[1] She was awarded the 2014 Goldman Environmental Prize[2] for having led a campaign on behalf of the Asháninka people to oppose large-scale dams that would displace indigenous communities and endanger the environment.
[3] Buendía has also been selected among the 100 Global Thinkers of 2014 by Foreign Policy Magazine for her opposition to the construction of large-scale dams that would endanger the environment enveloping the Asháninka indigenous communities.
In 2003 she began her involvement preparing and delivering documents of identification to people who lived in the communities around the Ene River who needed to flee the area due to the presence of the Shining Path.
In this way it was possible for Buendía to rekindle her contact with the rest of the Asháninka communities and empathize with their problems, which, apart from the overall social violence that burdened them throughout the 1980s and 90's, included lack of representation at the state level in the regions of the Peruvian Amazon, increased immigration from the Andes whose inhabitants brought with them the production and trafficking of cocaine, as well as the concession of their communal lands to hydroelectric and petroleum companies on behalf of the government.
— Ruth BuendíaOne year after the Assembly, Buendía was elected as President of the permanent Board of CARE, and was re-elected in 2009 and 2013, being the principal representative of the 10,000 to 12,000 people in the Ene River basin.
In 2009 and 2010, Ruth Buendía and CARE led the protests against the construction of a hydroelectric dam in Pakitzapango, a project that endangered the welfare of the Asháninka community in the Ene River watershed.