Rainforest Foundation US is tackling the world’s most urgent challenges: deforestation, biodiversity loss, climate change, and human rights violations.
The following priorities guide our work in Latin America:
Tropical rainforests are the oldest and most diverse ecosystems on the planet. Undisturbed by ice ages for roughly 20 million years, rainforests have evolved to harbor a rich network of flora and fauna found nowhere else on Earth. Although rainforests span only 6% of the earth’s surface, they are home to half of the world’s animal and plant species.
Rainforests perform essential ecological functions that support life both locally and globally. They provide food, medicines, and materials for housing, clothing, and other household needs. Rainforests supply fresh water from its rivers, the rainfall that feeds our agricultural systems, and at least a third of the oxygen we all depend on. Their trees and plants protect against floods and erosion. While rainforests furnish two billion people with livelihoods, their services benefit billions more.
Ongoing rampant deforestation and global climate change fragment and undermine the integrity of rainforests, threatening their survival. Scientists warn this degenerative process could cause a “tipping point” leading to ecosystem collapse. Rainforest Foundation US is committed to ensuring that these majestic, complex ecosystems remain intact and protected so that they can continue to provide for the plant, animal, and human communities that depend on them well into the future.
Indigenous peoples have inhabited the rainforests of the world for millennia, living according to values, beliefs and traditional knowledge systems based on close observation and interaction with their environment. Growing evidence links high biological diversity and greater carbon density in tropical forests with the traditional land management practices of Indigenous peoples, revealing how their practices contribute to forests that are healthier and even more robust over time.
Under the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), Indigenous peoples are recognized to hold particular collective rights as peoples. These include their rights to self-determination and to maintain their distinct political, legal, economic, social and cultural institutions; their rights to own and manage their traditional lands, territories and resources; and their rights to live according to their cultural values and ethnic identities, free of discrimination and violence, as well as free, prior, informed consent over polices, programs and projects which will impact their lands and territories.
Rainforest Foundation US believes that to protect and sustain the world’s tropical rainforests we must recognize the rights of the Indigenous peoples who have been responsibly stewarding these forests for centuries and make those rights effective on the ground. Indigenous peoples are entitled to own and manage their traditional lands; without secure rights, their very survival hangs in the balance.
The global climate crisis threatens the survival of humanity and Earth’s ecological systems. If not reversed, the crisis will bring significant sea level rise, more severe droughts, floods, fires, and storms, all of which will result in even more extreme hunger, disease, and economic disturbance and ever greater waves of climate refugees. Natural climate solutions – such as forest protection and restoration, and sustainable land uses such as agroforestry and permaculture – are among the safest and most cost-effective measures to address the climate crisis. Together they can contribute to up to 30% of the actions needed to keep the planet habitable, along with bold reductions in emissions from industrial countries.
Rainforests are natural carbon sinks that surpass even the most sophisticated human-engineered carbon sequestration technologies. Not only do tropical forests capture significant levels of carbon emissions from the atmosphere, but they store that carbon for long periods in the leaves, trunks and roots of trees and other plant life, and eventually in the soil as it decomposes.
But deforestation exacerbates the climate crisis as felled trees are burned, releasing their carbon reserve back into the atmosphere. Rainforest Foundation US works to mitigate the climate crisis by addressing the major drivers of deforestation that put rainforests and the survival of Indigenous peoples at risk: mining, agribusiness expansion, land grabbing, oil exploration and extraction, illegal logging, and poorly planned infrastructure development.
Brazil’s Supreme Court reached a majority decision to reject Marco Temporal, a pernicious legal argument that translates as a “Time Limit” on Indigenous peoples’ land rights. As the results were announced, Indigenous communities around Brazil erupted into celebration, filling the central plazas of state capitals with music and dancing.
The longstanding struggle for justice for the widows and families of the murdered Saweto activists remains unfulfilled. In February, the culprits behind the murder of four Indigenous leaders from the Alto Tamaya-Saweto community had been sentenced to 28 years in prison. Then last month, in an unexpected twist, the Peruvian court reversed this decision and threw out the charges to order a reassessment of the legal process.
Climate Week NYC 2023 is quickly approaching. From September 17 to 24, 2023 thousands of political leaders, policymakers, scientists, experts, and activists will gather in New York City to drive climate action and demand change. Check out the highlights from this year’s schedule of events.
Rainforests absorb and store more carbon dioxide than all other types of forests, making rainforest protection one of the most effective solutions to climate change. Support Indigenous peoples on the frontlines of rainforest protection.
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Didier Devers
Chief of Party – USAID Guatemala
gro.y1696102546nffr@1696102546sreve1696102546dd1696102546
Didier has been coordinating the USAID-funded B’atz project since joining Rainforest Foundation US in April 2022. He holds a Master’s in Applied Anthropology and a Bachelor’s in Geography. Before joining the organization, Didier worked for 12 years in Central and South America on issues of transparency, legality, governance, and managing stakeholders’ processes in the environmental sector. Prior to that he worked on similar issues in Central Africa. He speaks French, Spanish, and English, and is based in Guatemala.
