The Gaia Foundation has over 35 years experience accompanying partners, indigenous communities, social movements and Earth defenders in Africa, South America, Asia and Europe.
Through a holistic and long-term approach we focus on four key areas:
1. Building seed, food and climate change resilience, enabling small farmers, especially women, to enhance their indigenous knowledge and seed diversity.
2. Protecting sacred lands through legislation and policy change, and the assertion of custodial rights, helping communities to gain legal recognition that is rooted in their traditions.
3. Promoting Gaian governance through Earth Jurisprudence – recognising Nature as the primary source of law and ethics, and challenging the current capitalist system.
4. Moving “beyond extractivism” by backing those at the front line of mining struggles to defend their ecological and cultural heritage and to build alternative pathways. Protecting tropical belt and indigenous forests threads throughout this work and has been central to our approach since the 1980’s, when we joined forces with local partner Gaia Amazonas, and the indigenous communities of the Colombian Amazon, to secure their rights to govern their own territory.
Today, over 25 million hectares of the Colombia’s Amazon forest is being preserved by the indigenous communities, who have taken on the rights and responsibilities of local governance.
To find out more:
Visit:www.gaiafoundation.org
