Environmental Advocates Are on the Frontlines of Democracy Protection in the Amazon

Commentary by Xanthe Scharff

Published September 17, 2025

Amid increasing funding to protect the Amazon and ahead of COP 30 in Brazil, the United States should recognize environmental defenders' vital role in protecting democracy.

In November, an estimated 50,000 people will travel to the Brazilian Amazon for COP 30, the annual climate change conference where parties negotiate decisions to cut greenhouse gas emissions to mitigate climate change.

Climate change mitigation and environmental preservation efforts garner significant attention from governments and private philanthropy, although much more is needed to meet the goals set out in the Paris Agreement to limit global warming. Still missing at these annual meetings, however, is the understanding that environmental defense work is critically linked to democracy promotion. Environmental activists are fighting for the rights of the most vulnerable people and places on Earth-rights that lie at the very heart of democracy.

The Amazon is often referred to as a "carbon sink" because the areas that are protected from deforestation store and remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. On average, each year forests managed by Indigenous people in the Amazon remove about as much carbon dioxide as the UK produces from fossil fuels, according to the World Resources Institute.

The Amazon is home to over 3 million species and is one of the most biodiverse regions. Governments and several ultra-wealthy individuals are deeply invested in preservation efforts. Norway, Germany, the United Kingdom, and multilateral finance facilities, such as the Green Climate Fund, invest in the Amazon, as do the philanthropies of billionaires like Jeff Bezos and Michael Bloomberg. Increasingly, philanthropic efforts recognize the need for Indigenous people to be in the driver's seat when it comes to protecting the land, but few focus on the role of Indigenous people and other environmental defenders in democracy promotion.

Regional governments have also made commitments, largely thanks to the sustained advocacy efforts of Indigenous, regional, and global advocacy organizations; however, advocates have argued that these governments need to set more concrete goals. In August, at the fifth Presidential Summit of the Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization in Bogotá, Indigenous leaders urged country representatives to follow through on their commitments to protect the Amazon, and they succeeded in winning a greater decisionmaking role within the treaty organization.

Ahead of COP 30, world leaders should redouble their support for local defenders of the environment. These brave advocates are often frontline defenders of democracy, which is in turn essential for the preservation of ecosystems that are of global importance.

Environmental Defenders Protect the Most Vulnerable in Society

Just as democratic backsliding is often a harbinger of environmental destruction, on the other side of the coin, environmental defense movements help create and protect democratic norms, holding the line against corrupt actors. In some contexts, where standing up to corruption directly is too dangerous, or government actors have successfully suppressed civic spaces, environmental defenders build networks that can be mobilized during times of democratic crisis.

Brazil is the largest exporter of beef and one of the world's biggest producers of leather. To clear land for cattle, companies and cartels alike illegally deforest the Amazon. In fact, an estimated 80 percent of the leading cattle companies in Brazil and their investors have made no commitments to stop deforestation. This deforestation is often illegal, and the bosses tasked with clearing forests are also often using Indigenous laborers who are so exploited that their condition is considered a form of modern-day slavery. Between 1995 and 2004, authorities rescued an estimated 27,000 people from forced labor in the Brazilian Amazon.

Protecting the most vulnerable individuals in society is a core requirement of any democracy. In the Amazon, defense of this kind often falls to environmental, Indigenous, and human rights defenders who have a connection to protected lands. Some government actors and institutions proactively support environmental and human rights, but others use their influence to clear the way for illegal or shadowy profit-seeking operations, or look the other way, while the forest and the people living there are exploited. These defenders look for and report illegal activities, work with responsive government agencies to free forced laborers, and inform national and global journalism that exposes cartels and holds companies and corrupt officials accountable.

Investigators and journalists play a key role in holding bad actors accountable. Natália Suzuki is a project coordinator at Repórter Brasil, an investigative newsroom and education program that focuses on human and environmental rights and also engages with the government to promote better democratic practices. In July, she sat in the press box in a Brazilian courtroom to hear testimony in the case that the Brazilian Public Labor Prosecution Office brought against Volkswagen for the use of slave labor in their supply chain between 1974 and 1986. These laborers were used to deforest the land to make way for cattle for leather.

