From the forests of the Amazon to the streets of Puyo, FOSPA brought together Indigenous Peoples, Afro-descendants, local communities, and social movements to confront extractivism and build alternatives.
By: Andrea Echeverri Sierra
For six days in August, thousands of people from across the Amazon and beyond gathered in Puyo, Ecuador, to share experiences, strategies and hopes for the future of the region. Indigenous Peoples, Afro-descendant communities, social movements, youth, women, academics and civil society organisations came together through assemblies, workshops, ceremonies, cultural activities and a powerful march through the streets of the city.
The gathering took place against a stark reality. The Amazon is approaching a dangerous tipping point. Once imagined as an almost infinite forest, the region is increasingly threatened by deforestation, degradation, fires and global warming, with potentially devastating consequences for people, biodiversity and the climate system.
Yet FOSPA was not a gathering defined by despair. Again and again, what emerged from conversations, meals, ceremonies, a joint action plan and collective action was a sense that resistance is already happening, and that another future remains possible when people organise together.
The Amazon Under Threat
The Amazon bioregion— larger than the European Union and shared across nine countries—once felt infinite to its ancestral guardians. Today, however, it stands at the precipice of a dangerous tipping point, one that seems straight out of a post-apocalyptic film, the rainforest is rapidly shifting toward savannization. This impending ecological collapse threatens not only the Amazonian web of life, but the entire planetary stability. The consequences are catastrophic: a global climate feedback loop that would render international climate targets entirely unattainable; the disruption of atmospheric circulation, triggering widespread droughts across South America and altering weather patterns as far away as the Asian monsoons and Antarctic ice systems; and a catastrophic loss of socio-agrobiodiversity across ecological, cultural, pharmaceutical, and economic dimensions.
Although there are localized tipping points, such as the savannization in specific regions of Bolivia and Brazil, and the loss of ecological connectivity between the Andes and the Amazon, we find ourselves at a critical and extremely fragile moment in which we must act to prevent the Amazon region from reaching a critical threshold. With scientific models warning that this tipping point could be reached between 2040 and 2050 if current trends of deforestation, degradation, fires, and global warming persist, immediate and transformative action is imperative. Amidst this urgency, grassroots hope and resistance shine through numerous regional and local initiatives.
The Pan-Amazonian Social Forum (FOSPA)
The Global Forest Coalition (GFC) has joined the Pan-Amazonian Social Forum (FOSPA) at different times. FOSPA is a regional, autonomous, and pluralistic platform that brings together Indigenous Peoples, Afro-descendants, social movements, civil society, and academia from the nine countries of the Amazon basin. Formed in 2002 within the framework of the World Social Forum, it has become a key space for political coordination and action to defend life, territories, and justice in the face of the climate crisis and extractivism.
FOSPA 2026. GFC
Although FOSPA is an ongoing process, its most visible milestones to date are reflected in its twelve editions held in various countries of the Amazon basin. In 2026, GFC participated in the 12th edition of FOSPA in Puyo (Ecuadorian Amazon) from August 16 to 21, with the participation of thousands of people from 32 countries, primarily from countries within the basin. The gathering was rich and diverse, including field trips to identify impacts and celebrate alternatives, a market and food fair, a youth camp, cultural and artistic activities, workshops, working groups, plenary sessions, ceremonies and spiritual guidance, Indigenous People´s and women’s gatherings, self-organized events, a large march; and many shared experiences during dinners and meetings to harmonize our feelings about life into new plans and strategies.
The vibrant convergence of ancestral wisdom, daily resistance, and unwavering solidarity through walking the territories, sharing meals, listening to Indigenous elders, youth, and women in spirited assemblies, and participating in spiritual ceremonies is striking, it leaves an indelible mark. Hearing firsthand accounts from defenders whose very cosmogonies, rivers, and bodies are targeted by corporate extractivism shifts our understanding from a conceptual awareness of crisis to a visceral, embodied recognition of interconnected struggles. FOSPA reinforced the conviction that defending the Amazon is not merely an environmental task; it is an urgent defense of plural ways of living, feeling, knowing, and being.
