Impact
Our impact campaign aims to support Indigenous communities and environmental activists in Chile, El Salvador, and Honduras in protecting ancestral lands and addressing the global climate crisis.
Our impact campaign aims to support Indigenous communities and environmental activists in Chile, El Salvador, and Honduras in protecting ancestral lands and addressing the global climate crisis.
Water For Life will help raise global awareness of the plight of the Indigenous peoples in Chile, El Salvador and Honduras and of the courageous environmental and human rights activists—in these three countries and around the world—who are protecting ancestral lands and waterways from exploitation and devastation. We cannot fully address the global climate crisis if those safeguarding our planet are continuously threatened or silenced.
The campaign will bring worldwide attention to the work of these Indigenous leaders and their grassroots movements.
Protecting Ancestral Lands and their Sacred Waterways
Water is a human right. Life on earth cannot exist without water. Indigenous peoples throughout the Americas have long been the stewards of the earth, honoring and protecting the land, waterways, and natural resources.
But the history of the Americas has also been one of persecutions of Indigenous peoples, requisition, exploitation and destruction of their land, displacement and impoverishment of tribes.
Chile
Alberto Curamil is an Indigenous Mapuche Chief in Chile who, along with fellow Mapuche leaders and community members, fights to protect his ancestral land from corporate development that threatens their sacred river.
The Mapuche and other Indigenous groups who have rightful, ancestral claims to their lands and the rivers and waterways in them, will continue to challenge government sanctioned projects funded by international corporations interested in extracting resources and building water projects. The Mapuche will continue to encounter violence from armed, right wing groups allied with the government, police or with the companies wanting to exploit Indigenous lands with state complicity in illegally requisitioning land.
Our campaign will raise awareness about the challenges the Mapuche face and inform people in Chile and in other countries about the actions being taken by Alianza Territorial Mapuche to protect their land.
Honduras
Berta Cáceres was an Indigenous Lenca leader in Honduras who mobilized her community to resist the construction of a hydroelectric project on the sacred Gualcarque River by the Honduran corporation DESA. Berta’s death inspired activists around the world to support the fight of the Lenca to protect their ancestral land.
The fight of the Lenca people to protect their land is not over. Now Berta’s three daughters carry on her work and continue to raise international awareness of the fight of the Lenca people. The impact campaign will work closely with Berta’s organization COPINH to bring worldwide attention to the threats to Lenca land and attacks against indigenous and environmental defenders.
El Salvador
Francisco Pineda is a Salvadoran farmer who fought to stop a proposed gold mine, financed by Pacific Rim, a US corporation, that would deplete precious water resources and poison the water with cyanide.
In El Salvador, President Nayib Bukele continues to launch an assault on democratic norms and institutions, consolidating power. Now he’s beginning to subjugate the NGO and non-profit sector, making the work of activists and environmental organizations even more challenging.
Our campaign will focus on spreading the word about the advancements that have been made, while also raising awareness about the movements to protect water resources and Indigenous and environmental activists.