PRESS RELEASE | Coalition Submits Amicus Brief Calling for Enforcement of the Rights of the Piatúa River and Indigenous Rights in Ecuador

PRESS RELEASE | Coalition Submits Amicus Brief Calling for Enforcement of the Rights of the Piatúa River and Indigenous Rights in Ecuador

Contacts:  Constanza Prieto Figelist (cpfigelist@earthlaw.org, 202-621-3877) Monti Aguirre (monti@internationalrivers.org, 707-591-1220) QUITO, ECUADOR—On November 26, a coalition of civil society organizations and law professors submitted an amicus brief to Ecuador’s Constitutional Court calling for the protection of the Piatúa River based on the Rights of Nature and Indigenous rights. The Piatúa River is under threat from…

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PRESS RELEASE | “Rights of Nature:  Landmarks for the construction of a General Theory” Book Launch

PRESS RELEASE | “Rights of Nature: Landmarks for the construction of a General Theory” Book Launch

By: Anna Maria Cárcamo, Legal Advisor Latin America and the Brazilian National Articulation for the Rights of Nature – Mother Earth Português translation below | Tradução de português abaixo Rights of Nature is a global movement which proposes a profound change in legal frameworks and society as a whole, from an anthropocentric to an ecocentric…

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PRESS RELEASE | Amazon Communities Protest to Maintain the Xingu River Alive

PRESS RELEASE | Amazon Communities Protest to Maintain the Xingu River Alive

By: Movimento Xingu Vivo para Sempre Original post in Portuguese. This Monday morning (11/09), over 150 representatives of fishermen, riverbank communities, family farmers and the indigenous Curuaya and Xipaya peoples occupied a section of the Transamazon Highway in a protest against Norte Energia (NESA) the concessionaire of the Belo Monte hydroelectric dam complex located in the state of Pará (Brazil).  The…

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PRESS RELEASE | Civil Society Organizations Demand Moratorium on Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon Congress

PRESS RELEASE | Civil Society Organizations Demand Moratorium on Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon Congress

São Paulo and Brasilia  –   More than 60 civil society organizations and networks, including International Rivers, delivered this Thursday (August 6) to members of the Brazilian Congress, foreign investors and European parliamentarians a letter proposing five emergency measures to contain the deforestation crisis in the Brazilian Amazon. One of the measures is the establishment of a moratorium…

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Dear China, it’s time to talk: Despite saying it takes multilateral cooperation seriously, China has not yet responded to civil society concerns in Latin America

Dear China, it’s time to talk: Despite saying it takes multilateral cooperation seriously, China has not yet responded to civil society concerns in Latin America

By: Cooperacción, Fundación Ambiente y Recursos Naturales (FARN), International Rivers, China-Latin America Sustainable Investments Initiative At the end of April, 263 civil society groups from around the world sent a letter to the heads of various Chinese institutions about financial aid to help coronavirus-affected projects connected to the Belt and Road Initiative, China’s global infrastructure program. They…

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Covid-19 Impacts in the Amazon and Patagonia: Crisis to Opportunities Series

Covid-19 Impacts in the Amazon and Patagonia: Crisis to Opportunities Series

By: Monti Aguirre, Latin America Program Director (with Brent Milliken, Latin American Program Director) The global COVID-19 crisis has shed a light on the deep-seated inequities in the way our rivers and the people who depend on them are treated. With the exposure created by this crisis comes an opportunity. As International Rivers adapts to current…

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Belo Sun signals a restart, but controversial gold mining project in the Amazon remains suspended by three court decisions

Belo Sun signals a restart, but controversial gold mining project in the Amazon remains suspended by three court decisions

BY: Movimento Xingu Vivo para Sempre On April 24th, the Canadian mining company Belo Sun released a corporate statement on its website claiming that it “successfully completed” the indigenous component of an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) for its controversial Volta Grande project, a massive open-pit gold mining operation proposed for installation along the Xingu River in the Brazilian…

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STATEMENT | National River Protection Network to FOSPA

STATEMENT | National River Protection Network to FOSPA

By: National River Protection Network (2020) On February 25 and 26 we have met at the Antonio Ruiz de Montoya University in Lima, defenders of the rivers: Nanay in Loreto, Huallaga in Ucayali, Mashcón and Jequetepeque in Cajamarca, Apurímac in Cusco, Marañón in Amazonas and Rímac in Lima to discuss the need for a policy…

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Understanding the Crisis of Deforestation and Burning in the Amazon

Understanding the Crisis of Deforestation and Burning in the Amazon

By: Brent Millikan, Latin American Program Director COP 25: Read the civil society declaration on the crisis of deforestation and burning in the Brazilian Amazon In December 2019, at COP 25 of the UN Climate Change Convention (UNFCCC) in Madrid, Brazilian environmental and human rights activists launched a joint declaration on the crisis of deforestation and…

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