone in order to protect your personal information and secure your data and accounts.
That means unpairing, backing up, logging out, and most importantly, securely erasing all of your data before you hand over your device. Here’s what you should do with your phone before selling, trading it in or giving it away.
#3: Here’s why you need to start using a password manager — and how you can get started
It’s tough to remember all our passwords — but if you’re not using unique and complex passwords for each of your accounts, you’re making it easy for hackers or criminals to compromise your sensitive information.
A password manager can help. It keeps all of your accounts secure by creating, encrypting and storing your passwords so you don’t need to write them on a sticky note next to your computer anymore.
#2: How to quickly scan documents right from your mobile phone
Whether you’re applying for a new apartment or loan, or saving old recipes or receipts, at some point you’ve probably needed to scan a document or two. But scanning can be difficult if you don’t own a scanner or all-in-one printer.
#1: How to Block Annoying Robocalls and Spam Calls on Your Phone
We hate robocalls and spam calls, and we know you do too. They are persistent, annoying and dangerous.
Posted on June 29, 2021
The survey results are in: Equality and LGBTQ nondiscrimination across America
Despite significant victories for equality in recent years, LGBTQ Americans continue to face discrimination in many parts of our country.
That’s why, this Pride Month, we teamed up with our June grantee Freedom For All Americans to survey CREDO members about equality and discrimination in their area to help FFAA fight for full nondiscrimination protections for LGBTQ people nationwide.
Thousands of CREDO members took our survey, and here are the results.
We began the survey asking respondents whether they were aware of protections in their state against LGBTQ discrimination. Many people were not sure if the LGBTQ community is fully protected in their state.
Next, we highlighted that 29 states — more than half of all U.S. states — have not passed full nondiscrimination laws to protect LGBTQ people. A plurality of respondents expected this to be the case, and more than a quarter were surprised it is so high.
Click here to see if your state offers full LGBTQ nondiscrmination protection.
Recent polling from the Public Religion Research Institute found that 76% of all Americans, including 85% of Democrats, 78% of independents, and 62% Republicans, support full nondiscrimination protections for LGBTQ people. A majority of survey respondents did not expect the support for these laws to be so popular.
We then asked a series of questions about the Equality Act, a bill in Congress that would extend protections to LGBTQ people at the federal level, which is a priority for our allies at FFAA.
A overwhelming majority — more than 86% of respondents — are aware of the Equality Act.
More than half of all survey takers have taken action at least once to support the Equality Act, with more than one third taking action multiple times.
Finally, we asked our members what grassroots actions they’d be willing to take to make sure the Equality Act becomes law. We learned that a large majority want to use their voice to make change, so here are some ways you can take action today to help us and our partners at Freedom for All Americans ensure the Equality Act will protect the LGBTQ community nationwide:
- Email your senators and tell them to vote “YES” on the Equality Act
- Tweet at your senators and urge them to #Act4Equality
- Call your senators and urge them to support the Equality Act
Visit CREDODonations.com and vote for Freedom For All Americans and our other great grantees this month to help distribute our monthly donation
Posted on June 24, 2021
Your phone apps are tracking you. Here’s how to stop them.
Have you ever searched for something on your phone, like a new shirt, plane ticket or computer, then get the sinking feeling you’re being followed online with ads for the same product for the next few days?
You’re not alone. Your phone apps are helping marketers target and track you across the internet. For some, it’s a useful way to see products you might purchase. For others, it feels like an invasion of privacy.
Here are a few simple tips to protect your privacy and prevent these apps from tracking you online.
Turn off app tracking
A new feature built into iOS 14.5 released this April was App Tracking Transparency, which allows you to give explicit permission to apps to share your data, location and other identifiers that can allow third parties to serve you with targeted ads. Here’s how to manage this new feature:
- For new apps that you download, you will automatically receive a pop-up notification upon opening that asks if you would like the app to track your activity and explains how it will use your data. You can choose Ask App not to Track or Allow.
- For apps that you have already downloaded and use, you can control tracking permissions on an app-by-app basis. Go to Settings > Privacy > Tracking, and for each app in the list, you can choose which apps to allow or prevent tracking.
- You can turn off app tracking altogether by going to Settings > Privacy > Tracking, and turning off Allow Apps to Request to Track. This should prevent new apps from tracking by default and stop current apps from tracking you.