Suzuki watched the witnesses for the prosecution enter the courtroom. Unlike the prosecution, defense attorneys, and the Volkswagen executives, the witnesses-who are self-reported victims of forced labor-had no security guards. They had traveled hundreds of miles to the court without any protection. In a country where 25 environmental defenders were assassinated in 2023, this struck Suzuki as highly inequitable. Suzuki raised this in her meetings with government representatives, which helped drive the creation of a new provision in the third National Action Plan to Eradicate Modern Day Slavery that the state would provide security details for victims when they testify in court. It is critical to support groups like Repórter Brasil, frontline and survivor-led organizations, and international groups working together to end the use of forced labor in illegal deforestation.

How Environmental Defenders Mobilize

Environmental defenders in Bolivia played a critical role in defending democracy by helping to push Bolivian President Evo Morales out of office in 2019 after he was credibly accused of rigging election results to secure a fourth term.

In 2019, environmental defenders organized protests in response to mass forest fires, a tactic the Morales regime promoted to clear land and allocate it for profit and to loyalists.

Jhanisse Vaca Daza, a leader in the Bolivian environmental and pro-democracy movement and founder of the nonprofit Ríos de Pie, helped organize these protests and has documented the horrific environmental and human toll of Bolivian wildfires, which have continued to claim millions of hectares each year. The fires were the impetus for these protests, but the activists also demanded adherence to democratic principles, including term limits.

"Since this tragedy first began in 2019," writes Vaca Daza, " Ríos de Pie has been conducting on-the-ground campaigns to support volunteer firefighters, indigenous communities, and animal-rescue efforts while also staging nonviolent protests nationally to demand changes to the laws and the government causing this crisis."

Weeks later, when Morales attempted to hold onto office through falsified elections, environmental defenders and others drew on these mobilized networks to contribute to protests that resulted in Morales backing down.

Defending Human and Environmental Rights Is Defending Democracy

In corrupt and fragile states, environmental defenders are vulnerable and in need of support and protection. They speak truth to power, disrupting the highly profitable activities of criminal groups and sometimes paying the ultimate price. From the high-profile murder of Berta Cáceres in Honduras to the more recent assassinations of Bruno Pereira and Dom Philips in Brazil, these instances of violence belie just how high the stakes are for all those involved in defending these spaces.

The threats that environmental defenders face are a stark reminder of how much harm bad actors stand to inflict by exploiting the land and the people who should be protected by governments. Similarly, the link between profit-seeking autocratic leaders and the erosion of democratic norms and protected land is also evident.

When autocratic leaders consolidate their power over different branches of government, they have greater leeway to parcel off land to loyalists or to allow profit-seeking activities that violate previously established environmental and human rights protections. Take Venezuela, where President Nicolás Maduro has notoriously undermined human rights, the media, and the justice system. In 2016, he established the Orinoco Mining Arc, a mineral-rich area covering about half of Venezuela's Amazon territory, which is now riddled with illegal mining activity, contamination, and violence against environmental defenders. Since Daniel Ortega returned to power in Nicaragua in 2007 and began a period of leadership characterized by the dismantling of democratic institutions and widespread political violence, he targeted Indigenous people and shuttered civil society organizations-including environmental organizations-and nullified constitutional protections in favor of resource extraction.

Environmental and human rights require democratic processes, and democratic processes in Latin America are greatly supported by the brave frontline environmental, Indigenous, and human rights defenders who inhabit and work on behalf of the region's protected forests. Government officials and philanthropists will attend COP 30, seeking commitments to reduce carbon emissions and their impact on communities. They should also look to locally led environmental civil society movements that do the long and slow work of keeping civic space open, holding governments at all levels accountable, and protecting land and human rights.

Xanthe Scharff is a senior associate (non-resident) with the Americas Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C.

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