Every Day is Earth Day for Indigenous Peoples

Every day is Earth Day for Indigenous peoples. They are the stewards of more than 80% of the world’s biodiversity at a time when over one million species are threatened by extinction. Our future as a planet is – in many ways – in their hands. Yet powerful forces are threatening their land, their cultures, their traditions, and their very lives.

This is the case in the vast Amazon region – 2.5 million square miles spanning nine nations, an area that not only contains more than 10% of the world’s biodiversity, but is also essential to the race against climate change, with its billions of trees serving as a carbon sink. These lands, their stewards, and our planet, however, are facing dangers in the form of powerful logging, mining, soy and beef companies.

Please join us, in person or online for some of the events this week with the Brazilian and Peruvian leaders of the Catholic Ecclesial Network of the Amazon (REPAM). They will focus especially on the importance of the Amazon in the lead up to next year’s COP 30 which will be held in the Amazon city of Belem, Brazil.

Photo by Lisa Sullivan