If you have an Android phone, this feature is not available to you — at least not yet. Google has announced that it will start allowing users to opt-out of ad tracking sometime in late 2021 for devices that run Android 12. Android users can still turn off ads personalization in the Google ad network by going to Settings > Google > Ads and toggling off Opt out of Ads Personalization.
Turn off location tracking (iOS and Android)
Sharing your location data with certain apps is absolutely essential for the app to work properly, like navigation and map apps, rideshare apps, or weather apps. Sharing your location data for apps like these is pretty helpful, if not critical, to ensure the best experience.
But marketers can also use your geolocation data to target you with advertisements. If you’d like to read more, check out this visual explanation from the Boston Globe on how it all works.
If you’d like to control how you share your location data, here’s how:
- In iOS, go to Settings > Privacy > Location Services. Here, you will see a list of all the apps that have asked to access your location data. Choose the app you’d like to change permissions for, and select Never, Ask Next Time, While Using the App, or Always.
- Alternatively, you can also toggle Location Services to Off, but that could prevent some of your apps from not being able to function properly.
- For Android devices (this will be dependent on your device manufacturer and Android version), go to Settings > Location > App Permissions. Choose the specific app you’d like to change and choose Deny.
- You can also disable location services altogether by going to Settings > Location > App Permissions and toggling off the Location at the top of the menu.
Turn off access to your phone’s microphone
It’s all happened to us: We’re having a conversation with friends about the latest TV show or gadget, and then we see an ad on our phone soon after. It really seems like our phone was listening to us. Many people have reported this exact same experience, too, yet app developers claim they do not use ambient noise from our phone’s microphones to determine which ads to show users.
If you’re concerned that your phone is listening to you, you can turn off microphone access app-by-app. Here’s how:
- In iOS, go to Settings > Privacy > Microphone. You will see a list of all the apps that have requested access to your device’s microphone. Toggle which app you’d like to turn on or off.
- You can also turn off Siri, Apple’s voice assistant, which also uses your microphone. Go to Settings > Siri & Search. Toggle off Listen for “Hey Siri” and Press Side Button for Siri.
- For Android devices (this will be dependent on your device manufacturer and Android version), go to Settings > Privacy > App Permissions > Microphone and choose which apps you’d like to turn on or off.
- You can also turn off Google Assistant. Go to Settings > Google > Account Services > Search > Voice > Voice Match and turn it off.
If you want another layer to protect your data from advertisers, consider joining CREDO Mobile. CREDO customers never have to worry that their data is for sale. As a carrier, we don’t share your cell phone usage data with advertisers. In fact, data privacy is at the core of our business, and CREDO customers can rest assured that we take your privacy very seriously.
Click here to learn more about how CREDO protects your data — and how other major carriers like AT&T and T-Mobile do not.
Posted on June 21, 2021
AT&T donated more than $1.1 million to anti-LGBTQ lawmakers
This Pride Month, as it always has, AT&T changed its corporate logo to a rainbow, issued statements for equality and tweeted out support for LGBTQ youth — all for a month-long marketing campaign.
But a stunning new report from Popular Information found that over the last two years AT&T donated $1,079,500 to anti-LGBTQ federal politicians, as well as $59,450 to state-level lawmakers who sponsored anti-trans bills that target LGBTQ youth.
These recent donations are in addition to the $2.755 million that AT&T donated to 193 anti-LGBTQ politicians in 2017 and 2018.
AT&T can tout its support for equality and inclusivity, but its millions in donations to right-wing bigots tell another story.
In its recent report, Popular Information found that 25 major corporations donated more than $10 million to anti-LGBTQ politicians who earned a zero rating on the Human Rights Campaign’s latest Congressional scorecard, which measures support for equality by lawmakers in Congress.
AT&T’s donation put the telecom giant near the top of the list of companies donating to lawmakers who scored zero, second only to Comcast:
The report also highlighted a business statement organized by HRC, signed by AT&T more than 130 other companies, opposing anti-LGBTQ legislation at the state level which explicitly called out attacks on trans youth, saying:
We are deeply concerned by the bills being introduced in state houses across the country that single out LGBTQ individuals – many specifically targeting transgender youth – for exclusion or differential treatment.
Yet, AT&T donated nearly $60,000 to anti-trans lawmakers in Arkansas ($12,950), Tennessee ($4,000), North Carolina ($5,000), Texas ($22,500), and Florida ($17,500) who sponsored anti-trans bills at the state level, some of which specifically target transgender youth.
