In the pursuit of profit, big companies lie, cheat and steal.

When companies focus on their bottom line, it comes at a cost: ecosystems are destroyed, displacing countless species and contributing to global climate change. And this destruction has a heavy human cost too.

Around the world, big name brands, banks, and insurance companies are pushing projects that ignore the rights and health of local communities and Indigenous People.

The Indigenous Peoples of the Amazon are under threat from the world’s largest asset manager: BlackRock. With no practical policy addressing human rights, and the rights of Indigenous Peoples and local communities, BlackRock is fueling projects that lead to land grabbing and human rights abuses.

In Indonesia, farmers and frontline leaders in the rainforests of Sumatra are fighting the plantation expansion and human rights abuses of giant pulp and paper suppliers, who have for years used intimidation tactics and violence to get what they want including forcing local communities to give up their ancestral lands.

And in North America, despite huge local and environmental opposition, Enbridge, an energy giant and known polluter, is trying to push through Line 3 in Minnesota, with credit from JPMorgan Chase. The proposed route of this tar sands pipeline would span across the five Ojibwe nations and jeopardize culturally significant wild rice beds.

In pursuit of profit, big companies are caught stealing land from Indigenous Peoples, destroying protected lands to make room for crops like beef, palm, and soy, and polluting the air and water sources to the great detriment of those who live there.

Amplifying frontline leaders to create lasting solutions.

There is no environmental justice without racial justice and without respecting human rights. And we know that our work will have the greatest impact when it is in partnership and following the leadership of local communities. That’s why we try to provide direct support, such as our Community Action Grants, and work in solidarity with frontline and Indigenous communities.

Indigenous and frontline communities suffer disproportionate impacts to their health, livelihoods, and culture from the effects of global climate change and from destructive and invasive extractive industries like mountaintop removal coal mining and palm oil plantation expansion.

These communities know these threats because they live with their environmental impact every day and pay their heavy costs. As an international organization, we try to support, fund, and amplify grassroots movements on the ground where we can, because they know best how to achieve the change we all need.