Tropical rainforests sustain an amazing abundance of life. Not only do millions of species of plants and animals live in tropical forest regions, but they have long been home to indigenous peoples who have shaped their cultures based on the natural environment in which they live.

Gaia has been working with partners to protect the Amazon rainforest since the mid-1980s. Firstly with indigenous and rubber-tapper groups in Brazil, with Ailton Krenak and Chico Mendes and the Forest Peoples Alliance. This led to the development of an Amazon Network and an innovative Microprojects programme set-up by Gaia, providing small grants to support forest peoples in protecting their rainforest home across the Amazon Basin.

With our Colombian partner, Martin von Hildebrand and Gaia Amazonas Foundation, we formed the COAMA (Consolidation of the Amazon) programme. It was honoured with the Right Livelihood Award in 1999 for its success in empowering indigenous communities to revive their culture, traditions and governance systems. A vast area of Colombian Amazon rainforest - more than 26 million hectares, larger than the UK's land surface - is now being protected by its rightful guardians, the indigenous people, and governed according to their cultural priorities and values. They negotiate directly with the government and have developed their own intercultural schools and health programmes.

Today indigenous people, tropical forests, and many of the gains that were made for indigenous territorial rights in the Amazon, are under increasing threat - from mining concessions, dams, logging and the expanding agricultural frontier. We are redoubling our efforts and working to protect a continuous stretch, 100 million hectares, of tropical forest in the Northwest Amazon, across Colombia, Venezuela and Brazil.