Latin America faces multiple, intersecting climate crises, with extreme weather – droughts, floods, heatwaves, and glacial melt – threatening biodiversity, food and water security, and rural and Indigenous livelihoods. Deforestation and the authorization of oil exploration in the Amazon continue to accelerate climate impacts and undermine global mitigation efforts Historic injustices – colonization, land dispossession, inequality, and debt – further heighten vulnerability, as extractivism and unfair debt undermine food, energy, and climate sovereignty.
DISPLACEMENT
Internal displacements linked to disasters across the Americas reached a record 14.5 million in 2024 – more than the previous five years combined. The United States accounted for most of this (around 11 million, largely pre-emptive hurricane evacuations), leaving roughly 3.5 million across Latin America and the Caribbean. Conflict and violence drove further displacement, with Colombia recording one of the highest levels worldwide.
Underrepresented groups – Indigenous Peoples, Afro-descendant communities, rural women, and youth – bear the greatest impacts. Despite stewarding biodiverse lands, rural and Indigenous communities receive little support, while environmental racism exposes them to greater harm and limits access to resources and decision-making. Climate change worsens inequalities, increasing care burdens, harming health, and restricting opportunities for women and girls, who also face gender-based violence, including in their activism. Shrinking civic space, criminalization of protest and state repression also remain critical barriers to community-led climate action.
DEFENDERS
Of 146 land and environmental defenders killed or disappeared worldwide in 2024, 82% were in Latin America. Colombia was the deadliest country for the third year running (48 killings), followed by Guatemala (20, a fivefold rise on 2023), Mexico (18) and Brazil (12). Most cases were tied to mining, agribusiness and land disputes, and Indigenous people were about a third of victims.
The shift to a low‑carbon economy in Latin America and the Caribbean is increasingly driven by green financialisation and climate colonialism, where global climate goals come at the expense of local rights. Clean energy and mining projects – such as wind farms on Indigenous and Afro-descendant lands and lithium extraction in fragile ecosystems – often proceed without proper consent. With the Lithium Triangle of Argentina, Bolivia and Chile holding roughly half the world’s lithium resources, the pressure of the energy transition on these territories is intensifying, leading to displacement, environmental harm and conflict. Framed as “green solutions,” these projects risk replicating extractive colonial patterns, highlighting the need for a just energy transition that centres communities and protects territorial rights.
Latin America has a strong history of organised social movements and regional advocacy platforms like FOSPA, the Amazonian Initiative and ACAFREMIN. At national level, grassroots groups are driving reforms, such as Brazil’s climate-displacement bill and Guatemala’s draft water law promoting community consultation. Indigenous, feminist and Afro-descendant knowledge systems across the region offer key alternatives for ecological governance and climate resilience especially in agro-ecology, the care economy and territorial defence.
The 2025 elections shifted the political landscape, with progressive governments remaining in Brazil, Mexico and Colombia, but setbacks elsewhere creating tougher conditions for climate justice. This makes subnational actors, courts and civil society even more critical.
COP30 in Belém (2025) – the first held in the Amazon – saw record Indigenous participation and produced the “Belém Package,” including stronger adaptation finance and a Just Transition Mechanism, but no fossil fuel phase-out plan. The Escazú Agreement remains central to protecting defenders, with growing ratification and implementation, though Brazil has yet to ratify.
COP30 OUTCOMES
COP30 approved the Belém Package, including a commitment to triple adaptation finance by 2035, a just transition mechanism, and follow-on work on the Baku Adaptation Roadmap. It noted the Baku-to-Belém Roadmap to scale climate finance to USD 1.3 trillion a year by 2035, but – over the objection of 80-plus countries, including Colombia – did not adopt a roadmap to transition away from fossil fuels.
Environmental movements in Latin America are key drivers of change, defending territories, rights and ecosystems against extractivism and the climate crisis. Yet civic space is shrinking due to repression, limited resources and restricted policy influence. Despite this, movements remain resilient and intersectional, led by Indigenous, feminist and youth actors advancing issues like the ratification and implementation of the Escazú Agreement, economic rights, care work and protection of natural resources.
