We, the participants of the 8th Assembly of the World Forum of Fisher Peoples, including fishers,  gatherers, and harvesters from marine, coastal, and inland waters, gathered in Brasilia from  November 13 to 22, 2024, address the governments assembled in Rio de Janeiro for the G20. Considering the loss of environments, the devastation of mangroves, vegetation, and waters, erosion,  the melting of ice and permafrost, ocean warming and rising water levels, floods, droughts,  hurricanes, and the effects of climate change, the harmful impacts of aquaculture and industrial  fishing, the loss of aquatic biodiversity, and the entire process of advancing capitalism through other  emerging sectors of the blue economy, the agro-hydro-mineral business, and even so-called  renewable projects. 

We demand: 

• Stop the death policies of large projects by national and transnational corporations that  threaten our lives and livelihoods and forcibly expel us from our territories. 

• Hold national states and international organizations accountable for failing to respect their  own agreements and even less so to truly end the devastation. 

• Urgent historical, socio-economic, and environmental reparations. 

• Recognition of the climate crisis/emergency in which we live. 

• Stop projects that worsen climate change and false solutions that aggravate environmental  injustice. 

• End the criminalization and judicialization of defenders of the human rights of water  peoples. 

• We urge the G20 to stop wars and build paths towards world peace among peoples. 

That the following be recognized: 

• The ancestral, traditional knowledge of indigenous and all water peoples.

• The diversity of peoples living in communion with the waters: women, men, fishers,  gatherers, youth, traditional, ancestral, indigenous, and tribal communities. 

• Customary rights, including territorial rights over land and waters: rivers, lakes, lagoons,  oceans, mangroves, estuaries, deltas. 

• The legally constituted national and international rights that contemplate the rights of  peoples, such as free, prior, and informed consultation, in good faith and with consent. 

We declare that we are protagonists in our territories and in our lives; therefore, it is we who  must be consulted and make our own decisions!

*WFFP is an Agroecology Fund grantee partner, and with our support are strengthening the organization at a global level after the impacts of the pandemic.