Amazon In Focus SPRING 2019 ANNUAL REPORT 2017-2018 OUR MISSION & VISION CONTENTS Message from Our Executive Director ....................................1 Our Mission Our Work: Protecting the Amazon and Our Climate Amazon Watch is a nonprofit organization founded in by Supporting Indigenous Peoples ..........................................2 1996 to protect the rainforest and advance the rights of indigenous peoples in the Amazon Basin. We partner with Responding to the Bolsonaro Threat .......................................4 indigenous and environmental organizations in campaigns Defending Rights, Building Unity, and Protecting the for human rights, corporate accountability and the Amazon’s Sacred Headwaters ..................................................6 preservation of the Amazon’s ecological systems. BlackRock: The Biggest Contributor to Climate Change You’ve Never Heard Of ................................................................8 Our Vision New York Times Opinion: Bolsonaro Wants to We envision a world that honors and values cultural Plunder the Amazon. Don’t Let Him .......................................10 and biological diversity and the critical contribution of tropical rainforests to our planet’s life support system. 2017-2018 Annual Report We believe that indigenous self-determination is a critical Program Highlights .....................................................................12 component of any successful conservation strategy for Financial Report ..........................................................................15 the Amazon, and see that indigenous knowledge, cultures and traditional practices contribute greatly to sustainable Amazon Watch Community ......................................................16 and equitable stewardship of Mother Earth. We strive Thank You to Our FY 2017-2018 Supporters! ....................17 for a world in which governments, corporations and civil society respect the collective rights of indigenous peoples to free, prior and informed consent over any activity affecting their territories and resources. We commit, in the spirit of partnership and mutual respect, to support our indigenous allies in their efforts to protect life, land, and culture in accordance with their aspirations and needs, as well as the needs of future generations. MESSAGE FROM OUR EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR Dear Friends of Amazon Watch, Thank you for supporting our efforts to protect the Amazon rainforest and our global climate by advancing the rights of indigenous peoples! We are proud to share our 2017-18 Annual Report and our work to Stop Amazon Destruction, Advance Indigenous Solutions, and Support Climate Justice. Without your support, the critical change we seek would not be possible. Protecting the Amazon rainforest is essential to restore climate stability. And the most effective solution for protecting the Amazon is defending indigenous peoples’ rights and territories. Indigenous territories are threatened by rampant deforestation, industrial extraction, and industrial development fueled by short-sighted governments and corporations that seek to profit from destroying the most biodiverse terrestrial ecosystems on the planet. In the Western Amazon, our goal is the permanent protection of 60 million acres of primary Photo: Rucha Chitnis rainforests and indigenous territories from resource extraction. To accomplish this, Amazon Watch is partnering with indigenous nations of the Ecuadorian and Peruvian Amazon and a growing network of NGO allies in the Amazon Sacred Headwaters Initiative. The Initiative presents a united front against the pressures on their territories and addresses climate change by keeping forests standing and approximately six billion barrels of heavy Amazon crude in the ground. In Brazil, where the new government threatens to open the Amazon for industrial development by slashing environmental protections and indigenous rights, Amazon Watch has launched the Complicity In Destruction campaign to target the global supply chains and financial relationships that sustain these attacks. Indigenous leaders in Brazil have sounded the call for increased international solidarity in resistance, and Amazon Watch has redoubled its efforts to heed the call. The vast majority of deforestation in Brazil is caused by agribusiness activities, so we must challenge industrial and international agribusiness and their financiers - including U.S.-based asset managers BlackRock, State Street and Vanguard, which are shareholders in all five of the largest publicly-traded agribusiness companies operating in the Brazilian Amazon. Protecting and restoring the Amazon, indigenous rights, and the climate, requires greater unity across movements. Accomplishing the required transition from fossil fuels and protection of indigenous stewards of vital forests is the most urgent task we face today. We hope that you will join us in partnership this year and for many years to come. With deep gratitude for your support, Leila Salazar-López Executive Director 1 OUR WORK: Since 1996, Amazon Watch has protected the rainforest and PROTECTING THE advanced the rights of indigenous peoples in the Amazon Basin. AMAZON AND We partner with indigenous and environmental organizations in campaigns for human rights, corporate accountability, and the OUR CLIMATE preservation of the Amazon's ecological systems. BY SUPPORTING INDIGENOUS PEOPLES 2 Photo: Leonardo Milano Photo: Maira Irigaray Stop Amazon Destruction Advance Indigenous Support Climate Justice Amazon Watch resists the destruction Solutions Amazon Watch joins with the climate of the Amazon by challenging Amazon Watch supports and promotes justice movement to address the fact disastrous development projects and indigenous-led alternative solutions that the most vulnerable — especially resource extraction and by promoting to climate change, natural resource indigenous people and people of indigenous rights. extraction, and industrial development. color — bear the brunt of environmental destruction, corporate greed, and Current Priorities: Current Priorities: climate change, and are often excluded • Continue to develop our End Amazon • Scale up a robust and replicable Power from top-down solutions. Crude campaign, with a particular to the Protectors program to deliver Current Priorities: focus on the financiers of Amazonian oil solar energy, communications, and companies, while deepening ties with transport solutions to remote Amazonian • Build partnerships with research and California policymakers and forging a indigenous communities. media organizations and hone our diverse and effective campaign coalition. visual storytelling on the importance of Support indigenous-led efforts to • indigenous climate leadership. • Work with Ecuadorian and global advance visions and proposals for partners to halt the country’s planned a permanently protected Sacred • Support inter-ethnic and international new auction of oil drilling concessions Headwaters bio-cultural region located alliance-building between indigenous that threaten vast, pristine forests and the between the Napo and Marañón rivers in peoples of the North and South calling for peoples who call them home. the Amazon. climate justice. • Strengthen our campaign alongside • Formalize and expand our Amazon • Grow support for Earth Defenders of the Peru’s Achuar people and a coalition of Protectors Fund to meet the growing Amazon through advocacy before national partners to force GeoPark to abandon its financial needs of both established and and international authorities, emergency Amazonian oil concession. new grassroots partners. response, and communications to amplify • Slow Brazil’s ongoing assault on the the message of indigenous leaders and Amazon, environmental regulations, and communities that are at the frontlines of indigenous territorial rights by exposing protecting the Amazon rainforest. and severing international market and • Support and advance proposals by investment ties to corrupt government indigenous women and youth on the leaders linked to the agribusiness sector. frontlines of ecological destruction and climate change in the Amazon. 3 Photo: Leonardo Milano RESPONDING TO Today, Brazil is facing an emergency brutal military dictatorship, should be unlike any we’ve witnessed. The seen in the context of a wholesale THE BOLSONARO ascension of the extreme right-wing assault upon the country’s democratic politician Jair Bolsonaro to Brazil’s principles and institutions. A THREAT presidency profoundly exacerbates dominant, conservative faction of By Christian Poirier the country’s environmental and the country’s powerful agroindustrial human rights crisis. The Amazon sector, in coordination with extractive is one of the principal targets of industries such as mining, are driving his regime: since taking power, his Bolsonaro’s Amazon agenda. government has slashed socio- Working from within Bolsonaro’s environmental standards that are government, industry operatives are essential to preserving the rainforest’s stripping protections for forests and ecological integrity and the well-being land rights in order to gain unfettered of its peoples. access to areas currently safeguarded Bolsonaro’s severe policy rollbacks, from industrial activity. Their success which undo hard-earned safeguards would spell disaster for Brazil’s attained since the fall of Brazil’s Amazonian forests and the indigenous 4 and traditional peoples who call them home, while jeopardizing global climate stability. To achieve its