For many of our grassroots partners, often Indigenous communities living in close relationship with the ecosystems of their ancestral territories, accessing the the Earth Defenders Toolkit (EDT) platform has been a challenge due to a lack of internet connectivity. To address this challenge, we created Kakawa, an offline version of the EDT, drawing on our […]

Consultation protocols can take multiple shapes and implications when it comes to Indigenous Peoples and the government or NGOs that aim to collaborate with them in their territories. Having experienced harmful and extractive outcomes from protocols designed by outsiders, the Wayana People in Suriname created their own, which is grounded in their traditional practices and […]

Indigenous women play a key role in land defense strategies around the world and are critical guardians of global biodiversity. Last May, Digital Democracy held an Earth Defenders Gathering in the Ecuadorian Amazon, bringing together women from Indigenous territories around the world. The time they spent together sharing their strategies, and the friendships they cultivated, are […]

In May 2023, forty participants from eleven countries came together in the Ecuadorian Amazon to share strategies and build connections, at the “Earth Defenders Toolkit Gathering” convened by Digital Democracy. . Our original dream for this event was to create an opportunity for our local partners to meet each other and share their experiences of […]

Being an earth defender is neither easy nor safe work. On many occasions, earth defenders are criminalized, threatened, and attacked by actors whose interests conflict with theirs. Nowadays, the use of digital tools has strengthened and supported many earth defense strategies, which usually involve collecting sensitive information, while bringing new challenges and risks to their […]

Welcome Ben Tairea, the new Earth Defenders Toolkit  (EDT) Community Steward! We are thrilled to welcome Ben Tairea as the EDT Community Steward. Ben is Maori from the Cook Islands and has been a long-time inspiration to us. In 2018 he co-founded the Āhau tool, a tribal management and cultural archiving platform (a featured tool […]

There’s a lot happening with the Earth Defenders Toolkit (EDT), and we will soon be announcing new guides and case studies. Stay tuned! 2023 is also bringing some changes to the Earth Defenders Toolkit family, and we would like to use this blog post both to welcome Ben Tairea as the EDT Community steward and […]

One of Mapeo’s greatest features is having custom configurations, which gives the mapping project focus, identity and acessibility, as many community members are from oral-first cultures and literacy isn’t part of their daily lives. But creating a custom configuration for Mapeo isn’t as acessible an experience as we’d wish, requiring some design and research skills […]

Digital Democracy is looking for an Earth Defenders Toolkit Community Steward for a 12-month contract (with potential long-term), starting as soon as possible. You will steward community engagement for the Earth Defenders Toolkit, and crosscutting outreach projects by Digital Democracy’s Programs team. Your role will be to expand community engagement with the Earth Defenders Toolkit, building […]

After some months of visioning, we are excited to share the first EDT quarterly newsletter! We are entering the next phase of the Earth Defenders Toolkit initiative! Thanks to the generous support of the Patrick J. McGovern Foundation, we are moving into the 2nd phase of the Earth Defenders Toolkit Initiative! The toolkit was first […]