Supporting Environmental Defenders

The future of the world’s forests is intimately tied to the struggle of  forest-dependent indigenous and local communities. EIA is supporting  their fight to secure land rights, monitor and manage their forests, and  equitably participate in decisions on  forest governance. Local communities and their individual members, who are on the front lines of illegal logging and large-scale deforestation driven by agribusiness, are the victims of multiple threats and aggressions. Building on our partnerships with communities and community leaders around the world, EIA is supporting environmental defenders, by amplifying their voices, exposing the threats against them, helping mitigate the real life risks they face, and when necessary offer quick response in tragically common life-or-death situations.

Featured Work

Despite growing global attention, defenders continue to confront ongoing threats to their lives and livelihoods, as well as an eroding trust in local and national authorities. As forest communities around the world face increasing incursions into their territories and theft of their natural resources, there is an ever-present need for greater means of communication, monitoring, and protection.

Related Resources

The cover of
Report

Three Basins, Three Battlegrounds

Explore three cases that underline the current threats that extractive industries pose to these key ecosystems, highlight the ways that Indigenous Peoples and local communities are resisting, and offer recommendations for strengthening forest governance from the ground up.

Blog

Justice for Dom and Bruno: Victims of the global war on nature

Dom Phillips and Bruno Pereira have been killed for searching and reporting the truth. Their lives were dedicated to protecting indigenous peoples and the Amazon forest they depend upon. Our heartbreak over these atrocities is beyond words, but we must turn our grief and anger into stronger determination to ensure their life’s work will continue. […]

Letters

Letter: Open Letter to President Castillo from the Inter-Ethnic Association for the Development of the Peruvian Rainforest (AIDESEP)

Given the current situation, the Inter-Ethnic Association for the Development of the Peruvian Rainforest (Aidesep), representing more than 1800 communities, 109 federations and 9 regions, states the following: Three weeks ago in a radio program, the now premier, Hector Valer accused indigenous peoples of being “tenacious landowners”, and “paralyzing the national economy”, proposed to convert […]

Blog

Open Letter to President Castillo from the Inter-Ethnic Association for the Development of the Peruvian Rainforest (AIDESEP)

Peru’s indigenous peoples have sent a strong public letter to Peru’s President, Pedro Castillo, protesting the appointment of the new president of the cabinet, Hector Valer, who has a public trajectory of attacking, insulting and criminalizing indigenous peoples. In its letter, the Inter-Ethnic Association for the Development of the Peruvian Rainforest (AIDESEP) refers to Valer’s […]

Letters

Open Letter to the 117th Congress and Biden-Harris Administration Urging Support for the FOREST Act

Open Letter to the 117th Congress and Biden-Harris Administration Urging Support for the FOREST Act as a Critical Tool to Help Tackle Deforestation and Associated Crime October 6, 2021 The undersigned organizations urge Congress and the Biden-Harris administration to swiftly enact the Fostering Overseas Rule of Law and Environmentally Sound Trade (FOREST) Act led by […]

Video

Has HS Timber Achieved Full Traceability?

    HS Timber, formerly Holzindustrie Schweighofer, is an Austrian company that is the largest timber processor in Romania. Following a year-long investigation into widespread allegations of illegal timber purchasing, the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) disassociated itself from HS Timber in 2017. The first requirement the FSC set for HS Timber’s reassociation was for the […]