The World Rainforest Movement (WRM) is an international initiative that aims to contribute to struggles, reflections and political actions of forest-dependent peoples, indigenous, peasants and other communities in the global South. WRM is part of a global movement for social and environmental justice and respect for human and collective rights.

Its main role is to support struggles that defend the collective rights and self-determination of indigenous peoples and peasant communities who live in and with the forest over their territories, lives and cultures.

WRM was set up in 1986 by activists from different parts of the world in response to the ongoing destruction of forests in the global South and excessive consumption of tropical timber products in the global North. It has supported forest peoples who have been resisting the enclosure of their territories by different economic interests and extractive industries beyond timber (pulp, oil palm, minerals, dams, oil, etc), in many cases endorsed by big conservation NGOs.

From the beginning, WRM’s informal alliances with community groups, social and environmental justice organisations and social movements have been based on trust and shared political analysis of the direct and underlying drivers of forest loss and a commitment to prioritize the strengthening of community struggles in our joint work.