Indigenous and traditional women are on the front lines, protecting the Amazon while facing the direct impacts of gender-based violence, environmental destruction, and climate change.
Due to these experiences, women must be recognised as protagonists in our collective attempts to solve the climate crisis. To protect the Amazon, it is key that women hold leadership roles in spaces where climate change mitigation and adaptation decisions and policies are made.
Amazon Watch supports and promotes Indigenous solutions to climate change, resource extraction, and industrial development. Indigenous knowledge, cultures, and traditional practices are key to the protection and equitable stewardship of the Amazon. Their mission amplifies Indigenous initiatives and expands the capacity for Indigenous leaders, especially women, to maintain stewardship of their territories.
Through their Amazon Defenders Fund, Amazon Watch supports initiatives including community organising and mobilising, women’s leadership, communal economies, protection of Earth Defenders at risk, and crisis response including to wildfires and oil spills. The ADF is built upon a multi-decade track record as a trusted partner among Indigenous nations, and is an active expression of decolonized philanthropy and climate justice. Amazon Watch has distributed $6.7 million USD in the past three years, and will distribute $1 million this year.
Stand in solidarity with Indigenous women this International Women’s Month and get inspired by the incredible work they are doing to protect our earth.