These new revelations are disturbing, yet completely unsurprising. In 2019, we highlighted Judd Legum’s reporting that found AT&T had donated to $2.7 million to nearly 200 anti-LGBTQ politicians, like Sen. Marsha Blackburn, who supported Donald Trump’s ban on trans people in the military, regularly voted against protections for LGBTQ people and opposed marriage equality, and Ted Cruz, who co-sponsored a bill that would sanction discrimination by businesses against LGBTQ people and urged states to ignore the Supreme Court’s ruling affirming marriage equality.
AT&T has a long history of being on the wrong side of history. The company donated millions to Donald Trump and hired his criminal associates. It lobbied Congress for massive tax breaks to create jobs, then laid off workers. It donated $200,000 to anti-abortion politicians. The company even helped re-elect a white supremacist.
Here at CREDO, we don’t support anti-LGBTQ politicians – and we never will.
In fact, CREDO donates to organizations fighting for LGBTQ rights like the Transgender Law Center and the National LGBTQ Task Force. In total, CREDO members have helped us contribute nearly $15 million to groups fighting for civil rights and equality.
And unlike AT&T and other major carriers, we don’t plaster a rainbow flag on our logo during Pride Month – because we don’t need to. We stand with the LGBTQ community all year long.
This month, our allies at Freedom for All Americans, who are fighting to pass the Equality Act in Congress, are on our June donations ballot. Take a minute to drop them a vote at CREDOdonations.com.
If you’d like to learn more about how you can help fund progressive organizations fighting for climate justice, economic justice, civil rights and equality just by signing up for great mobile service, click here to find out how you can make the switch and join CREDO Mobile.
Posted on June 14, 2021
5 ways to celebrate Juneteenth this year
This week, Americans across the country will celebrate Juneteenth, the day more than a century and a half ago that enslaved Black people in Galveston, Texas were finally told they were free.
The day has been celebrated by the African-American community for more than a century as America’s second independence day. There’s been renewed interest in Juneteenth after George Floyd’s murder, the countless other Black people affected by police violence, and nationwide protests calling for justice.
If you’ve never celebrated Juneteenth before, here are some ways to honor and celebrate freedom, equality and Black history.
What is Juneteenth?
On June 19, 1865 — two and a half years after President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation — Union soldiers, led by Major General Gordon Granger, rode to Galveston to notify enslaved people that the Civil War had ended and they were now free. The name is a portmanteau of June and nineteenth, and is also known as “Emancipation Day,” “Freedom Day,” and “Liberation Day.” Here’s a history of Juneteenth from Vox to learn more.
Support Black-owned businesses
The pandemic has been tough for so many small businesses across the country, and Black-owned small businesses have been hit especially hard.
Our allies at Color of Change created the “Black Business Green Book,” a site where you can search Black-owned small businesses by state or keyword, or browse by a number of categories, including Health/Wellness, Food & Drink, Home Goods and more.
You can also check out our curated list to support Black-owned businesses every month from this February.
Protect the right to vote
Today, the right to vote, especially for Black Americans, is under threat. More than 350 voter suppression bills have been introduced in state legislatures across the country, and so far, according to our allies at the Brennan Center for Justice, at least 14 states have enacted 22 laws that are designed to make it harder to vote. Many of these laws will suppress the vote in Black communities
Our partners at Fair Fight Action and Black Voters Matter are doing some incredible work to protect voting rights, especially in the wake of these voter suppression attempts. Learn how you can get involved and volunteer with these two amazing organizations.
Visit locations that celebrate Black culture and history
Take some time to learn more about Black culture and history this Juneteenth. Visit the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History & Culture in Washington, D.C., the Museum of the African Diaspora in San Francisco, the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis or the Northwest African American Museum in Seattle. Fodor’s has curated a list of 15 “unmissable” Black history museums, too.
If you don’t have a venue near you that celebrates Black history (or you’d rather not visit in person), the New York Public Library offers a virtual archive of podcasts, audio recordings, videos and vast digital collections to enjoy.
Advocate to make Juneteenth a national holiday
Juneteenth isn’t a national holiday, yet, but it should be. In 1980, Texas became the first state in the nation to make Juneteenth a state holiday, and since then, nearly every state recognizes the holiday in some form.
The movement to make Juneteenth a federal holiday is gaining steam. On June 15, the Senate unanimously passed the Juneteenth National Independence Day Act, legislation to recognize the day federally, and now the bill heads to the House. Urge your representative to pass this important bill by calling the Capitol Switchboard at (202) 224-3121, or by emailing your member of Congress here.
