Amazonian Leaders Declare State of Emergency Amid Extraction Threats
In the Amazonian city of Puyo, Ecuador, environmental defenders gathered for the 12th Pan-Amazonian Social Forum (FOSPA), a conference hosted by Indigenous leaders and social-movement members. The event aimed to discuss how to protect the region from threats such as oil drilling, mining, and industrial agriculture.
At the forum, participants emphasized that the Amazon basin is an interconnected living system divided by national borders, and attacks on the forest cannot be separated from attacks on its defenders. They highlighted the growing cancer burden among women in the region due to toxic pollution from extraction activities.
Isabel Ahuani Gaba Nenquimo, a 43-year-old Indigenous leader from Ecuador's Waorani Awañite community, spoke about the expansion of oil operations into her territory. She described how her people used to live freely without health problems associated with extraction, but now they are surrounded by oil operations.
The forum also featured testimony from environmental defenders who faced chemical spills, oil operations forced on communities that did not want them, and environmental defenders charged with crimes or killed. The United Nations' special rapporteur on the right to safe drinking water and sanitation, Pedro Arrojo-Agudo, described the extractivist model in the Amazon as inflicting human rights abuses.
The conference's 2,500 participants declared the Amazon in a state of emergency near a point of no return. They released proposals for creating more extractive-free zones, expanding recognition and enforcement of the rights of nature, and launching a pan-Amazonian observatory to map organized crime and aid affected communities.