The Amazon Sacred Headwaters Initiative

Stand is honored to be joining Indigenous nationalities and federations and allies as a formal member of Amazon Sacred Headwaters Initiative. We join this effort to call for the governments of Ecuador and Peru to stop expanding new fossil fuel and mining development in one of the birthplaces of the Amazon River. 

Stand is honored to be joining indigenous nationalities and federations and allies as a formal member of Amazon Sacred Headwaters Initiative. We join this effort to call for the governments of Ecuador and Peru to stop expanding new fossil fuel and mining development in one of the birthplaces of the Amazon River. 

The Indigenous peoples from this region have been and are actively resisting and defending their ancestral territories from massive threats from resource extraction that will expand oil spills and toxicity and result in new roads that are a gateway to large-scale deforestation.

The Vision:

Permanent protection 74 million acres of tropical rainforests in the headwaters the mighty Amazon River–the Napo, Pastaza, and Marañon River Basins of Ecuador and Peru. 

This area, referred to as the Sacred Headwaters of the Amazon: Territories for Life, is the ancestral territory of nearly half a million Indigenous peoples from 20 nationalities and groups; some living in voluntary isolation and is one of the most biodiverse terrestrial ecosystems on the planet. It also represents nearly 6 billion tons of carbon in standing forests and undeveloped oil and gas reserves.