For nearly 20 years, TIME Magazine has been compiling and sharing a list of the year’s 100 most influential people. In creating the 2020 list, TIME acknowledged the fact that 2020 has been a year of multiple crises taking place across the world, all at once. Therefore, the 2020 list includes the heads of state, CEOs, and artists you would expect, as well as lesser-known individuals who are working to build movements, drive change, and make the world a better place.
Among those individuals is Nemonte Nenquimo, a Waorani environmental defender from Ecuador, and Greengrants’ grantee.
Nemonte is the leader of the Consejo de Coordinacion de la Nacionalidad Waorani Pastaza Ecuador, a group that has received two grants from Global Greengrants Fund in collaboration with Rainforest Action Network. The group represents Waorani communities in the province of Pastaza, Ecuador and fights for the welfare of communities, including family health, environmental conservation, and the protection of Waorani culture, much of which is under threat due to the expansion of extractive industries in the area.
One grant, awarded in 2019, was used by Nemonte’s group to help the Waorani legally assert their right to Free, Prior, and Informed Consent in a case against the Ecuadorian government, and protect their territory from oil extraction in the Ecuadorian Amazon. The Waorani have launched a full-fledged resistance to the state’s plans to open up their territory for oil operations. Through community organizing, high tech territorial mapping, legal actions, alliance building, and storytelling, the Waorani are fighting in Ecuador and internationally to save their ancestral lands and culture. In response to widespread Indigenous resistance, the government has significantly scaled back its plans, temporarily removing 2.8 million acres from its planned auction.
Even more important, the efforts of Nemonte and her fellow Waorani led to a landmark ruling, in which the Ecuadorian court ruled in favor of the Waorani, indefinitely blocking the entry of oil companies onto ancestral Amazonian land for oil exploration activities. The verdict effectively protects half a million acres of precious rainforest from being auctioned off for oil activity, and it sets a critical and historic precedent for Free, Prior, and Informed Consent for other Indigenous groups across Ecuador.
We are proud that Nemonte and her organization are being recognized for their important work, work that has ripple effects for other Indigenous communities worldwide, and for the protection of our planet for future generations.