From 9 to 12 September 2025, a meeting’ took place in the Alto Turiaçu Indigenous Territory in Brazil. At the meeting were women from Indigenous, social justice, and environmental organisations from Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, and Argentina.
The women put out a statement from the meeting titled “NO to REDD+”. They are calling on organisations and social movements around the world to sign on to the statement rejecting carbon market projects in their territories.
SIGN ON TO THE DECLARATION HERE
Since February 2023, Wildlife Works has been developing a REDD project in the Alto Turiaçu Indigenous Territory in the State of Maranhão. The Tuxa Ta Pame, the Ka’apor Management Council opposes the project.
In May 2025, a Federal Court in Maranhão granted an injunction that temporarily suspends the REDD project and bars Wildlife Works and its representatives from carrying out activities related to the proposed REDD project.
In July 2025, the Tuxa Ta Pame published a statement explaining their opposition to the REDD project.
SLAPP threat against Rainforest Rescue
Also in July 2025, the German NGO Rettet den Regenwald (Rainforest Rescue) received a series of warning letters from a law firm in Hamburg threatening legal action unless Rainforest Rescue submitted an “attached cease-and-desist declaration”. Between December 2023 and June 2025, Rainforest Rescue had written three articles about the proposed REDD project. Rainforest Rescue also set up a petition (currently with more than 60,000 signatories) against the REDD project.
The Indigenous organisation Associação Kaapor Ta hury Rio Gurupi appears to have been behind the legal threats. But on 10 June 2025, Wildlife Works posted a commentary on its website that closely echoes statements in the letters from the Hamburg law firm.
The lawyer Prof. Dr. Roger Mann acted on behalf of Rainforest Rescue. Mann said that, the legal threats “carry all the features of a SLAPP procedure”. SLAPP refers to Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation. SLAPPs are lawsuits aimed at intimidating critics to prevent reporting. Mann is a member of the German anti-SLAPP alliance.
The Hamburg lawyers did not reply to Mann’s response to the legal threats.
No to REDD+
Here is the women’s declaration from the meeting in Alto Turiaçu in September 2025:
NO to REDD+: Declaration from the Gathering of Women Resisting Carbon Markets and Fighting to Defend their Territories
Alto Turiaçu Territory of the Ka’apor, Brazil, September 2025
Women who raise their voices, who sow courage and water the earth with resistance.
We are strong roots that sustain life, guardians of memory and hope.
Each step is a cry for freedom. May the bond between us always be the greatest weapon against injustice.
We continue side by side, with our fists raised high, defending the land, water, life, and dignity of our peoples.We, women defenders of collective territories from different countries in Latin America, gathered in the Alto Turiaçu Indigenous territory – in Ararorenda village of the Ka’apor people – in the state of Maranhão, Brazil, from September 9-12, 2025, hereby state our position on carbon markets and the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) mechanisms, which threaten our territories.
Whereas:
Our territories and forests have been cared for and protected since ancient times by our grandfathers and grandmothers, and we continue to protect them from all threats imposed on us by governments and private companies.
Governments are now opening the door to the carbon credit business, putting a price on our territories and forests.
Our territories are sacred, and we do not put a price on that which gives us life.
Governments and companies that claim to protect forests and reduce contamination through carbon credits and REDD+ are actually, under the logic of offsets, allowing for the expansion and legitimization of the plunder associated with mining, hydrocarbon exploitation, agribusiness (such as livestock and plantations), infrastructure projects, logging, and other industries. They sign long-term contracts that take away our access to our territories, water, food and medicine for our families and communities.
Therefore, if they truly want to reduce contamination, deforestation and forest degradation, we reiterate what we have been repeatedly demanding from our governments and from companies:
Stop polluting rivers for mining, stop cutting down forests for your extractive activities in our territories and protected areas, and stop blaming us as if we were a threat and cause of deforestation.
Allow forests degraded by extractive activities to be restored naturally, thereby truly reducing pollution.
Guarantee fair compensation, restoration and reparation processes for our peoples, communities and territories that have historically been affected by extractivism – whether driven by capitalists or developmentalist governments that present themselves as leftist.
Stop putting a price on nature and profiting from the lives of our peoples and all living beings that need forests and water to live; because without free forests, we cannot live.
Stop deceiving us with contracts, REDD+ policies and projects, carbon credits and other “green solutions,” nature-based solutions, etc. Stop saying that you are protecting what we are already protecting, while you continue to contaminate, deforest and commodify our territories around the world.
Comply with Free, Prior, and Informed Consultation in good faith, respecting our own consultation procedures, without dividing us or corrupting organizations in order to advance projects that are foreign to our communities.
Guarantee territorial rights for those who effectively protect territories. Promote land regularization in all of our territories, through demarcation and homologation of indigenous lands; land titles for quilombola communities;1 agrarian reform for peasants living in collective settlements; and recognition of common use territories – among other necessary measures to respect our rights.
Strengthen territories that have already been titled but which, nonetheless, still face conflicts with agroindustrial, oil and mining companies. Ensure the withdrawal of these activities and guarantee access to other basic rights that fully allow for people to remain, produce and reproduce life in the territory.
Finally, we maintain that REDD+ is not a solution. It is a false and illusory proposal because it is a business that puts a price on nature – in which intermediaries profit, and companies and governments continue to pollute. Meanwhile we are stripped of our territories, which are our life.
For all these reasons, we, women defenders of territories, express our categorical rejection of all forms of REDD+, and we declare ourselves ready to fight to defend our lives!
NO MORE REDD+!
SIGNATORIES:
• Tuxa Ta Pame - Conselho de Gestão Ka’apor, Brazil
• Jumu’eha Renda Keruhu - Centro de Formação Saberes Ka’apor, Brazil
• Coordinadora Nacional de Defensa de Territorios Indígenas Originarios Campesinos y Áreas Protegidas (CONTIOCAP) - Bolivia
• Comité Defensor de la Vida Amazónica en la cuenca del Río Madera (COMVIDA) - Bolivia
• Organización Comunal de la Mujer Amazónica (OCMA) - Bolivia
• Associação das Mulheres Munduruku Wakoborun - Brazil
• Tejido Unuma De La Orinoquia - Colombia
• Red de Mujeres Indígenas Tejiendo Resistencias - Peru
• Associação dos moradores do Baixo Riozinho e Entorno (ASMOBRI) - Brazil
• Aty Ñeychyrõ - Argentina
• Associação dos Moradores Agroextrativistas do Assentamento Acutipereira (ASMOGA) - Brazil
• Associacao dos Moradores Agroextrativistas do Assentamento Peaex Acangata - (ASMOGAC) - Brazil
• Associação Indígena Extrativista Da Aldeia Akamassyron Surui Aikewara- Brazil
• Associação dos Pescadores São José de Icatu Quilombola - Brazil
• Coletivo de Mulheres Flor da Roça, Quilombo São José de Icatu - Brazil
Quilombola communities are black communities made up of an ethnic-racial group, with their own cultural identity and a particular historical trajectory that comes from their resistance to slavery and oppression.
Thank you, Chris, for sharing this important declaration as COP30 descends upon Brazil. These women provide a fine example of why letting them protect their own territories is better locally and globally than REDD+ approaches seeking to profit from forest "protection."