It is deeply moving to witness unity literally in motion, with everyone working tirelessly for a living Amazon and honoring its diverse peoples and cultures. It became clear that no one saves anyone else, nor does anyone save themselves alone; we truly need each other. We need a committed academia, radical church movements standing firm for the transformation of a model that exploits bodies and territories, and civil society organizations that vibrate with life, embracing their role of support rather than usurping the voices of those who dwell there. We need organized women and youth grounding their agendas, Indigenous Peoples constantly demonstrating dignity and a deep, harmonious kinship with Mother Earth, and resilient, joyful Quilombolas and afrodescendents communities bringing a stubborn hope through their words and actions. We need Amazonian city dwellers, artistic collectives, environmental organizations, producer associations… In moments like these, we know that by coming together, we can save the Amazon.
Faced with the multiple problems confronting the peoples and ecosystems of the region—and the world—we require diverse and coordinated struggles from different perspectives. In particular, our emphasis on this occasion, together with members and allies of our coalition, was focused on strengthening alliances and joint actions to curb the impact of industrial agribusiness and livestock production, as well as on promoting alternatives to these practices.
The conversion of forests and jungles to make way for new cattle grazing areas and crops such as soy, corn, and oil palm is the main cause of the accelerated loss of vegetation cover. Evidence is alarming; according to a 2023 report from the Amazon Georeferenced Socio-Environmental Information Network (RAISG) and the MapBiomas network, three out of every four hectares deforested in the Amazon over the last four decades have been used for cattle ranching, which accounts for 75% of accumulated deforestation. This figure becomes even more significant when we consider that, of the approximately 86 million hectares (Mha) of natural vegetation deforested between 1985 and 2022 in the Amazon region, 66.5 Mha were converted into pastureland, while of the additional 19.4 million hectares used for agricultural purposes, a large proportion is used for the production of soy or corn, inputs which are then used to feed the same livestock industry.
Unsustainable Livestock Production is Extractivism
During a self-organized event, co-convened by GFC, our members CEDENMA, Brighter Green, and CIPCA, together with Acción Ecológica and GRAIN, we were able to hear diverse perspectives on these impacts in Colombia, Ecuador, Bolivia,Brazil and throughout Latin America. Among the key issues were: the serious harm caused by industrial livestock and soy production to Indigenous and peasant communities, which jeopardizes entire worldviews by affecting rivers, soils, and spiritual practices, and which generates sick, sad, displaced bodies and corporate memories; the links between industrial livestock and paramilitarism and drug trafficking in countries like Colombia; the strategies of persecution, harassment, and co-optation deployed by companies and governments against land defenders; the foreign ownership of land and water; the persistent dependence on an export-oriented extractive model; and, in short, the predatory practices of the livestock industry. All of this led us to recognize,along with around 24 organizations participating in this and other activities convened by this same group, that unsustainable livestock is in essence a core form of extractivism, placed on the exact same predatory footing as oil drilling and large mining.
This statement was ratified in the FOSPA Action Plan, which must guide coordinated actions until the holding of its XIII version in Colombia in 2028: “Industrial animal production is one of the main drivers of deforestation, pollution, and land grabbing, as well as human rights violations, and it is a form of extractivism that threatens our territories and ecosystems.”
Just as there are vehement struggles against oil exploitation and mining extraction, if we want to make the future possible again in the world and in the Amazon, we must add to these necessary battles those aimed at containing the expansion of agribusiness, largely concentrated around industrial livestock farming. These insights from FOSPA directly reinforce our core campaigns and policy positions. GFC has long advocated against false solutions to climate change and exposed the devastating drivers of deforestation and forest degradation. The lessons learned in Puyo validate our strategic focus on challenging corporate-led industrial livestock and agro-industrial models as central pillars of our work on just transitions.
FOSPA 2026. GFC
Environmental justice cannot be achieved while trade agreements, international financing, and corporate supply chains continue to reward land grabbing and ecosystem destruction under the guise of “feed security” or “green growth.” We take away from FOSPA a reinforced mandate to strengthen internationalist solidarity, bridge local community resistance with global policy advocacy, and amplify the voices of women, Indigenous Peoples, and local communities who champion genuine, rights-based alternatives such as agroecology, food sovereignty, and community forest management.
The challenges facing the Amazon and our global climate are immense, but FOSPA did not leave us paralyzed by the prospect of ecological collapse. Instead, it filled us with a deep sense of agency, hope, and concrete collective action.
“¡Si nos juntamos, los atajamos!” (If we band together, we stop them!)
The path forward lies in our unity. As the inspiring rallying cry echoed through the streets of Puyo. We are not the generations destined to watch the Amazon die in a slow, agonizing collapse. We are the generations choosing to stand together, bridging local resistance with global solidarity, to heal our relationship with the Earth and secure a vibrant, living future for all.