Follow the work of our allies
Since 1985, CREDO has donated more than $25 million to our allies who are fighting for civil rights, equality and voting rights.
This month, open up your social media accounts and email inboxes to keep up with the important work of some of our allies who are doing critical work to honor Black culture and history and working to protect communities of color and the right to vote. Here are just a few:
- Color of Change
- Black Voters Matter
- Fair Fight Action
- Zinn Education Project
- Brennan Center for Justice
- American Civil Liberties Union
- Southern Poverty Law Center
- NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund
Learn more about our donations program and vote for this month’s grantees at CREDODonations.com.
Posted on June 10, 2021
How to safely sanitize your phone and keep it germ-free
Let’s face it: Our phones are filthy. We touch contaminated surfaces then touch our devices. We speak right into our phones, transferring germs from our mouth. We have our phones when we eat and — let’s be honest — when we use the restroom.
Now that we’re heading back out into the world, we could be contaminating our phones even more on public transportation, at restaurants and in other public settings.
Bacteria and viruses can live on certain surfaces from a few hours to days, so we should regularly disinfect our phones to prevent the spread of transmissible diseases. Here are a few simple tips to keep your phone germ-free.
Studies show that our phones carry around 17,000 bacteria per square inch — 10 times more bacteria than a toilet seat — and we touch our phones roughly 2,617 times a day. For heavy phone users, that number jumps to 5,427 times.
In addition to washing your hands regularly and avoiding touching your face to reduce germ transmission, we recommend these steps to clean your cell phone and other devices:
- Unplug and power down your device.
- Remove your phone case, if you have one. If your case is waterproof, wash it thoroughly with soap and water, and let it dry completely.
- Use a good, lint-free microfiber or lens cleaning cloth to remove oil and fingerprints.
- Don’t spray any disinfecting liquids directly on your device, as they may damage your device or its coating.
- Gently use a Clorox Disinfecting Wipe or 70 percent isopropyl alcohol wipe to disinfect your phone. You can also spray a 70% alcohol solution on your cloth, but not directly on your device. Do not use bleach and don’t submerge your phone in liquids. (Read more from Apple.)
- Samsung recommends using a “hypochlorous acid-based solution (containing 50-80ppm) or an alcohol-based solution (containing more than 70% ethanol or isopropyl alcohol)” gently applied to your device using a microfiber cloth.
- Allow your device to air dry for five minutes.
- Alternatively, you can purchase a UV-C sterilization device which works by shining a type of ultraviolet light that can destroy the genetic material of viruses and bacteria.
Posted on June 8, 2021
CREDO funding helped Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières respond to the global pandemic
Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is an independent international medical humanitarian organization that provides emergency aid to people affected by armed conflict, epidemics, natural disasters, and exclusion from health care, regardless of race, religion, gender or political affiliation.
Thanks to CREDO members who enabled us to donate $52,665 to Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières in 2020, the organization was able to care for more than 10 million people caught in some of the world’s worst emergencies, and CREDO support made MSF’s rapid response to the COVID-19 pandemic possible.
Because of the support in part from CREDO and our members in 2020, MSF teams were able to quickly adapt to a world with COVID-19 and prepared its 400+ programs for this global threat — implementing infection prevention measures, reorganizing patient flow in hospitals, and training health care and nursing home staff. As the pandemic spread, MSF rapidly scaled up COVID-19 treatment capacity and focused on some of the hardest-hit areas, many in locations where it had never worked before.
At the same time, MSF teams continued to treat children suffering from malnutrition, war wounded and burn victims, and people with malaria, HIV, tuberculosis, and other diseases. While caring for patients, MSF continued its innovative efforts to stem the spread of antibiotic resistance and responded to other emergencies, including mass displacements in Syria and outbreaks of Ebola and measles.
MSF vaccinates 2,000 children who due to the terrible living conditions, including the lack of basic sanitation, severe overcrowding, and extremely limited access to healthcare, coupled with the forthcoming winter, are extremely vulnerable to illness. Photo © Anna Pantelia/MSF
Below are a few examples of successful medical humanitarian responses MSF conducted this past year thanks to CREDO’s support:
Launching Dedicated COVID-19 programs
From Yemen and Iraq to Ivory Coast and South Africa, from Cambodia and Malaysia to Haiti and Brazil, MSF opened dedicated COVID-19 medical projects in hard-hit countries, strengthened infection prevention and control (IPC) across their programs to protect staff and patients alike, and prepared for this global threat to health systems.
