Sani Isla's Artisan Craft Business

Posted on February 27, 2013 by lathamsa

Today’s blog is part five in the guest blog series by Rainforest Partnership. Check out the first, second, third, and fourth blog posts for more information. This entry was written by Nicole Wagner, Director of Operations, and Andrea Ricaurte, Director of Development, Rainforest Partnership.

The Threat of Oil and Sani Isla’s Artisan Craft Business

The success of Austin-based Rainforest Partnership’s work with Sani Isla is a remarkable story of the women in a remote rainforest community, and a partnership that empowered them to start a business. Through this project, the Sani women are making an income – for the first time in their lives. This income helps them pay for medication, food, and other support for their families, and it helps them have control over their community-owned, titled land.

Sani Isla Background: Sani Isla is an indigenous rainforest community in the Ecuadorian Amazon, located at the borders of two protected areas, National Park Yasuní and Nature Reserve Cuyabeno. Sani Isla is among the most biologically diverse areas in the world and home to 302 indigenous Kichwa families. In 1998, the community voted to bring ecotourism to the village, and thus they developed the Sani Lodge. This ecolodge grew steadily and created new jobs for the men, but was not able to provide enough income to support the community. The Sani community began to face pressure from oil companies to open their land for prospecting and eventually drilling, but the community refused. When Sani Isla learned about Rainforest Partnership, the community voted to ask for their help developing a business specifically for the women of Sani Isla. This business has helped the Sani community become a strong voice for forest conservation.

Sani Isla Project Timeline: In collaboration with Sani community leaders and Ecuadorian NGO Conservación y Desarrollo, Rainforest Partnership developed a project plan in 2009 for an artisan craft business, based on traditional craft-making techniques of the women of Sani Isla. The women elected a project coordinator who was originally from Sani Isla and who had also received outside education. Rainforest Partnership funded her work which consisted of evaluating forest resources for craft-making, analyzing the women’s skill set, and building the business from there. The older women led the others by teaching them how to collect seeds and plant fibers and to assemble them into bracelets, necklaces, handbags, and the beaded tops and palm skirts worn by their ancestors. With funding from a family foundation, Rainforest Partnership was able to construct an artisan craft house to provide a home for the developing business, and the women established a nursery and demonstration plot outside, planting more than 2,000 native plants. They began selling their first products at the Sani Lodge. With the revival of these craft-making skills, the women now had a product to sell and a market to enter. Rainforest Partnership organized workshops to help the women acquire the business skills necessary to manage their business, including supply chain management, communicating with tourists, and environmental education. Indigenous women came from neighboring communities to teach them new craft skills, and the women opened a market stand in a nearby town. The Sani Lodge began sending tourists directly to the craft house twice per week as part of a cultural tour, and from this the women have earned as much as $600 USD in a single day.

Empowerment and Independence: Through this project, the Sani women have taken ownership of their education and learned to self-manage their business. In 2012, the women organized themselves, dividing into five groups of seven, and elected one leader for each group. The groups rotate management of the craft house. They also adopted a mixed economics business model, voting on a percentage of sales for each artisan and a percentage to go into the organization’s group fund. Rainforest Partnership funded a trip for women to visit Quito for a learning tour, where they interviewed craft vendors about pricing and craft supply chain management. Based on this experience, a new marketing plan was developed to expand their operations.

The Threat of Oil: Although the Sani community has voted unanimously to keep oil extraction off their land, on January 15, 2013, a company threatened to begin prospecting in the indigenous owned land of Sani Isla. A single hectare in this part of the Amazon contains more biodiversity than all of North America. Fredy Galingua, the manager of the Sani Isla ecolodge, and a former guide and community leader, commented on the oil threat: “The Sani people have experience watching the bad experiences from oil in our neighboring communities. They (oil companies) create huge roads, like 40 meters wide. All the animals are gone. The people can’t fish – the fish are

gone so the communities need to go into other areas to fish. The land is totally destroyed. We are so happy to continue working in our ecotourism project, which will help us to continue protecting and conserving forests for a long time. Our ecotourism project is working and the women have jobs (from the artisan project). This money helps them buy food, send their children to school, and support their family.” Today the Sani women have been one of the strongest voices against oil extraction in their territory. On January 16, 2013 the Sani community appealed for an injunction.

