THE DOING MAKES THE DIFFERENCE
In March 2024, Mari Luz Canaquiri Murayari and Asociación de Mujeres Huaynakana Kamatahuara Kana won a landmark rights of nature court decision to protect the Marañón River in Peru. For the first time in the country’s history, a river was granted legal personhood—with the right to be free-flowing and free of contamination.
In January of 2018, as a result of the efforts of Liz Chicaje Churay and her partners, the Peruvian government created Yaguas National Park, protecting more than two million acres of Amazon rainforest.
A subsistence farmer in Peru’s northern highlands, Máxima Acuña stood up for her right to peacefully live off her own property, a plot of land sought by Newmont and Buenaventura Mining to develop the Conga gold and copper mine.
In the remote Peruvian Amazon, Julio Cusurichi secured a national reserve to protect both sensitive rainforest ecosystems and the rights of indigenous peoples living in voluntary isolation from the devastating effects of logging and mining.
Maria Foronda fostered partnerships between community groups, fishmeal producers and the government to institute environmentally sound and profitable business practices in lieu of dumping untreated industrial waste into streams and out of smokestacks.
Evaristo Nugkuag, a member of Peru’s Aguaruna tribe, organized his people to creative alliances at local, national and international levels to protect indigenous rights and the environment.
Overcoming a history of traumatic violence, Ruth Buendía united the Asháninka people in a powerful campaign against large-scale dams that would have once again uprooted indigenous communities still recovering from Peru’s civil war.