Sustaining Essential Medical Care Amid a Global Pandemic
In many of the places where MSF works—where health systems are already fragile and people live in precarious conditions—keeping essential health services available and accessible is vital to prevent losing more lives, whether from measles, malaria, malnutrition, or complicated pregnancies. Since the beginning of the pandemic, MSF has sought to keep essential medical services up and running for the millions of patients who rely on MSF while also preparing for and responding to the threat of the virus itself.
Ensuring Vaccinations for Deadly Diseases
In many parts of the world, parents already struggle to protect their children from vaccine-preventable diseases such as measles and whooping cough, which claim hundreds of thousands of young lives each year. The COVID-19 pandemic is putting vaccination programs all over the world at serious risk, and the repercussions on the youngest lives could be devastating.
Last spring, as a massive measles epidemic continued to grip the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), MSF Emergency Response Teams vaccinated 260,000 children during one of their first campaigns since the COVID-19 pandemic began. In September, MSF also vaccinated 50,000 children between the ages of 6 months and 14 years in Timbuktu, Mali, where several cases had been reported.
Safeguarding Reproductive Health Care for Women and Girls
Reproductive health care is essential to preventing maternal and neonatal mortality, but the health needs of women and girls are often neglected in the midst of an emergency—and COVID-19 is no exception. All over the world, MSF teams are seeing women and girls cut off from the health services they need due to closures of health facilities, cuts in services, and supply shortages. The impact is especially severe in places with weak or overburdened health systems.
MSF has therefore adapted its programs to ensure continued access to vital care for women and girls, for instance by using telehealth for prenatal and postnatal care in Arauca, Colombia and for counseling for sexual violence victims in Rustenburg, South Africa. At a MSF project serving refugees on the island of Samos, Greece, camp residents with medical backgrounds have been trained to identify individuals with health needs and use telehealth to connect those patients with the MSF team for care.
To learn more and get involved with MSF’s life-saving medical humanitarian work, please visit www.doctorswithoutborders.org or follow the organization on Twitter, Instagram or Facebook.
Posted on June 7, 2021
Freedom For All Americans fighting for Equality
Did you know that across America, 13 million LGBTQ people are vulnerable to discrimination in their everyday lives? It’s true—we hear these stories of discrimination every day:
- In Michigan, a pediatrician refused to see Krista and Jami’s 6-day-old baby for her first checkup, because her parents are a same-sex couple.
- In Indiana, U.S. Army veteran Jessica couldn’t get her military records changed to reflect her gender and new name, even though she was a member of the first group of soldiers to be deployed during the Iraq War.
- In Texas, an H&R block agent said he couldn’t do Kim and Debbie’s taxes “in good conscience” because they’re a married couple.
- In Ohio, Théo thought he had found the perfect apartment. But when the landlord learned Théo is transgender, he forced him out—and as a result, Théo had to drop out of school and move in with his parents.
- In Arizona, Jim and Bob were harassed at their retirement community simply because they’re a married couple. The harassment got so bad they concluded the community wasn’t safe, and had to move—a huge financial burden.
- And in Montana, a landlord told Kathleen that they wouldn’t “rent to your kind” when Kathleen mentioned her fiancée Casey and their son.
In 29 states—including all the states above—there are no laws that explicitly protect LGBTQ people from being discriminated against at work, when looking for a place to live, or when trying to access public spaces and services. This patchwork of protections leaves too many people behind.
There is a solution: The Equality Act. The Equality Act would update federal law to ensure explicit nondiscrimination protections in key areas of life, including employment, housing, education, and public spaces—like restaurants and shops—for all LGBTQ people, no matter what zip code they call home.
Freedom for All Americans is the bipartisan campaign to win these nondiscrimination protections nationwide, with our ultimate goal being to secure federal statutory protections like the Equality Act.
Our work brings together Republicans and Democrats, businesses large and small, people of faith, and allies from all walks of life to make the case for comprehensive nondiscrimination protections that ensure everyone is treated fairly and equally.
America is clearly ready for this legislation. The House vote was a bipartisan 224-206, and a recent survey by the nonpartisan Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) found that 76 percent of Americans support LGBTQ nondiscrimination protections, including 62 percent of Republicans, 78 percent of independents and 85 percent of Democrats.
