Where Can I Get More Information and Support?

A. International NGOs and Organizations

Below is a non-exhaustive list of NGOs and other international organisation that work on forest issues: 

• AIDA Americas: AIDA uses law and science to protect the environment and communities affected by environmental damage, primarily in Latin America.
• ALL RISE: ALL RISE is a non-profit organisation and registered law clinic for climate and environmental justice located in KwaZulu Natal, South Africa. Their attorneys work pro bono for communities who can’t afford legal services and take on matters of public interest.
• Amazon Watch: Amazon Watch is a non-profit organization that protects the rainforest and advance the rights of Indigenous peoples in the Amazon Basin. They partner with Indigenous and environmental organizations in campaigns for human rights, corporate accountability and the preservation of the Amazon’s ecological systems.
• Amnesty International: Amnesty International is an international NGO working to end abuses of human rights worldwide.
• Articulation of of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil (APIB): The APIB was created by the Acampamento Terra Livre (ATL)of 2005, the national mobilisation which has taken place every year since 2004, to make visible the situation of Indigenous rights and to demand that the Brazilian State attend to the demands and claims of Indigenous peoples.
• Center for Climate Crime Analysis (CCA): The CCA is a non-profit organization of prosecutors and law enforcement professionals designed to support and scale up judicial climate action worldwide at the national and international level.
• Centre for Environmental Rights: The Centre for Environmental Rights is an organisation of activist lawyers based in South Africa. They work with communities and civil society organisations in South Africa to realise the Constitutional right to a healthy environment and by advocating and litigating for environmental justice.
• Centro Mexicano de Derecho Ambiental (CEMDA): An organisation based in Mexico that specializes in using legal action to address a range of environmental issues, including forest and jungle coverage.
• Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL): CIEL is an organisation that specializes in using the power of law to protect the environment, promote human rights, and ensure a just and sustainable society. It has a team of attorneys, policy experts, and support staff who provide legal counsel and advocacy, policy research, and capacity building on climate change issues. They are assisting other organisations in a range of climate litigation cases. They also have informative resources on their website to assist people wanting to stop deforestation.
• Comissão Guarani Yvyrupa/Commission Guarani Yvvrupa (CGY): CGY is an Indigenous organization that brings together collectives of the Guarani people from the South and Southeast regions of Brazil in the struggle for territory.
• ClientEarth: An organisation that specializes in using legal action to protect the environment, including forests. They frequently use strategic litigation to challenge energy projects, government environmental policies and corporate malfeasance. They also have a useful library of resources on a range of environmental issues and legal strategies.
• Indigenous Work Center (CTI): CTI is a non-profit association made up of professionals with qualified training and experience in the most varied fields and committed to the future of Indigenous Peoples. Its identity is marked by direct action in Indigenous Lands, through projects developed based on local demands, aiming to contribute to the self-determination of Indigenous Peoples, with specific objectives of collaborating so that Indigenous Peoples exercise territorial control and management of their territories, in addition to supporting their ethnic and cultural affirmation.
• EarthLife Africa: An organisation with offices in South Africa and Namibia that campaigns and uses legal action to secure environmental justice.
• EarthRights International: A growing global team of community activists, campaigners, and legal strategists who challenge powerful institutions that violate peoples’ rights and destroy our planet for profit.
• Earthsight: Earthsight is a non-profit organisation that uses in-depth investigations to expose environmental and social crime, injustice and the ties to global consumption.
• Environmental Law Alliance Worldwide (ELAW): A global alliance of lawyers, scientists and other advocates who work to promote a sustainable environment, including by supporting legal action in different countries. They have a comprehensive database of environmental cases and legal research.
• Environmental Defender Law Center: EDLC works to protect the human rights of people in the Global South who are fighting against harm to their environment by supporting civil lawsuits brought by and on behalf of those environmental defenders. EDLC’s support includes legal and scientific resources, and funding to support environmental human rights cases. They also maintain a directory of resources available for persecuted environmental defenders.
• EarthRights International: EarthRights International is an environmental organisation that specialises in using legal action to hold businesses accountable for human rights and environmental abuse. They take legal action against businesses. They also provide training and advice and campaign for corporate accountability.
• Environment Investigation Agency (EIA): The EIA investigate and campaign against environmental crimes and abuse.
• Friends of the Earth: An environmental organisation with offices all over the world. They frequently take climate litigation cases and assist others who are taking cases.
• FERN: Fern works to achieve environmental and social justice with a focus on forests and forest peoples’ rights in the policies and practices of the European Union.
