Indigenous Amazonian Del Receive Honors in California Senate

Indigenous Amazonian Delegation members at the California Senate floor

Sacramento, California – As wildfires rage across the Western U.S. and the Amazon nears a dangerous tipping point, California’s State Senate this week welcomed a delegation of Indigenous leaders from Ecuador’s Amazon and introduced Senate Resolution SR51 calling for an investigation of California’s role in consumption of Amazon crude and what changes to state policies and practices can help preserve and protect the Amazon rainforest.

The following day, Amazon Watch released a groundbreaking report, Drilling Toward Disaster: Amazon Crude and Ecuador’s Oil Gamble, detailing the environmental, legal, and human rights risks of Ecuador’s latest plan to open over 2.3 million hectares of pristine rainforest to new oil drilling.

The two events underscore the urgent links between Amazon rainforest destruction and California’s fossil fuel economy, and the growing call for global solidarity and accountability.

“Today, we’re joined by three Indigenous leaders from the Ecuadorian Amazon… Their communities are on the front lines, asserting their rights, and resisting oil drilling. They are defenders of a living rainforest that stores carbon, regulates global weather, and sustains life. They’re here to invite us into solidarity and shared action with Indigenous defenders, with the planet, and with future generations,” said California State Senator Josh Becker during his floor speech introducing the resolution.

The resolution highlights California’s role as one of the world’s top consumers of Amazon crude, with roughly half of all Amazonian oil exports ending up in the state, refined primarily at facilities in Los Angeles where fenceline communities are already suffering from fossil fuel pollution.

Despite the 2023 national referendum and Constitutional Court rulings mandating a halt to drilling in Yasuní National Park, Ecuador continues to extract crude from the protected area – much of which is exported to California – making the state complicit in the trade and use of oil obtained in violation of both Indigenous rights and Ecuadorian law.

Additionally, the new Amazon Watch report warns that Ecuador’s proposed Southern Oil Round – a new oil auction of millions of hectares of rainforest – will unleash more drilling in Indigenous territories, deepen the climate crisis, and risk spills through an aging and failure-prone pipeline in Peru or possible construction of new pipelines in Ecuador that would impact multiple Indigenous territories..

• “California is complicit in violating our rights by continuing to consume crude that our courts and voters have said must stay in the ground. We are calling on California to take action to phase out its imports of oil that has come at a high price for our forests, our peoples, and our climate,” said Juan Bay, President of the Waorani Indigenous Nation of Ecuador- NAWE (Nacionalidad Waorani del Ecuador).

• “Our people have borne the brunt of oil extraction – the contamination, the health problems, the loss of our territories. But today we bring the voices of our people to call attention to the environmental and human rights crisis that we are suffering. Our leaders and families have faced threats, persecution, and been killed for opposing oil extraction. We are looking for California to be a climate leader, take responsibility and take action,” said Jhajayra Machoa.

• “Ecuador’s new oil auction is a direct threat to our territories. After 60 years of extraction, we’ve seen only death and destruction – not development. We’re here to build solidarity with Californians impacted by the same oil, and to call on the state to stop fueling demand and support a just transition that protects communities on both ends of the supply chain,” said Nadino Calapucha, representative of the Kichwa PAKKIRU organization.

• “This isn’t just an environmental issue in South America,” said Nathaly Yépez, legal advisor at Amazon Watch. “It’s a matter of international human rights, global climate, and California’s responsibility. California cannot claim to be a climate leader while fueling destruction elsewhere. No communities should be sacrificed – we need a rapid fossil fuel phase out and just transition from the Amazon to California and beyond to avoid a climate catastrophe.”

The Indigenous delegation includes:

• Juan Bay – President of the Waorani Nation of Ecuador and a leader in the historic Yasuní referendum campaign

• Jhajayra Machoa – Youth leader of CONFENIAE and member of the A’i Cofán nationality, from a community deeply affected by oil contamination

• Nadino Calapucha – Representative of the Kichwa organization PAKKIRU, whose people have resisted decades of extractive threats

These leaders were honored on the Senate floor and are meeting with policymakers all week, calling for cross-border solidarity to protect the Amazon and hold oil importers accountable.- Media release