Niyanta Spelman, Executive Director of Rainforest Partnership, with women from Sani Isla

2013 and Beyond: Based on a recent request

from the women of Sani Isla, and the community’s request to build long-term economic alternative to fossil fuels, Rainforest Partnership is raising the final round of funds needed to finish the women’s environmental, language, and business education, and to develop new markets for their artisan crafts. Rainforest Partnership is planning to hire a coordinator for this final phase to conduct some of the training. This coordinator will stay with the community and also act as their liaison in Quito, as well as assist the women in accomplishing the interactive tasks they do not feel comfortable undertaking yet, such as greeting tourists visiting the lodge, conducting transactions, utilizing wholesale versus retail pricing schemes, and connecting with markets in Quito. The women have also asked for help to further their environmental education and organizational skills to strengthen the community against outside issues that might divide them, such as pressure from oil companies. By 2014, and with the necessary funds Rainforest Partnership is now raising, the business will be self-sustaining, and the women will be able to run the artisan craft house for generations.

This entry reflects the author’s personal judgments and does not represent the views of the United States Government or the Department of State.

Why Rainforests Matter

Posted on February 22, 2013 by lathamsa

Today’s blog is part four in the guest blog series by Rainforest Partnership. Check out the first, second and third blog posts for more information. This entry was written by Andrea Ricaurte, Director of Development at Rainforest Partnership.

Why Rainforests Matter

Every person on the planet is intimately connected to the rainforest, through the air we breathe, the products we buy, and even the medicine we take. The band of tropical rainforest surrounding Earth’s equator covers just 7% of Earth’s land surface, yet contains half of all living organisms on our planet.

Weather and Water: Rainforests play a tremendous role in regulating Earth’s weather systems and temperature. Plants and trees absorb carbon dioxide and sunlight, in turn producing oxygen through the process of photosynthesis. The wealth of plants and trees in

tropical rainforests produce 20% of the oxygen we breathe. An estimated one-fifth of all fresh water on Earth is stored in the Amazon River Basin, the area comprising the Earth’s largest remaining tropical rainforest. Rainforests absorb water from the soil and transmit it to the environment through the process of transpiration. Rainfall in the forests works its way down the canopy, the roots of plants and trees prevent it from eroding the soil as it falls. In forested areas, 75% of the water that rains down is cycled back into the atmosphere, with 25% becoming runoff water that flows across Earth’s surface, carrying soil with it. When forests are cut down, these percentages reverse- 75% of water ends up as runoff, and only 25% gets put back into the atmosphere. We need rainforests to maintain the limited amount of fresh water we have on Earth.

Medicine and Biodiversity: Of all drugs on the market today, about 25% come directly from plants found only in the tropical rainforest. The US National Cancer Society has found more than 2,000 tropical plants useful in the treatment of cancer, and of the plants currently used for cancer treatment,

70% can only be found in the tropical rainforest. Although a quarter of the medicines we use are made from ingredients in tropical plants, we’ve only been able to analyze about 1% of tropical plants species for application in modern medicine. From this small sample, we’ve already found treatments for leukemia, malaria, high blood pressure and other ailments, imagine what other treatments we could find hiding in the most biologically diverse areas on Earth.

Human Ecology: The Amazon Rainforest alone is home to many indigenous people, who have lived in the forests for hundreds of years, living in harmony with the natural world, knowledgeable about the plants and animals that live there. Around 1500 A.D. between 5-6 million indigenous people lived in the Amazon Rainforest. Today, less than a million indigenous people remain, as they disappear, so does their knowledge and their way of life.

