Indira Huacani

Peruvian environmental leader safeguarding Amazonian biodiversity through indigenous rights advocacy

Indira Huacani, a Quechua leader from Peru's Madre de Dios region, has become a global voice for Amazon conservation. As founder of ACCA (Amazonian Coordinating Body for Indigenous Organizations), she united 30+ communities against illegal mining threatening the rainforest. Her 2020 campaign stopped a Chinese-owned gold mine project, preserving 500,000 hectares of primary forest.

Huacani pioneered the Biocultural Territories certification (2021), a legal framework recognizing indigenous land rights under international law. This initiative led to UNESCO declaring 14 Amazonian zones as biosphere reserves by 2023. Her 2022 documentary Voices of the Rainforest, co-produced with National Geographic, exposed mercury pollution from artisanal mining affecting 200,000+ people.

In 2024, she negotiated the Lima Accord with 12 governments to create transboundary protected areas along the Amazon River. Huacani's grassroots education programs have trained 1,500+ youth in agroecology through the Savia Amazonas network. Her memoir Rooted in the Rainforest (2025) details her family's century-long stewardship of ancestral lands.

As UN biodiversity advisor since 2023, she helped draft Article 15 of the Global Biodiversity Framework mandating indigenous participation in conservation. Huacani's work was honored with the 2024 Goldman Environmental Prize, and she now mentors the Young Amazon Leaders fellowship. Her 2025 partnership with Google Earth creates real-time deforestation monitoring systems managed by indigenous rangers.