MacKenzie Scott understood our needs in the fight to achieve social and environmental justice. We need Brazil’s philanthropists to do the same

I’m starting this story with a heavy heart. Despite planning to bring new positive insights into the discussion of social and environmental justice philanthropy for Brazil and other Global South countries, the recent assassination of British journalist Dom Phillips and the Brazilian Indigenous protector, Bruno Pereira, shines an enormous spotlight on what happens to those people who try to protect our planet’s most important biomes.

In Brazil, land and environmental defenders and traditional communities are in extreme danger. Illegal activities are growing exponentially in these remote regions. When the only protectors of these places are abandoned by a state that turns its back and announces it doesn’t care, the only way is to figure out how society itself, those of us who do care, can do a better job.

Demonstration for the preservation of the Tapajós River in Brazil. Credit: Attilio Zolin