Launched in New York, this initiative coincides with CONAIE-led nationwide strike and the UN Assembly.

On Wednesday, Jane Fonda, Harrison Ford, Cynthia Nixon, Stephen Fry, Chelsea Handler, Lily Tomlin, Eugenio Derbez and other celebrities announced their participation in a campaign against the expansion of oil production in Ecuador’s Amazon rainforest.

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The launch of the initiative coincides with the national strike called in the South American country by the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE).

Speaking from New York, Jane Fonda and Waorani leader Nemonte Nenquimo presented the international campaign, developed in collaboration with the organization Amazon Frontlines. The announcement came during the United Nations General Assembly high-level week.

In August, Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa announced his intention to promote 49 new oil extraction projects, which he said would attract about US$47 billion in foreign direct investment.

“The Amazon is not for sale, not to oil companies, not to miners, not to loggers. Its value goes beyond money: it is the beating heart of the planet, and defending it is the responsibility of all of us,” Fonda said at the campaign’s launch.

Amazon Frontlines noted that 89% of the territories at risk from the Ecuadorian government’s initiative are “intact” forests that together act as an important climate buffer.

In a video released on social media, Thompson, Fonda and Derbez shared the message that the Amazon “is not for sale,” a phrase also displayed on a truck driving through the streets of New York.

The campaign’s promoters also called on Noboa to “fulfill his responsibility” to protect the human and collective rights of Indigenous communities, as well as the ancestral territories of the Amazon.

“Today the eyes of the world are on Ecuador due to the alarming dismantling of laws and presidential decrees that are restricting civil rights and threatening greater destruction in the Amazon to promote oil extraction,” said Nemonte Nenquimo, of the Ceibo Alliance.

teleSUR/ JF

Source: EFE- Amazon Frontlines

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