• Forest Carbon Partnership Facility: The Forest Carbon Partnership Facility (FCPF) is a global partnership of governments, businesses, civil society, and Indigenous Peoples focused on reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation, forest carbon stock conservation, the sustainable management of forests, and the enhancement of forest carbon stocks in developing countries, activities commonly referred to as REDD+.
• Forest Peoples Programme: Forest Peoples Programme is a human rights organisation working with forest peoples across the globe to secure their rights to their lands and their livelihoods. They support forest peoples in campaigning and taking legal action to protect their forest homes.
• Forest Stewardship Council: FSC works to promote sustainable forest management and certification in an environmentally appropriate, socially beneficial and economically viable way.
• Forest Trends: Forest Trends pioneers innovative finance for conservation – including the promotion of healthy forests.
• Gaia Foundation: The Gaia Foundation has experience accompanying partners, communities and movements in Africa, South America, Asia and Europe. Together they work to revive bio-cultural diversity, to regenerate healthy ecosystems and to strengthen community self-governance for climate change resilience.
• Global Forest Coalition: GFC is an international coalition of NGOs and Indigenous Peoples’ Organizations defending social justice and the rights of forest peoples in forest policies.
• Global Canopy and the Forest 500: Global Canopy is a data-driven non-profit working to target market forces destroying nature and to enable transformative change towards a global deforestation-free economy. Their project, the Forest 500, ranks companies driving tropical deforestation.
• Global Legal Action Network (GLAN): GLAN works with affected communities to pursue innovative legal actions across borders to challenge powerful actors involved in human rights violations and systemic injustice.
• Greenpeace: Greenpeace is a network of 26 independent national/regional organizations operating in 55+ countries. They have teams that specialise in forest protection in different countries across the world.
• InterAmerican Association for Environmental Defense (AIDA): AIDA has a team of lawyers across Latin America who use legal action to protect the environment and communities who rely on it.
• Institute for Climate and Society (iCS): The iCS promotes prosperity, justice and low carbon development in Brazil. They operate as a bridge between international and national funders and local partners. They are part of a wide network of philanthropic organizations that are dedicated to finding solutions to the climate crisis.
• International Union for Conservation of Nature: IUCN is the global authority on the status of the natural world and the measures needed to safeguard it. It is a membership Union composed of both government and civil society organisations.
• Open Society Justice Initiative: The Open Society Justice Initiative provides expert legal support for its broader mission and values through strategic human rights litigation and other legal work. Their lawyers have represented individuals and groups before domestic and international courts and tribunals around the world. Working with partners, they also document violations, propose and pilot solutions, engage policymakers, and draw on their global legal experience so that access to justice can be available to everyone.
• Politica por Inteiro: Monitor public environmental and climate policies in real time to identify the political signals (policy signals) of relevant changes announced (risks) or carried out (acts) by the Federal Executive [Brazil], as well as their effects. Project of Instituto Talanoa, a Brazilian think tank dedicated to climate policy.
• The Rainforest Foundation: The Rainforest Foundation uses advocacy and campaigning to protect the rights of communities who live in forests.
• Institute Socioambiental (ISA): ISA work alongside Indigenous, quilombola and extractivist communities, our historical partners, to develop solutions that protect their territories, strengthen their culture and traditional knowledge, raise their political profile and develop sustainable economies. They closely monitor public policy proposals and decision-making, whether by the Legislative, Executive or Judiciary, which may directly impact Indigenous Peoples, traditional populations, their territories and collective rights.
• The World Wildlife Fund (WWF): WWF is a leading international wildlife conservation and endangered species non-governmental organisation, with a mission to stop the degradation of the planet’s natural environment and to build a future in which humans live in harmony with nature.
• World Resources Institute (WRI): WRI develops practical solutions that improve people’s lives and ensure nature can thrive. Their programs focus on solving seven major challenges at the intersection of environment and human development: Cities, Climate, Energy, Food, Forests, the Ocean and Water.

B. Local Organizations and Law Firms

The most important source of support you can often get is from lawyers and organizations who work in your country or local community.

Check to see if any of the following groups could support you in taking forest litigation:

• Local civil society organizations;
• Local environmental justice movements;
• Community groups;
• Pro-bono lawyers in your region, country or local community who offer free legal advice; and
• Law centres in your community or a nearby city.

The international organisations listed above may be able to help you find local support.

If you are an organisation or a law firm who works on forest-related issues and would like your name and/or resources to be used on the A4J Forest Litigation Guide, please contact us on administrator@action4justice.org