Deforestation and Climate Change: Because deforestation is so rampant, eliminating the equivalent of two US football fields per second, it is a major contributor of greenhouse gas emissions. Deforestation alone accounts for 17% of global carbon dioxide emissions, more than all cars, trucks, airplanes, ships and trains combined. Excess carbon not immediately needed for photosynthesis is stored in the trees, so when those trees are burned or die from being cut down, that carbon dioxide is released back into the atmosphere. The major factors contributing to deforestation in the Amazon are mining, logging, oil exploration, ranching and agriculture. Local people, tempted by short-term economic gain, often extract resources unsustainably from the forest, further exacerbating deforestation. An estimated 57% of existing tropical rainforests are found in developing nations. Preventing deforestation means working with people who live in and around rainforests, developing alternative income sources and sustainable livelihoods that allow these people to earn a living while leaving the forest standing.

This entry reflects the author’s personal judgments and does not represent the views of the United States Government or the Department of State.

Protecting the Magic of Tropical Rainforests

Posted on February 22, 2013 by lathamsa

Today’s blog is part three in the guest blog series by Rainforest Partnership. Check out the first post here and the second post here. This entry was written by Niyanta Spelman, Executive Director of Rainforest Partnership.

Protecting the Magic of Tropical Rainforests

Celebrating Five years of Rainforest Conservation: At Rainforest Partnership, in five years we have had many accomplishments and created incredible relationships and strong bonds with individuals in the partner rainforest communities that we work in. We have celebrated many rewarding achievements working with these rainforest communities, including a new palm extraction technique that allows the trees to remain unharmed in an indigenous community of Chipaota in Peru; construction of a broom fiber production facility; infrastructure development to support basic ecotourism as an alternative to deforestation in the Colibri Cloudforest of central Peru; and working with indigenous women who had never been able to earn a living themselves, to make and sell artisan products in Sani Isla, Ecuador.

The Magic of the Forest: As wonderful as all we do is, I would be remiss if I didn’t share a little of what it is like to do this work, beyond our accomplishments and the rich relationships. Rainforests are magical. These forests beg protecting simply because of what they are, what they hold, the incredible diversity of life and the people all living in harmony. As the founder and Executive Director of Rainforest Partnership, in just over five years, I have logged a lot of miles flying, walking, in buses, rickety cars, boats, canoes and even motorbikes (I think my mother doesn’t know this). I have accidentally stepped over—not on–the most poisonous snake in Ecuador to the delight of my nine year old son who listens to my many rainforest stories; and slept on top of a canopy tree which the chief of that community describes as sleeping between heaven and Earth (think mother tree in Avatar). I’ve seen more kinds of spiders, insects, frogs, butterflies, mushrooms, orchids, moths that sometimes defy explanations, and likely include yet “undiscovered” and unnamed species. I have listened to nightly symphonies magically orchestrated with singing night birds,

frogs and insects under clear nights with stars reflecting on still, dark water as fireflies fly among the reeds, such that I have felt that maybe I had left our planet for some otherworldly place. I have slept in more interesting and different places and taken “baths” in even more interesting ways. I, a vegetarian, have eaten roasted grubs (think Pumbaa in the Lion King); and I now have bonds with more incredible human beings that are wise and know ways of the world and of living than we can ever fathom here in the cities and the western-influenced world that we live. And yet, what strikes me is how similar we are as human beings. I find that I can traverse from sleeping on someone’s floor in the middle of the jungle and having a strong bond with them as a fellow human being, and two days later, be just as comfortable in a suit meeting with a minister in a capital city. I realize that ultimately, there is no bridging necessary, that there is no gap to close, that it is about connecting at the very basic level

as human beings. We are all the same, whether we live in the middle of the forest in the Amazon or anywhere else.

This entry reflects the author’s personal judgments and does not represent the views of the United States Government or the Department of State.

Take a Breath, Thank a Rainforest

Posted on February 20, 2013 by lathamsa

Today’s blog is part two in the guest blog series by Rainforest Partnership. Check out the first post here. This entry was written by Niyanta Spelman, Executive Director of Rainforest Partnership.

Take a Breath, Thank a Rainforest

Every year on Earth Day, April 22nd, a seventh of us on this planet, a billion people, acknowledge the importance of the environment and celebrate our planet. Last year at Rainforest Partnership, we celebrated by taking a breath…and thanking a rainforest.

