Dr Martín Von Hildebrand

UCD Alumni Award in Social Sciences 2024

BSocSc 1968

Ethnologist and anthropologist Dr Martín von Hildebrand has dedicated the last 50 years to strengthening indigenous communities and conservation of the Amazon. Martín, whose mother was Irish, grew up in Colombia where his parents settled in 1948. After his studies at UCD, he returned to Colombia and spent six months in the Amazon forest with indigenous communities, witnessing their treatment as slaves by rubber dealers and how their indigenous identity was being stamped out. As an activist for indigenous rights and cultural and ecological diversity, his work in both government and non-government sectors led to more than 26 million hectares of the Colombian Amazon territory being officially handed back to the local indigenous inhabitants.

Martín is coordinating the Andes Amazon Atlantic Corridor initiative, which aims to safeguard the ecosystem connectivity and the environmental services in the northern region of the Amazon as a concrete solution to tackle climate change. He is the recipient of many international awards including the Order of the Golden Ark in recognition of his work with Gaia Amazonas and the COAMA programme, the Right Livelihood Award, the Colombian National Environmental Prize, Operation Hope’s Man of the Year, the Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship and the Special Irish Presidential Award for Irish Abroad. Martín also has a doctorate in ethnology from the Sorbonne, Paris.