Empowering Indigenous Women Nature Defenders in Latin America
Gender, Culture, and Nature Are Three Correlated Elements
In many parts of the world, women defenders of Nature are more vulnerable than men to risks associated with their work as environmental activists. Latin American women environmental defenders, especially from Indigenous communities, are the most affected by discrimination, asymmetries, and insecurity. They are also more likely to be excluded from decision-making processes related to Nature. This situation has had negative consequences with dire implications for Indigenous women and the conservation of their traditional knowledge.
ELC’s Latin America team finds that developing our understandings of gender discrimination and cultural differences in particular communities is a critical aspect of comprehensively assessing the asymmetries and barriers that hinder women from exercising their environmental rights equally.
Empowering Indigenous Women
Our collaborative capacity-building program fosters the exercise of rights and ecocentric solutions, promoting cooperation and advocacy in environmental decision-making and dialogue at a regional level. We work hand in hand with communities, strengthening their efforts in the defense of Nature and equipping them with tools for empowerment, management, and environmental governance, taking gender-based and other forms of discrimination into account.
In 2022, with our strategic partner ONG Defensa Ambiental, we started the project Training in the Rights of Access to Information, Participation, and Justice in Environmental Matters. This project focused on Indigenous women river defenders in Chile and Peru, and was supported by the French Embassy in Chile and ECLAC. We worked with Indigenous women leaders of the Kukama Kukamiria community in Peru to evaluate their problems in defending the Marañón River.
The Voice of the Marañón River in National
and International Forums
Earth Law Center helped facilitate the participation of Kukama women in international forums like the 2023 UN Water Conference and the 2024 Escazú Cop. In 2024, Escazú Cop and Kukama leaders presented the first results of an evaluation of the gaps and asymmetries suffered by Indigenous women in exercising their environmental rights to national and international authorities.
Through an amicus curiae brief, ELC supported the amparo action by which the Kukama Federation of Women demanded the recognition of the Marañón River as a subject of rights. They obtained a successful Ruling in March 2024.
Our goal is to replicate our work methodology of amplifying the voices of Indigenous women leading the defense of Nature in Latin America. We will expand this project with more communities to create spaces to strengthen Indigenous women's access to environmental democracy.
Additional resources on Empowering Indigenous Women Nature Defenders in Latin America
Header Photo: Unsplash / Jonatan Lewczuk; Multimedia: (2) Dario Cuellar / (3) Alan Benavides; Resources Photo: Unsplash / Simone Dinoia
Footer Photo: Unsplash / Franz Nawrath