This dissertation compares non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that are engaged in transnational political activism on behalf of the Brazilian Amazon in two countries: Germany and the United States. The dissertation examines the ways in which activists and organizations in the two countries attempt to fight on behalf of traditional forest peoples and against environmental destruction. It looks comparatively at the groups' different organizational forms, their different modes of networking at home and abroad, their relative commitment to popular educational and publicity work versus elite research and lobbying, and their different modes of insertion to international and transnational political spheres. The goal is to examine this specific sector of the NGO scene in the two countries in order to provide a window into important differences in national "civic associational culture" in the U.S. and Germany, differences deriving from the very different historical development of the environmental, human rights and third world solidarity movements in the two countries, from different traditions of private philanthropy and interest group organization, from different historical and contemporary modes of government/civil society interaction and incorporation.