Amazonian communities face multiple threats as the pandemic spreads across the forest, including increased violence, high levels of morbidity and mortality, a lack of access to healthcare and protective equipment, food scarcity, lack of income and environmental catastrophes including increased deforestation, oil spills, fires and floods.

For over 500 years, indigenous peoples of the Amazon and across the Americas have faced invasions and loss of their ancestral territories, ethnic and socioeconomic discrimination, and the constant threat of physical and cultural extermination resulting in displacement, disease and genocide.

Now, indigenous peoples – particularly the elders, wisdomkeepers and those living in voluntary isolation – are gravely at risk by the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic. Traditional forest communities are similarly threatened, including riverine communities, quilombolas, rubber-tappers and other populations who defend the forest with their lives.