Knowledge - Unity

In 2020, indigenous peoples in Central and South America face several unprecedented challenges. COVID-19, rampant deforestation, raging fires, and political systems that continue to further marginalize them are threatening their survival.

COVID-19 has disproportionately affected indigenous peoples because of immune systems particularly vulnerable to foreign viruses, the lack of government aid reaching remote communities, no hospitals within close proximity, and the loss of any income previously available. Families have very little, if any, access to food, medicines and healthcare. Meanwhile, reports suggest illegal loggers, miners and land grabbers are taking advantage of falling environmental oversight amid the chaos of COVID-19.

Largely due to a lack of government oversight, deforestation in the Amazon has increased dramatically in the last year compared to prior years, especially since COVID-19 has spread throughout the region and authorities have shifted focus on the virus and away from removing illegal prospectors from indigenous lands. Because of this, the fires this year are expected to rage at levels not previously seen. Indigenous peoples, already devastated by COVID-19, are unfortunately left largely to their own devices to try and stop these fires that are turning previously pristine and ancient forests into fields for cattle.

HEAL

Your donation will enable the Rainforest Foundation works on the ground with indigenous communities and also strategically partners with local organisations to:

— Fight for indigenous rights on the govern mental level

— Strengthen governance and capacity at the community level

— Support reforestation initiatives

— Create community land management plans that are both profitable,
sustainable, and respectful of the land and traditional customs

— Equip communities with technology
suchas smartphones and drones to
photo-map and monitor their territories for illegal ranching, mining and logging
operations

— Supports indigenous-led organisations to provide on-the-ground emergency
response to local communities as needed

— Provide legal support to indigenous
communities to secure tenure of their
ancestral lands

SOLIDARITY

Rainforest Foundation partners with indigenous communities and indigenous-led organisations in Central and South America to support their visions of protecting their ancestral lands and of living cooperatively with both a forests and the modern world. 30 years and 12 million hectares later, the Rainforest Foundation is the standard bearer for effective and respectful human rights-based environmental protection.