Amazon Watch

Community organizations, environmental justice advocates, and international frontline leaders will gather across the Bay Area next week for the 13th annual Anti-Chevron Day, May 13-17, 2026, culminating in a major public festival and march in Richmond.

Traveling back to Bogotá from the First Conference on Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels in Santa Marta, Colombia, I struggled to name a feeling I had never experienced after a climate conference: hope!

“In light of this situation, it is essential that responses to organized crime and illicit economies do not translate into new processes of militarization, criminalization, or the subordination of Indigenous governance systems.”

Indigenous leaders who gathered at the U.N. Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues are demanding a decisive shift away from failed militarized responses toward rights-based approaches that center Indigenous territorial governance, autonomy, and community-led security systems in efforts to confront organized crime.

Whenever gold returns to the center of global geopolitics, the Amazon comes back into the crosshairs. The war between the United States and Iran has put the metal back on the radar of markets, investors, and the extractive industry.