President Patricia Gualinga closes session at the 6th International Rights of Nature Tribunal

The International Rights of Nature Tribunal joined Climate Week in New York in calling for a transition from fossil fuels and advocating for the Rights of Nature as a key response to the climate crisis.

An expert panel addressed global cases where the fossil fuel industry has violated Nature’s rights, harmed human rights and environmental defenders, and pushed the planet towards catastrophe. Cases covered false climate solutions, pipeline projects, oil spills, and sacrifice zones.

Patricia Gualinga (Ecuador) is a defender of native rights and Mother Earth, and the former foreign affairs leader of the Native Kichwa People of Sarayaku, a community located in the Ecuadorian Amazon. Patricia’s leadership has contributed to the struggle of the Kichwa people of Sarayaku for the protection of the Living Forest in their ancestral territories. Patricia Gualinga presented a historical case before the Inter-American Human Rights System (SIDH) that ended in 2012. The Native Kichwa people of Sarayaku is now facing other threats such as oil extraction projects by Chinese companies in their territory, and the long conflict over the exploitation of the sacred Bobonaza basin. Patricia is known nationally and internationally because of her ongoing work in defending the rights of native people and the call she has made to amplify the call to keep fossil fuels underground in the Amazon.