Rainforest Foundation US

Description

Rainforest Foundation US is a non-profit organisation that partners with Indigenous peoples in Central and South America to protect rainforest ecosystems.

It takes a rights-based approach, focusing on three priorities: securing land rights, protecting rainforests and strengthening Indigenous and local community organisations. It supports partners with grants, mapping, legal and technical assistance, and technology such as satellite imagery, GPS phones and drones to monitor and defend territories. Its Rainforest Alert program trains community members to detect and report deforestation using this technology.

It also helps Indigenous organisations build stronger governance, administrative and financial capacity, and provides direct financing so they can manage their own priorities and funding. Land it has helped title to Indigenous communities shows markedly less deforestation than untitled land. The organisation works in the Amazon region, including Peru, Brazil and Guyana, and in Central America and Mexico.

Rainforest Foundation US is headquartered in Brooklyn, New York. It traces its origins to work begun with the Kayapo people of Brazil in the late 1980s and is part of a wider Rainforest Foundation network alongside sister organisations in the United Kingdom and Norway.