As part of its long-term conservation efforts in the Amazon, The Caring Family Foundation has partnered with Associação Médicos Da Floresta (AMDAF) to launch a medical bus that provides specialist healthcare to Indigenous Amazonian communities, including gynaecology, paediatrics, cardiology and ophthalmology diagnosis and treatment.
Since the start of the year, the mobile health unit has offered lifesaving care and medical support to 38,000 Indigenous people living deep within the forest who protect 1.7 million hectares of the Amazon.
Equipped
In March 2025, it became clear just how desperately needed specialist health care is in these regions. The Nukini community contracted respiratory and gastrointestinal infections – if left untreated, this could have threatened the lives of the entire community. Thankfully, with access to treatment, not a single person lost their life.
By showing up reliably, delivering culturally sensitive care, and co-creating services with community guidance, the programme strengthens Indigenous resilience on their ancestral lands and brings meaningful, long-term impact in communities that have long been overlooked.
Equally critical is economic independence. With many Indigenous communities across the Amazon facing economic hardship, there is mounting pressure to turn to logging, mining, or monoculture agriculture to meet basic needs, at devastating ecological and human costs.
Organisations like Ecoporé and SOS Amazonia, with support from the foundation, have co-created innovative bioeconomy projects to support Indigenous communities in building sustainable businesses rooted in biodiversity.
Both organisations have a strong focus on female empowerment, enabling these women to achieve the same goals we all share: to improve their lives and the lives of their children, improve their living standards and improve their future.
Harmony
In the Brazilian state of Rondônia, the foundation partnered with Ecoporé’s Regenera Project to help young Indigenous entrepreneur Celesty Suruí scale Sarikab Coffee, turning her community’s deep knowledge of agroforestry systems into a source of sustainable income.
Equipped with essential materials like sealing machines and proper packaging, Sarikab Coffee can now process and distribute coffee more widely, in turn strengthening economic autonomy for local Indigenous peoples.
When communities are given tools to generate income in harmony with the forest, they no longer face the false choice between protecting nature and feeding their families.
The urgency to protect the Amazon and support Indigenous communities could not be greater. However, we are not moving in the right direction.
Commitments
In May 2025 alone, the Amazon lost 960 km² of forest cover – an area larger than New York City. This represents a 92 per cent increase in deforestation compared to May 2024.
Even more troubling, studies now reveal that parts of the Amazon have lost up to 40 per cent of their biomass over the past eight years, shifting the region from a vital carbon sink to a dangerous carbon source.
Our climate, health and future depend on protecting the Amazon and its peoples; their survival is our survival, their forests, our shared insurance against runaway climate change and biodiversity collapse.
Brazil’s COP30 marks a historic opportunity to shift course. To succeed, it must deliver tangible commitments to Indigenous peoples, including legal protection of land rights, investments in healthcare, financing for bioeconomy growth and direct funding mechanisms.
Protect
When these conditions are met, Indigenous peoples are not only better able to protect the rainforest – they are able to flourish within it.
Indigenous peoples have been protecting these forests for millennia.
They are not victims waiting for rescue or communities needing saving; they are leaders whose rights, knowledge, and resilience are indispensable to global climate stability. We must listen and learn from them with respect and take action with them.
As COP30 convenes in the heart of the Amazon, world leaders must recognise this truth: to protect the planet, we must first protect the protectors.
This Author
Katie Beeching is the director of The Caring Family Foundation, a philanthropic institution created in 2019 by entrepreneurs Richard and Patricia Caring. Operating in Brazil and in the United Kingdom, the foundation supports projects focused on three core pillars: combating child poverty, confronting domestic violence, and environmental preservation, with a focus on Amazon reforestation. Its mission is to promote lasting social and environmental impact by strengthening vulnerable communities, supporting women and children at risk, and developing sustainable solutions that contribute to tackling climate change.