Pan-Amazonian Social Forum rejects carbon credits with jaguars – EnviroNews

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The XII Pan-Amazonian Social Forum categorically rejected the use of the Amazon and jaguars as carbon credits because it violates the Sacred, dispossesses Indigenous Peoples of their territories, and is a false solution to the climate crisis, which greenwashes oil companies that are destroying the Amazon and the climate.

Today, polluters can buy digital carbon credits with jaguars (Panthera onca) – which are essentially permits to continue polluting – online using a credit card or cryptocurrencies from projects like Greenoxx’s Jaguar Amazon REDD Project, which supposedly protects jaguars, but actually logs the rainforest where they live.

In the Puyuk Political Declaration, launched at the closing ceremony of the XII Pan-Amazonian Social Forum, which was attended by more than 2,500 people from the nine Amazonian countries, Indigenous, Afro-descendant, peasant, feminist, and youth organizations denounced the “hegemonic capitalist development model, based on the commodification and appropriation of nature and the commons.” In particular, the Forum rejected the carbon market and “jaguar credits” and other “false solutions” to the climate crisis caused by “the burning of fossil fuels” and “mining.”

Similarly, the Declaration of Women Against Extractivism and Violence presented to the Pan-Amazonian Social Forum by the Conference of Women Defenders of the Territories of Abya Yala, also explicitly opposed jaguar offsets.

“We reject the use of our territories and sacred animals – such as jaguars – for carbon credits, since these finance the dispossession of our territories, commodify our Pachamama (Mother Earth); and greenwash the polluting industries responsible for the destruction of the Amazon and the climate crisis, such as the oil company Chevron-Texaco.”

Felipe Bonilla of the renown environmental NGO Acción Ecológica of Ecuador states that “using animals for carbon offsets is the worst form of the current colonisation of nature, because it commodifies the most sacred beings that inhabit the rainforest.”

In 2026, the United Nations and conservation NGOs launched the Jaguar 2030 Roadmap to commodify and privatize jaguars and their habitat as “natural capital,” which includes their use as carbon credits. The plan covers 18 countries from Mexico to Argentina, mostly targets Indigenous Peoples’ territories, and does not exclude extractive industries or dams from the projects.

Indigenous leader Marlon Santi of the Kichwa Nation of Sarayaku, former president of the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE) and co-founder of the International Campaign Enough is Enough! Jaguars are NOT carbon credits, explained that jaguar credits are offensive to Indigenous Peoples because “in our worldview, the jaguars of the rainforest are the sacred spirits of our ancestors, so jaguars absolutely cannot be used for the carbon market. The West doesn’t understand this because it turns everything into a commodity.”

Nicole Auz of Quito Sin Minería (Quito Without Mining) also clarifies that “jaguars and whales are not offsets or carbon credits to justify – or, as they say, ‘compensate’ – the pollution caused by oil and mining companies. Nature doesn’t need us to put a price on her: she needs us to stop destroying her and respect the people, cultures, and territories that care for her.”

The Province of Pastaza and Yasuní rainforest in Ecuador are priority areas for jaguar offset projects. According to Waorani leader Alicia Cawiya from Yasuní, “governments want to implement REDD+ and SocioBosque carbon offset programmes in our rainforest and put jaguars into the carbon market. But for the Waorani, the jaguar, the condor, the snake, lightning, thunder, and rain are our family. Hear our cry: Jaguars cannot be sold as carbon credits because that destroys our family and violates our rights. Our beloved Amazon and our jaguars ensure our existence and the future of humanity.”

In addition to jaguars, lions, whales, and elephants are used for carbon credits by oil and mining companies. The UN is building a Global Carbon Market with Wild Animals. Such false solutions exacerbate global warming and could accelerate the extinction of the jaguar, the largest feline in the Americas.