This year, AIDA celebrates 25 years of work on behalf of the environment and people affected by environmental damage in Latin America. In this time, we have strengthened the capacity of people and communities across the continent to protect their individual and collective right to a healthy environment.
One of the most valuable aspects of AIDA's role in Latin America has been to clarify what it means to have a healthy environment.
In 1998, environmental law organizations from Colombia, Costa Rica, Mexico, Peru, and the United States founded AIDA as an independent organization aimed at building and strengthening national capacity to achieve victories for environmental conservation and human rights in the region. Soon after, AIDA began providing free legal and scientific support on environmental and human rights issues, serving as a bridge between communities, local movements, national organizations, governments and international agencies.
If I hadn’t had that scientific information, if I hadn’t known my rights, if I hadn’t known the process of information to grant the social license, I believe that it would not have been possible to make visible and accept the effects of lead.
We hope you will join us in celebrating 25 years and the decades to come!
A Joint Effort
You can support this milestone in AIDA's journey and together we can build a stronger AIDA so that we can continue our impact for the next 25 years and beyond!
AIDA's history is full of achievements and important advances in protecting vulnerable communities, ecosystems, and keystone species. These are collective, not individual, achievements and are the result of the broader environmental movement of which we are a part and to which we contribute. These are just a few of them.
Throughout these 25 years, our journey and impact have been possible thanks to a great community of allies with whom we have collaborated and with whom we now share the joy of this celebration. Listen to their testimony.
It is difficult to incorporate all branches of government in a trend towards sustainability, so it’s done step by step. Sometimes we start with a law, and we work with the legislative branch; then we work with the executive so that it is implemented in policy. When they’re not being implemented, we go to the judicial level. AIDA has fulfilled all these steps: as an organization it’s developed the basis for more effective environmental litigation, influenced policy, and pushed for the changes in regulation and implementation changes that Latin America nations require; but at the same time it’s now strongly inter-American.