But why thank a rainforest? Through photosynthesis, rainforests play a vital role in processing atmospheric carbon dioxide into breathable oxygen. Every acre of rainforest absorbs approximately two and a half tons of carbon dioxide per year. Tropical rainforests, the “lungs” of the planet that absord ever-increasing levels of carbon dioxide, covered over 12% of Earth’s land surface just a hundred years ago. Today, less than 5% remains. Some of us live and breathe to protect this 5% right alongside our partners who live in these forests. The rainforest may not be in our backyards, but we need to protect them as if they are. This is our pact at Rainforest Partnership.

Rainforest Partnership, a five year old international nonprofit organization, was formed with the idea that the way to protect the “lungs” of the planet is to help the people who live in those “lungs” make a living that allows them to protect their forests. People living in and around the forests need sustainable social and economic benefits from not overusing the forests. Therefore, using a bottom-up approach, we match economic development choices to the needs and desires, culture, knowledge, and skills of local communities, and the opportunities created by each individual rainforest. It all begins when a community turns to us asking us to help them identify an alternative to cutting down their trees, stemming from their desire to maintain their way of life and their forests.

For several decades, there had been a prevailing trend to create protected areas as a way of protecting tropical forests. Often, the people living in these forests were not included in this process, nor did anyone consult them. Sometimes they were removed from the very lands that had been their homes,

and their land was suddenly off limits to them as protected areas. Once the protected areas were created, often there were no future plans and funds to manage them, as if their designation alone was enough to ensure they would remain under protection forever. In reality, the protected areas were found to be in varying degrees of compromised condition.

If the people who lived in and around these forests had a stake in designating and protecting these forests, the “protected areas” might have a better chance of being so. That is what we learned from the experience of others, and what forms the core of our belief and working philosophy. That working with rainforest communities that want to protect their land and their way of life, and are looking for an alternative and sustainable means of livelihood, is the best way to protect the forest. If communities have a stake in protecting their forests, then they will do this for themselves and in doing so, do it for the rest of us.

Now take a breath, and thank a rainforest. And, thank the many

rainforest communities that protect their forests-with or without outside help- for all of us on this planet.

This entry reflects the author’s personal judgments and does not represent the views of the United States Government or the Department of State.

Films for the Forest

Posted on February 19, 2013 by lathamsa

This week on the blog, we have a special set of guest blogs written by Rainforest Partnership just for you! In keeping with this month’s theme, Protecting Our Forests, the guest blogs cover a variety of forest-related topics. The first blog is by Nicole Wagner, Director of Operations at Rainforest Partnership.

Films for the Forest Raises Awareness about Rainforests

Austin-based Rainforest Partnership is excited to present its fourth annual Films for the Forest, an annual international short film contest created by Rainforest Partnership to raise awareness for rainforest issues through the transcendent and powerful medium of film. Rainforest Partnership, a non-profit organization based in Austin, Texas, with staff in Austin and Peru, is committed to protecting rainforests. Films for the Forest was created because we wanted to engage a wider audience of people on the topic of rainforests, why they matter to all of us, and what each one of us can do to help make a difference.

Film topics covered during Films for the Forest includes anything about rainforests – from deforestation, indigenous and forest communities, biodiversity, climate change, sustainable development, forest products and resources, and the beauty of forest flora and fauna to many other profound issues. For the second year in a row Films for the Forest is part of the annual SXSW Film Community Screenings held every spring (usually in March) in Austin, Texas. SXSW Film is part of the larger SXSW festival that also includes music and emerging technology. SXSW Music is the largest music festival of its kind in the world, and SXSW Film witnessed 68,000 attendees last year.

So far we have received films from award winning filmmakers from 5 continents. This year’s celebrity judges panel includes writer and director Richard Linklater, maker of “Dazed and Confused”, “The School of Rock”, “Bad News Bears”, and “Bernie”; actress Dana Wheeler-Nicholson, who has appeared in numerous movies and TV

Rainforest Partnership in Ecuador and Peru

Posted on February 28, 2012 by lathamsa

This guest blog is by Maurine Winkley of the Rainforest Partnership. Read her bio and another post by her here.

