Between August 16 and 21, 2026, the Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature (GARN) participated in the XII Pan-Amazonian Social Forum (FOSPA) in Puyo —Puyuk, in Kichwa—, Pastaza province, Ecuador.
It all started before the Forum doors opened, with our feet in the mud of the Sarayaku territory. And it ended nearly a week later, with a Tribunal that had declared the Amazon a comprehensive subject of rights, a Waorani march demanding three years of an unfulfilled promise, and a Political Declaration collectively signed by peoples from nine countries. In between, GARN organized an eight-hour Tribunal, accompanied young indigenous leaders in a gathering about memory and training, and walked alongside the delegations that filled the streets of Puyo until the very last day. This is the recount of this week.
Sarayaku and the Living Forest
Before the Forum began, a GARN delegation joined a visit organized alongside FOSPA to tour the territory of the Kichwa people of Sarayaku and get a close look at their Living Forest, the Kawsak Sacha.
Walking through this territory is walking through a history of resistance that spans more than two decades. In the early 2000s, Sarayaku faced the intrusion of an oil company and the armed forces into its territory and managed to expel them. They took this case to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, which in 2012 determined that the Ecuadorian State had violated the rights of the Sarayaku people by authorizing oil activities without prior, free, and informed consultation.
That exploration process left a physical mark that persists to this day: around 1.5 tons of explosives remain buried in the territory. The passage of time has made their removal unfeasible. For this reason, Sarayaku has requested that the Court grant legal recognition to Kawsak Sacha as a form of permanent protection for its territory, grounded in the Rights of Nature and indigenous self-determination.
For the people of Sarayaku, territory is not organized as a collection of separate resources, but as a comprehensive living being: forest, mountains, rivers, and people form a single web. That principle —which today inspires other peoples facing extractive threats across different points of the basin— was the starting point of the week in Puyuk.
XII FOSPA: Rights of Nature in Action
With the official opening of the XII FOSPA, GARN joined House 1, Territories Free from Extractivism for an Amazon with Rights, one of the four thematic spaces where the Forum systematized complaints and proposals from across the Pan-Amazon region.
That same day, GARN organized the event “Rights of Nature in Action,” where women leaders and experts from Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, and Brazil shared experiences regarding the defense of the Marañón River (Peru) and the Puyo River (Ecuador), the protection of native stingless bees, and progress toward a Declaration of the Rights of the Amazon, in dialogue with the proposal driven by Panama before the United Nations for a Universal Declaration of the Rights of Nature and the proposals for rights in Brazil. The complete recording is available here.
3rd Regional Rights of Nature Tribunal
GARN co-organized the 3rd Regional Rights of Nature Tribunal, which held its session for eight hours in Puyo. An ethical jury heard six cases coming from Ecuador, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Bolivia, and Brazil, documenting damages caused by the advance of the fossil fuel industry across the Amazon basin.
The Tribunal declared the Amazon a comprehensive subject of rights and a total exclusion zone for fossil fuels, and classified the current and projected impacts of oil extractivism as ecocide and ethnocide. The ruling demands the immediate fulfillment of popular consultations and rulings from the Inter-American Court of Human Rights favoring Amazonian peoples, and calls for protecting those who defend their territories from persecution and criminalization. The full session, and each separate intervention, can be viewed here.
That same day, the Indigenous Council of GARN organized a gathering with young Indigenous leaders from different collectives, who talked about how they incorporate the memory and tradition of their communities into the training of new generations, and how to encourage other young people to speak out and train their peers.
The march of the Waorani for the unfulfilled promise of Yasuní
On August 20, the streets of Puyo woke up to the march of the Waorani Nationality of Ecuador (NAWE), every step moving in the same direction: demanding a territory free from oil exploitation.
The march took place three years after the referendum of August 2023, when around 60% of the Ecuadorian electorate —more than 8 million people— voted to keep the oil underground in Block 43-ITT, inside the Yasuní National Park, Waorani territory. Three years later, the oil infrastructure remains standing, and the State has proposed expanding the extractive frontier into new territories.
At the close of the march, NAWE authorities delivered an official letter to the government demanding the dismantling of the oil wells, comprehensive remediation for the Waorani people, and respect for the intangibility of the territories inhabited by the Tagaeri and Taromenane peoples in isolation, whose survival depends on that protection.
GARN marched alongside NAWE and then headed to the plenary of the XII FOSPA, where each of the four Thematic Houses presented its conclusions.
General FOSPA march and celebratory closing at Rizoma
The last day of the Forum began with the general march of the XII FOSPA, which brought together nationalities, Indigenous peoples, Afro-descendant communities, and peasant communities from the nine countries that make up the Amazon Basin: Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, French Guiana, Peru, Suriname, and Venezuela. As part of the march, demands were delivered to officials from the Government of Pastaza, demanding respect for the Amazon and for the rights of the peoples who inhabit it.
At the closing press conference, the Political Declaration of Puyuk was presented, built collectively from the four Thematic Houses and delivered as an expression of the agreements and demands emerging from the territories. The Declaration includes commitments to continue coordinating the defense of the Amazon until the next FOSPA.
The day, and the week, closed with the free music festival Rizoma, which brought together artists from different Latin American countries around life and Nature.
The Puyuk Mandate 2026, presented in Quito
Days after the closing of the Forum, spokespersons for the seven Indigenous nationalities of Pastaza presented the Mandate of the Indigenous Peoples and Nations in Puyuk 2026 in Quito, along with the main results, agreements, and demands stemming from the XII FOSPA.
The Mandate recognizes the Amazon as a living territory, fundamental for the planet’s biodiversity and climate balance, and warns of growing threats: legal and illegal mining, oil exploitation, agribusiness, drug trafficking, the expansion of roads and hydroelectric projects, and deforestation, aggravated by climate change and by the false solutions that seek to commodify the climate crisis. Faced with this scenario, the Mandate declares the Amazon in a state of emergency as a protective and preventive measure.
Natalia Greene, director of GARN and member of the FOSPA Ecuador Committee, highlighted during the press conference that the meeting allowed for agreements on concrete actions—among them, the possibility of launching litigation across the entire Amazon basin in defense of the Rights of Nature and its peoples. She also reiterated the call for the Ecuadorian State to comply with the results of the 2023 popular consultation regarding Yasuní.
Francesco Martone, coordinator of the Tribunal’s Judges’ Assembly, and Yuvelis Morales, a judge on the Tribunal and winner of the 2026 Goldman Environmental Prize, participated in the presentation on behalf of the Regional Rights of Nature Tribunal.
A seed, not a closing
The Political Declaration of Puyuk declares that what was built in Puyo is a seed that must germinate in every community and in every defended river. For GARN, the week of the XII FOSPA confirmed something we already knew: the recognition of the Rights of Nature is built from the territories, from community assemblies, and from the forms of Indigenous governance that pre-date the State, extending outward to the rest of the world.
