Conversation with Patricia Gualinga and Eliane Brum

Living forest

Patricia Gualinga, climate activist and defender of women’s rights, speaks with journalist and writer Eliane Brum about being nature, and also about the long struggle of her people to defend the living forest.

The activist Patricia Gualinga is one of the most outstanding leaders of the climate struggle today. She represents the Kichwa people of Sarayaku in the Ecuadorian Amazon rainforest who, for decades, have been combatting extractivism and deforestation, and who succeeded in expelling an oil company from their territory. This achievement, now an exemplary case in international law, has offered the concept of “Kawsak Sacha” (the living forest) as a transversal principle in the struggle for life, for existence.

In this session, Particia Gualinga, whose work has been recognised with the Olof Palme Prize, speaks with the journalist and writer Eliane Brum about the long struggle of her people to defend nature and the lives of Indigenous peoples.