Amazon indigenous tribes, Brazilian Indians and their supporters demonstrate at the People's Summit for human and land rights and call for preservation of the rainforest and the protection of Amazonia in June, 2012. Photo Credit: John van Hasselt - Corbis via Getty Images
Environment EcuadorTribes Join Hands to Fight for the Amazon’s Survival
Amazonian tribes are standing together to urge the international community to protect the rainforest as it is crucial for humanity’s survival, and to discuss concrete ways to implement their recommendations.
“We need to be at the place where supposed solutions are being discussed to the planetary crisis,” says Jose Gregorio Diaz Mirabal, General Coordinator at the Coordinating Body for Indigenous Organizations of the Amazon Basin (COICA), who submitted the emergency motion “because of the grave environmental crisis the planet is in,” adds Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, a former U.N. Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) held in Marseille, France, gathers some 10,000 participants including indigenous peoples, government officials, and business leaders, and has more than 1,300 IUCN members who vote on different issues regarding climate change, including COICA’s demand to protect 80% of the Amazon forest by 2025 since “it represents an important space for us.” The Amazon plays a key role in regulating the planet’s climate by absorbing and storing carbon dioxide.