The video above is showing the forest conservation and economic development efforts led by Rainforest Partnership and our partner communities in Ecuador and Peru. Rainforest Partnership is an international non-profit enterprise committed to protecting tropical rainforests. We partner with forest communities to help them make an income that allows them to protect their forests. Together we do this by developing rainforest products: raw materials, finished goods, and services that can be found only in the rainforest. By developing the market for these products, locally, elsewhere in Latin America, and in the U.S., sales of these goods and services give residents a financial stake in protecting their forests.

Our model is collaborative, bottom-up, and results-driven. We work with communities that want an alternative to deforestation. By enabling communities to have an active role in project design and implementation and by using market-based approaches we collaboratively prevent deforestation and foster economic development. By creating a global network—linking people to people, community to community—we create long-term economic and environmental sustainability.

We believe that the way to protect the “lungs” of the planet is to help the people who live in those “lungs” have a better standard of living, to grow their economy in harmony with their rainforest. Our mission is to partner with people who live in and around tropical rainforests to develop environmentally sustainable economies to protect and regenerate their forests. Our vision is that, together with our partners, we will become a global leader in the development of sustainable economies to preserve tropical rainforests around the world.

COP17 Guest Blog: Maurine

Posted on December 13, 2011 by lathamsa

Maurine Winkley from the Rainforest Partnership attended COP17 in Durban, South Africa over the last two weeks. Below are some of her observations. Don’t forget to check out Maurine’s other guest blog for us about the incredible work of the Rainforest Partnership.

The Life of a COP17 Delegate

The COP is wrapping up today. So as we wait for negotiations to end and decisions to be made (or put off until next year), I am reviewing the past week and my experiences here and want to give all of the curious folks out there some insight into what it is like to participate in this conference.

I am writing as a COP 17 Observer who is attending her 3rd Conference of Parties. I started in Copenhagen in 2009, was in Cancun last year and am currently in Durban. I can start by saying that this is the first year we have applied to be an official delegate to the COP and in the past have attended parallel conferences. You may ask why we would not be part of the official negotiations. Well, as you know, the UN negotiations move slowly. There are so many stakeholders involved in the outcome that it is hard to come to agreements that may affect one country negatively and another positively. The parallel conferences, we have found, can be just as productive in connecting with other individuals, organizations and businesses that align with our mission. Throughout the city that hosts the COP there are many other ways for one to participate in the happenings surrounding the climate negotiations. Hence in the past, and this year (in addition to the COP), we have attended Forest Day, the World Climate Summit, Climate and Development Days, Business Day, and the Trade and Climate Change Symposium.

Being on the inside and outside of the areas where negotiations take place is incredibly interesting. Not only are you connecting with people that care about the earth’s future, but also people from all over the world. We have met everyone from a chief of a Masai tribe in Tanzania to Jane Goodall to heads of large multi-lateral institutions and CEOs of Fortune 500 companies. Last night on the bus there were about 10 of us and the languages being spoken were Spanish, Japanese, English and Zulu. Pretty cool mix if you ask me.

Niyanta Spelman and Maurine Winkley with Jane Goodall (Photo courtesy of Rainforest Partnership)

The COP-related exhibits, located outside of the badge only area of the conference, are another draw as they highlight sustainable design and development of technologies. Below are some of the pictures I took while walking around the facilities.

Gardening exhibit at COP17 (Photo courtesy of Rainforest Partnership)

The living beehive exhibit at COP17 (Photo courtest of Rainforest Partnership)

To give you an idea of what Durban is like, it is the third largest city in South Africa and a tropical metropolis on the Indian Ocean. Everyone I have spoken with that is visiting the city for the first time describes it as somewhere they have visited before. And they are all different! Surprising to me, my first thought as we flew beneath the layered clouds before landing in Durban was how similar the outskirts of the city were to the outskirts of Tarapoto, Peru, the Amazon city one must fly into to visit Rainforest Partnership’s partner community of Chipaota. These areas are marked with thick, bright green forest and silty-brown rivers with increasing views of agricultural land as one nears each city. See views from the plane below.

