Who we are
What if Indigenous peoples had the power to influence the decisions affecting their lives?
The ultimate goal of People’s Planet Project is to see a world where Indigenous peoples can halt deforestation from encroaching industries on their land and are able to live undisturbed on their own territories.
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We believe in the power of videography and geospatial mapping as tools for legal change. Our ultimate goal is to empower Indigenous communities to protect forest territories and its biodiversity through powerful videos and geospatial data that could be used as proof of evidence against deforestation. We track our impact to determine how much of the video content and spatial data is used as proof of evidence in court and how many hectares of Indigenous forest areas are reclaimed through these cases.
What's at stake
Indigenous peoples are on the frontline of a dangerous fight against deforestation.
An estimated 18 million acres of forest, which is roughly the size of the country of Panama, are lost each year. Indigenous communities are the first people to experience changing climates ranging from extreme droughts to long-lasting rainfall causing floods and havoc.
Indigenous forests are cleared for commercial purposes, releasing carbon into the atmosphere to drive global warming while leaving Indigenous communities landless. Those communities are left with no avenues to resist unsustainable land grabbing or address it on a local and global level.
Evidence-based storytelling approach
Why video technology and GIS data?
Through an evidence-based storytelling approach, videography and geospatial mapping are combined as effective and interconnected tools that can document, map and create data-backed but personal audiovisual narratives about deforestation, land-grabbing, human rights abuse, environmental degradation, and so many other topics around which Indigenous communities mobilize. Together, the two tools hold more power than when used alone.
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Legal cases fought by Indigenous communities can be strengthened with these tools and support to collate and present the evidence of environmental destruction through film and geospatial data. Through drone footage and images, community members are able to capture and expose the illegal logging and mining within their forest territory. Through mapping tools and databases, Indigenous communities are able to gather spatial data on tree cover loss, fires, and large-scale deforestation. This data provides the trained communities with the geolocation of unsustainable practices and can be used as scientific evidence to back film footage showing the infringement of Indigenous and environmental rights. This combination of storytelling has a great potential to be used as powerful legal evidence to halt deforestation, uphold environmental laws, and preserve Indigenous forest land and territories.
Indigenous forests, language, and livelihoods are preserved
and shared for future generations of Indigenous peoples through storytelling
A new framework for international litigation is inspired that promotes a different way of providing evidence in court that protects Indigenous and environmental rights
Indigenous peoples are the creators of their own stories and are enabled to use video technology and spatial data to prove the violations of their rights
Meet our ambassadors
A global climate justice movement.
We work together with ambassadors - local filmmakers, geospatial analysts, and environmental lawyers - involved in groundbreaking environmental and human rights issues globally. These strategic partnerships will enable Indigenous communities to secure ancestral land and take on land tenure and legal battles to prevent commercial land grabbing and deforestation.
Meet our team
Committed to stand with the guardians of our forests.
Abdel Mandili
Founder & Executive Director
Andra Enuica
Donor Relations & Impact Coordinator
Katarzyna Nowosad
Media & Communications Officer
Meet our board
Our planet is our shared home.
Álvaro Fernández-Llamazares
Advisory Board Member
Álvaro Fernández-Llamazares is an ethnobiologist and researcher at the University of Helsinki. His research explores the importance of Indigenous Peoples’ stewardship practices and knowledge systems for biodiversity conservation. Based on his long-term, field-based ethnographic engagement with different Indigenous groups (e.g., Tsimane’ in Bolivia, Daasanach and Maasai in Kenya), he examines the contributions of Indigenous Peoples in safeguarding a substantial proportion of our world’s biological and cultural diversity. He uses a broad range of tools and research approaches to explore these questions, from geospatial analyses of Indigenous land tenure at regional and global scales to field-based studies of customary management systems.
Jérémie Gilbert
Advisory Board Member
Jérémie Gilbert is a Professor of Human Rights Law. His main area of research is on the rights of Indigenous communities, particularly their rights to land and natural resources. Jérémie has worked with several Indigenous communities across the globe and regularly serves as a consultant for several international organizations supporting Indigenous rights. As a legal expert, he has been involved in providing legal briefs, expert opinions and carrying out evidence gathering in several cases involving Indigenous peoples’ land rights across the globe.
Gabriela Russo Lopes
Advisory Board Member
Gabriela is postdoctoral researcher at the Center for Latin America Research and Documentation (CEDLA), University of Amsterdam. Her research focuses on the social, cultural and political relations between forests, nature and local communities. She works with the bioeconomy, sociobiodiversity value chains and the interface between human rights and deforestation patterns. Gabriela’s professional background includes experiences at the Brazilian Mission to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, the Worldwatch Institute, and the Amazon Environmental Research Institute. Her academic background has been in the fields of International Relations, Human Geography and Environmental Governance. She defended her PhD thesis in 2023 about forest restoration in the Brazilian Amazon as an active practice of forest-making.
Our partners
On a journey to protect the lungs of our planet.
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