Act for Climate Justice works with diverse regional partners – public universities, feminist networks, Indigenous cooperation platforms and the Alza la Voz por la Amazonía campaign. We are developing a Youth School with the International Land Coalition (ILC), strengthening the Platform for Defenders of Territory and the Environment, and supporting Indigenous women natural resource defenders in Guatemala. Tools like the Gender Action Learning System (GALS) promote diverse masculinities, equality and co-responsibility in care work, and digital resilience training builds civic capacity amid rising cyber threats. Regional anchors such as CAN Latin America distribute movement funding through trust-based models with built-in safeguards. With rising criminalisation and violence against defenders – especially after the 2025 rightward political shift – trust-based, security-aware funding and support mechanisms are increasingly essential for climate justice work.
Climate finance in Latin America is highly unequal and largely loan-based. Access remains limited for local and national actors – including rural, Indigenous and peasant communities – due to technical and administrative barriers. While the Loss and Damage Fund is operational and includes regional representation, it currently focuses on government budget support, with no clear access yet for communities.
CLIMATE FINANCE & DEBT
About 81% of the climate finance received by Latin American and Caribbean countries in 2016–2020 came as loans rather than grants. Globally, roughly two-thirds of climate finance is delivered as loans, adding to developing-country debt that now stands at around USD 3.3 trillion – a pattern Oxfam describes as deepening dependence rather than delivering justice.
Momentum from regional and global processes, such as the Loss and Damage Fund, is creating openings for more just climate finance. National efforts in countries like Bolivia, Mexico, Peru and Brazil are advancing reform, while civil society is driving initiatives on debt swaps, fiscal reform and accountability. A4CJ supports these efforts through research, such as Oxfam’s Climate Finance Shadow Report, advocacy and participatory tools – including developing a community-based method to measure loss and damage – to help direct climate finance to the most vulnerable.
Adaptation is gaining ground in national planning, with Brazil and Bolivia advancing sectoral strategies and women-led resilience, reinforced by COP30’s push to scale up finance. The region emphasises agroecology, participatory land governance and FPIC (Free, Prior and Informed Consent) as core to community adaptation. Act for Climate Justice supports these efforts through work with rural and Indigenous women, agroecological systems, local markets, and women’s economic empowerment, alongside tools like gender-differentiated vulnerability indices and rights-of-nature frameworks.
In Central America and Colombia, Act for Climate Justice has supported community-based early warning systems, local risk governance and disaster management – often led by women and youth. Supported by initiatives like ECHO Amazonía and local monitoring networks, these are strengthening resilience and enabling early action.
AMAZON
Recent reporting indicates deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon fell for a second consecutive year in 2025, down roughly half from 2023 levels. Progress is fragile: forest degradation now outpaces clearance, a conservative-leaning Congress is rolling back satellite-based enforcement, and Brazil approved offshore oil drilling at the mouth of the Amazon (Foz do Amazonas) just months before hosting COP30.
Fossil fuel dependence, extractivism (e.g., copper, lithium, oil), subsidies, and weak regulation hinder a just energy transition in the region. Still, change is underway: Mexico is debating mining reform and carbon pricing; Colombia is tackling energy poverty; and Bolivia is advancing transition processes – though the change of government in Bolivia, and the broader 2025 rightward political shift may affect progress. Initiatives like clean cookstoves, green bonds, and carbon market debates are shaping policy, but risks of green colonialism, land grabbing, and regressive measures remain – highlighted by Brazil’s expansion of oil exploration. This underscores the need for rights‑based governance.
Act for Climate Justice promotes dialogue on equitable energy transitions that cut emissions while ensuring social and environmental benefits. We are analyzing 33 countries’ NDCs and NAPs, linking adaptation and just transition, and researching energy-transition chains in South America. Key efforts include the establishment of the Regional Working Group for a Just Energy Transition in LAC (LATEJ) in 2022 by Oxfam Mexico, with Publish What You Pay and Fundar, lithium model analysis in Bolivia, and projects in Colombia supporting peasant and Indigenous women’s leadership and documenting human rights impacts of energy projects.