COP-26: « Our collective resistance to defend our ancestral territories is part of an urgent and necessary proposal by indigenous peoples that aligns with our call to protect at least 80% of the Amazon rainforest before 2025. » – The time is now to « Exit Amazon Oil & Gas » – and other extractive industries!

**Indigenous people of the Amazon Rainforest**

Indigenous leaders from across the Amazon passed a resolution to protect 80% of the rainforest by 2025 at the IUCN World Conservation Congress in September, 2021. Now at COP-26 they continue to call on global governments, corporations and financial firms to end financing for extractive industries in the Amazon region.

« The fossil fuel industry has spent decades denying and delaying real action on the climate crisis, which is why this is such a huge problem. Their influence is one of the biggest reasons why 25 years of UN climate talks have not led to real cuts in global emissions. »

Global Witness

Of the approximately 40,000 people attending COP-26, the Brazilian government has the biggest official team of negotiators with 479 delegates, according to the UN.

Global Witness counted 503 delegates and lobbyists with links to fossil fuel interests who were accredited for COP-26. Therefore, the fossil fuel industry has the largest delegation at the climate summit which has apparently influenced the first draft of the COP-26 decision text. This official text, which describes the steps for nations to take after the summit in order to avert the worst effects of the climate crisis, mentions accelerating the phasing-out of coal and subsidies to fossil fuels. Governments and banks must stop funding fossil fuels altogether, including gas and the current pipeline projects destroying indigenous lands.

« The Amazon and our global climate are in a state of emergency. We’re running out of time to avert catastrophic climate chaos. It’s time to listen to Indigenous peoples and address the tremendous debt owed by the Global North to the Global South for its unfair share in driving climate chaos. »

Amazon Watch

Many global oil and gas companies are promoting false « solutions » such as carbon offsetting, carbon trading, carbon removal, carbon capture and storage as well as net-zero scams in order to allow them to continue extracting oil and gas.

**Water sources in Ecuador contaminated by oil from a Chevron well**

« We, the original peoples, protect 80% of the world’s biodiversity. We demand that banks stop financing fossil fuels and ensure the life of all of humanity. We want to continue to exist, and for the forest to remain living for everyone. »

Marisela Gualinga, Vice President of the Kichwa of Sarayaku, Ecuadorian Amazon.

The Exit Amazon Oil & Gas campaign calls on all banks to:

• Immediately commit to end financing for the expansion of oil and gas activities in the Amazon as soon as possible and no later than the end of 2022

• Commit to end financing for all currently operational oil and gas activities in the Amazon by the end of 2025, for the purpose of facilitating a responsible wind down of operations

• Commit to exit all loans, letters of credit, and revolving credit facilities for all traders actively trading oil or gas originating in the Amazon biome by the end of 2022

**Water sources in Ecuador contaminated by Chevron oil**

« Our collective resistance to defend our territories is resistance to protect the planet from the climate crisis we are currently living in. A geographic exclusion policy is a commitment from banks to exclude all types of financing and investment in any kind of oil or gas activity carried out in the Amazon. This is an urgent and necessary proposal that aligns with our call to protect at least 80% of the Amazon rainforest before 2025. The IUCN has already approved this measure, and corporations must follow this mandate. Any bank that continues to support the fossil fuel industries that are destroying the largest tropical rainforest in the world cannot declare itself an ally in the fight to protect our future and that of the planet. »

José Gregorio Díaz Mirabal, Wakuenai Kurripaco from Venezuela and the General Coordinator, Coordinating Body of Indigenous Organizations of the Amazon Basin (COICA).

**Indigenous people and allies marching at COP-26: « Divest from Amazon Destruction! »**

About Barbara Crane Navarro - Rainforest Art Project

I'm a French artist living near Paris. From 1968 to 1973 I studied at Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, Rhode Island, then at the San Francisco Art Institute in San Francisco, California, for my BFA. My work for many decades has been informed and inspired by time spent with indigenous communities. Various study trips devoted to the exploration of techniques and natural pigments took me originally to the Dogon of Mali, West Africa, and subsequently to Yanomami communities in Venezuela and Brazil. Over many years, during the winters, I studied the techniques of traditional Bogolan painting. Hand woven fabric is dyed with boiled bark from the Wolo tree or crushed leaves from other trees, then painted with mud from the Niger river which oxidizes in contact with the dye. Through the Dogon and the Yanomami, my interest in the multiplicity of techniques and supports for aesthetic expression influenced my artistic practice. The voyages to the Amazon Rainforest have informed several series of paintings created while living among the Yanomami. The support used is roughly woven canvas prepared with acrylic medium then textured with a mixture of sand from the river bank and lava. This supple canvas is then rolled and transported on expeditions into the forest. They are then painted using a mixture of acrylic colors and Achiote and Genipap, the vegetal pigments used by the Yanomami for their ritual body paintings and on practical and shamanic implements. My concern for the ongoing devastation of the Amazon Rainforest has inspired my films and installation projects. Since 2005, I've created a perfomance and film project - Fire Sculpture - to bring urgent attention to Rainforest issues. To protest against the continuing destruction, I've publicly set fire to my totemic sculptures. These burning sculptures symbolize the degradation of nature and the annihilation of indigenous cultures that depend on the forest for their survival.

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