View from the plane to Durban (Photo courtesy of Rainforest Partnership)

The days are long at the COPs as one has so many ways to engage. Between the actual negotiations, official side events, parallel conferences, exhibits, running into interesting people receptions and dinners, one is lucky to get any rest at all. One may arrive tired the next day, but after beginning to engage with people working in the climate change space, the energy is revitalized and we all do it all over again! So I will leave Durban, happy with my participation in the conference, but a bit sad as well since we don’t have time to waste discussing climate change. Action is the only way to mitigate and adapt to the changing climate of our planet. With or without and internationally-binding agreement, Rainforest Partnership will continue to do our part to mitigate climate change by working to improve livelihoods and protect the world’s remaining rainforests! I know that readers of this blog will continue to do their parts to protect our remaining resources.

For further info about our participation in COP 17, check out the Rainforest Partnership blog where I have been writing about the conference, general negotiations and forest-specific negotiations. There are also posts on our Facebook page and Twitter!

Youth Activists in Africa

Posted on November 21, 2011 by lathamsa

Map of Africa showing climate vulnerability (Courtesy of Delphine Digout, Revised by Hugo Ahlenius, UNEP/GRID-Arendal. http://maps.grida.no/go/graphic/climate_change_vulnerability_)

This week the blog will cover climate change in Africa, including the efforts of youth organizations. This week-long focus on Africa will lead us into the 17th Conference of the Parties (COP17) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, which takes place in Durban, South Africa from November 28th-Decemer 9th. Next week we will tell you all about the incredibly exciting COP17 coverage we will have for you here on the blog, as well as on our Facebook page and Twitter (@ClimateUSGov) including guest blogs by youth delegates from SustainUS, members of the Rainforest Partnership, and live interactive web-chat programs with experts at Durban on a variety of climate-change related topics including agriculture and women and children.

Three incredibly active youth organizations are the Africa Youth Initiative on Climate Change (AYICC), the Nigerian Youth Climate Coalition, and the South African Climate Change Youth Ambassadors.

AYICC was conceived in 2006 in Nairobi, Kenya during the second international Conference of Youth before COP12. It was established to connect African youth in order to take action and make an impact on issues of climate change on country, regional, and continent-wide scales. AYICC has 42 country chapters, including Kenya, which has its own website.

There is a whole section of the AYICC website devoted to COP17. If you are interested in information about how to participate in youth activities during COP, there is information on applications, open positions, deadlines, etc.

The Nigerian Youth Climate Coalition (NYCC) has a site that connects youth from all over Nigeria (and several from around the world) and allows them to share stories, messages of hope, photos, and information on events and workshops. There are even blog posts about COP17 from an African youth perspective.

The South African Climate Change Youth Ambassadors are three young people passionate about environmental issues chosen to represent South Africans at the Conference of Youth (COY7) before COP17. These youth will continue to work all over Africa after the conference finishes in early December, educating people about climate change issues and working with them on local action initiatives. In the weeks preceding COP17 and COY7 however, they are focused squarely on the conferences and what they hope to come out of them.

One of the youth ambassadors, 29 year old Aluwani Nemukulu from Limpopo, attends Durban University of Technology as a Biotechnology student. He talks about why we need youth involved in combating climate change: “The change in sea levels and climate patterns is affecting the African natural biodiversity. There is a need for youth engagement in preservation, protection of our natural resources and biodiversity in Africa to ensure food security and the prevention of extinction of our indigenous plant and animal species.”

If you are interested in any of these organizations, the links provided above take you to the websites, where you will find their contact information.

Guest Blog: Maurine Winkley of the Rainforest Partnership

Posted on November 16, 2011 by lathamsa

Maurine Winkley, Rainforest Partnership (Courtesy Photo)

Maurine Winkley is the Director of Operations at Rainforest Partnership. In both professional and academic experience, she has sought opportunities to combine her passion for entrepreneurship and finance with her desire to create lasting economic alternatives to environmental destruction. Specific focal areas have been in carbon finance, financial analysis and international business management. Her experience spans both the non-profit and privates sectors and notably includes two businesses she started, managed and sold.