The Equality Act has also been endorsed by a broad coalition that includes more than 300 businesses, 50 trade and professional associations, and 500 advocacy organizations. And thousands of American faith leaders of all denominations have urged Congress to pass these protections as well. The same PRRI survey shows majorities of all major American religious denominations support LGBTQ-inclusive nondiscrimination protections.
Funding from CREDO will help FFAA run highly individualized education and lobbying campaigns targeting conservative senators in 11 states, to provide both personal and public pressure and achieve the 60 Senate votes needed to pass the Equality Act.
Vote now for Freedom for All Americans to receive crucial fundraising support from CREDO.
Posted on June 7, 2021
To Protect Our Rainforests, Protect Rainforest Dwellers
If you destroy an ecosystem, you destroy the people who live there. But too often, the plight of indigenous peoples is ignored by conservationists. As indigenous leader Gregorio Díaz Mirabal recently told the New York Times, “If you’re going to save only the insects and the animals and not the indigenous people, there’s a big contradiction… we’re one ecosystem.”
Rainforest Foundation US works with indigenous groups throughout the Americas to protect the tropical forests they depend upon. Our organization is guided not just by humanitarian values, but also by the evidence, which shows that indigenous communities conserve their forest territories more successfully and cost-effectively than other protective entities—including national parks.
But indigenous territories are vast, and are under attack from powerful black-market forces: narcotics cultivators, gold miners, and loggers, amongst others. Indigenous peoples shouldn’t have to defend this territory on their own.
In Peru, we’ve trained indigenous peoples to fight deforestation via a mix of technologies, including drones, smartphones, and satellites. The system we’ve deployed (known locally as “community monitoring”) is scalable, cost-effective, and illustrates what we’ve always believed: That indigenous peoples are capable of using sophisticated technology to play a leading role in the fight against deforestation.
We conducted a study over the past two years that proves this approach works. In the Peruvian Amazon, we divided dozens of indigenous communities into two groups: a “treatment” group, and a “control” group. The treatment group was trained in (and implemented) the technologies. The control group was not. Two years later, the data are clear: using smartphones and satellites, indigenous communities drastically reduced the destruction of their lands.
Tropical rainforests are integral to blunting the effects of climate change—they trap approximately half of all human-made emissions. And these forests are disappearing at an astonishing rate. In 2020, the world lost more than 10.4 million acres of tropical rainforest—an area the size of the Netherlands. And when a tropical rainforest tree is felled, we pay the price twice. First, because cutting down a tree means one less tree capturing carbon and creating oxygen; the world’s green lungs are diminished. Second, because the burning of a felled tree releases carbon into the atmosphere; instead of fresh air, we get smoke.
Our trajectory is unsustainable. On the course we’re on, climate change will pose an existential threat to humanity in our lifetimes.
Protecting the land rights of indigenous peoples is a key part of the solution. Around the world, more than 1.8 million square miles of rainforest fall under government-recognized indigenous territories—an area the size of India and Greenland combined. Indigenous people have repeatedly demonstrated their ability to live in harmony with the natural world. If we’re going to win the war against climate change, we need to protect the people who protect the land.
Rainforest Foundation US is on the front lines of that struggle. And in the last year alone, we’ve made so much progress.
In Guyana, we recently completed an indigenous land tenure assessment with our partner, the Amerindian Peoples Association. That project maps historic indigenous land holdings across the nation, down to the acre: an unprecedented project that will serve as a valuable tool for indigenous rights attorneys and public advocacy groups as they petition their government in the near future.
In Brazil, we’re working with partners to scale up a reforestation program in the northern state of Roraima, where we’re also working to combat the deleterious effects of gold mining, which has wrought violence and pollution on indigenous communities like the Yanomami.
And in Panama, we helped create an online map that tracks COVID cases and shows resource scarcity amongst 48 indigenous territories so that humanitarian organizations like the United Nations are better able to allocate their resources and efforts. That’s proven especially useful during the COVID-19 pandemic, which has simultaneously heightened demand and complicated outreach.
To learn more about Rainforest Foundation US, please visit our website at https://rainforestfoundation.org/. Together, we can bring about a world that is healthier and more compassionate. We hope you’ll consider joining us in our mission: to help future generations. To help distant neighbors. To help each other. Our forests are the lungs of this planet. When selfish, we choke. Together we breathe.
