‘Time Is Water’: How Indigenous Leaders Are Fighting To Save the Amazon

YURIMAGUAS, Peru – The Sacred Headwaters Alliance brings together 30 Indigenous peoples of the upper Amazon in Ecuador and Peru, who are self-organising to defend a forest devastated by unchecked extraction that is rapidly consuming their territory. Their leaders are on high alert due to the devastating effects of climate change on nature, which they perceive as a living being with a spiritual entity.

The Sacred Headwaters Alliance is focusing on climate mitigation and adaptation, as well as on teaching younger generations to resist the ongoing destruction of the Amazon. This initiative is crucial as the Amazon Basin has been severely impacted by record wildfires, with more than 22.4 million hectares (55.3 million acres) scorched between January and September 2024 in Brazil alone. Extreme heat and drought conditions have also exacerbated the crisis, affecting evaporation processes and pushing almost all major rivers in the Amazon – vital for Indigenous communities’ livelihoods – to their lowest-ever levels.

How do they face this existential crisis? What worldview do they propose to save the forest and the planet? Are we still in time to prevent a tipping point? These are the critical questions grappled with in openDemocracy’s ‘The Time of Water’ documentary, which follows two of the Sacred Headwaters’ leaders as they travel the territory and work to protect both their cultural heritage and the environment.