Maurine enjoys being outdoors as much as possible and joining local volunteer efforts in her home town of Austin, TX. Other core interests include gourmet cooking, international travel, conversing in Spanish & Portuguese and staying active. Read her guest blog below!

Photo courtest of Rainforest Partnership.

When it comes to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, much of the focus today is on new technologies for renewable energy and other cool stuff like electric cars and high tech green buildings. While these are an essential part of the solution, sometimes old tricks are the best tricks for making big reductions in emissions: saving the rainforest.

Not only do rainforests take out carbon from the atmosphere and store it, but they also produce oxygen, hold 50% of the species on the planet (think monkeys, butterflies, trees) and regulate weather patterns beyond their immediate location.

One of the best ways we can reduce global carbon emissions is by stopping people from cutting down and burning trees in rainforests. Cutting and burning of forests adds up to one fifth of the annual global carbon dioxide emissions (CO2). For rainforests, that is the equivalent of about 24,000 football fields a day that get cut! If we can stop tropical deforestation, it would be like stopping every car and truck from emitting CO2.

It’s that simple!

But, it is not that easy. As much as we would like to, those trees in the Amazon cannot be protected unless they are worth more standing that cut down, or the land they are on is worth more with them on it. So we must work to find innovative and effective ways to protect rainforests.

Photo courtest of Rainforest Partnership.

Experts agree that empowering communities to act as stewards of their forests works better than fencing off large sections forest and hoping that it remains untouched – working with the communities that live in and around the rainforest ensures that everyone benefits.

Over the past decade, Peru has lost more than one million hectares of rainforests to deforestation. In a new study using satellite imagery to estimate the carbon stocks of forests in Peru, researchers at Carnegie Mellon found some telling numbers.

The researchers mapped out 4.3 million hectares of the Amazon forest in the Madre de Dios region of Peru. They found that the trees in this region contained some 395 million metric tons of carbon and measured a release of 630,000 metric tons of carbon per year. They also found that older more diverse forests stored 3 times as much carbon as replanted forests.

According to the Council on Foreign Relations cutting deforestation rates by just 50 percent over the next century would provide about 12 percent of the emissions reductions that we need to meet the carbon dioxide concentration target of 450 parts per million at the end of the century. Obviously this is just part of the solution, but I think that we can do better than 50 percent. Prudent forest conservation and management efforts combined with aggressive reforestation will go a long way towards saving the planet from catastrophic climate change that our current trajectory is steering us towards.

Photo courtest of Rainforest Partnership.

This is where we step in. At Rainforest Partnership, we are partnering with communities that live and depend on the forest to create sustainable economies that protect and regenerate their forests. We believe that the best stewards of the rainforest are the people who live in the forest.

Every forest and every community is unique. Using a bottom-up approach, Rainforest Partnership matches the needs, desires, culture, knowledge and skills of local communities with sustainable economic development opportunities unique to each local forest.

At Rainforest Partnership we work with rainforest communities at the local level but there are also steps that we can all take as global consumers of products that come from the rainforest. My advice would be to become aware of what you buy. The rainforest provides us with a cornucopia of goods: coffee, chocolate, tea, fruits, and not to mention wood. As consumers we need to purchase goods that are grown and harvested sustainably and that provide real benefits to the communities that harvest them.

Visit http://www.rainforestpartnership.org/ to find out more about our projects and learn how you can partner with us, become a Facebook fan, follow us on Twitter and check out our Youtube Channel.

Our Planet

Join. Share. Act.

Tag Archives: Rainforest Partnership

Sani Isla's Artisan Craft Business

Why Rainforests Matter

Protecting the Magic of Tropical Rainforests

Take a Breath, Thank a Rainforest

Films for the Forest

Rainforest Partnership in Ecuador and Peru

COP17 Guest Blog: Maurine

Youth Activists in Africa

Guest Blog: Maurine Winkley of the Rainforest Partnership