UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — The Penn State Climate Consortium has announced the keynote speaker for the 2025 Climate Solutions Symposium will be Nemonte Nenquimo, an Indigenous activist and leader of the Waorani Nation from Ecuador's Amazon region. She is an author and the co-founder of both the Indigenous-led nonprofit Ceibo Alliance and its partner organization, Amazon Frontlines, which is committed to creating sustainable solutions by working alongside Indigenous communities to secure basic necessities and protect Indigenous land from industrial threats.
Erica Smithwick, director of the Penn State Climate Consortium, said that despite the geographic distances between the Amazon and Pennsylvania, she believes Nenquimo’s stories will inspire attendees and provide hope for imagining, innovating and implementing climate solutions in local communities.
“Her leadership has helped to preserve and adapt one of the most important ecosystems on Earth, the Amazon basin, reminding us that climate change is a globally interconnected challenge,” Smithwick said. “Secondly, her fight to save her community and the rainforest has elevated the voice of women and Indigenous peoples in global dialogue and action.”
Nenquimo was born in Ecuador’s Amazon, one of the most biodiverse and threatened rainforests on the planet. Nenquimo led her people in an historic legal victory, protecting half a million acres of rainforest from oil drilling and setting a precedent for Indigenous rights across the region.
“Unrestrained industrialization has poisoned the atmosphere,” Nenquimo wrote in a 2024 piece for Time magazine. “Burning down the Amazon will accelerate climate change beyond a point of no return. Uncontrolled warming will imperil life on [E]arth.”
Her leadership has been widely recognized. In 2020, she won the Goldman Environmental Prize for Central and South America and the United Nations’ Champions of the Earth Award. Nenquimo was also named in the BBC’s 100 Women list, the TIME list of the 100 Most Influential People in the World, the TIME 100 Climate list, and is an honoree of the 2024 TIME Earth Awards. She is also a member of The Earthshot Prize Council.
Additionally, Nenquimo is the co-author of her acclaimed memoir “We Will Be Jaguars,” written with her husband and Amazon Frontlines co-founder, Mitch Anderson.
Since first contact by Westerners in the mid-20th Century, the Waorani people have experienced numerous challenges. The community, today numbering about 2,000 people, has lost much of its original territory in Ecuador. The Waorani's current home in the rainforest sits atop the majority of Ecuador's oil reserves, making it a focal point for extraction efforts by the Ecuadorian government. This has led to multiple concerns in a globally significant environmental region — one that stores vast amounts of climate-warming carbon — including pollution, biodiversity loss, deforestation and climate change.
The 2025 Climate Solutions Symposium will be held on May 19 and 20 at the Penn Stater Hotel and Conference Center. Registration is now available.