The maps behind me identify the first ever protected districts for Brazil Nut harvesting in the Amazon forest. And that’s my brother Aaron who invited me to Madre de Dios, Peru to join him on one of his environmental trips. Aaron does mapping on the ground long with photography under the cloud cover from a Cessna and by satellite mapping (GSI). The project aims to help protect the world’s greatest rain forest, especially an area now threatened by a huge highway being paved through the forest to the Pacific Ocean. Okay, roads are good, but with roads come more deforestation, more slash-and-burn plantations, destructive secondary roads, and disruption of local life through immigration, mining, ranching, and logging. The realists among you will not be surprises that some roads are created for nothing but profitable purposes regardless of the cost to local life (people, plants, animals).
читать дальшеThe stations we visited, run by the Amazon Conservation Association, fight to preserve some areas of the forest. One of their first areas was a Brazil nut concession in the Castana Corrido. It sustains 420 families and I got to meet some of them. The Brazil nut industry is important because it is a sustainable industry (existing naturally in a healthy rain forest).
The USAID under the Bush Administration says that first comes economic growth (which may reduce poverty), first comes their “macroeconomic framework” (and sustainability may follow). The USAID says that regulations discourage employment and inhibit firms from high productivity.
It seemed to me the people on the ground were saying reducing poverty should be top of the list, not a maybe outcome. They were saying companies have to be regulated first, because they don’t care, and people regulated least of all. Shouldn’t sustainability come first and profits second? I think so. These are the two different ways of looking at the issue. I came away not liking USAID’s “The Goal is Growth” slogan. It should be about people first. But, still, everyone I met was full of hope.
Here I’m on millions of Brazil nuts. Yes, they come in shells not how they look in bags of Trail Mix.
And first of all they come in giant pods and I got to use a machete for real:
You can seem more about the Amazon Conservation Associations. They are working to get producers a higher price for their product and to win the first sustainable certification for a forest product in Peru. They are an amazing group of people. I’ll just leave this little lecture with one of their forest posters.
And I have to add one final picture from Machu Pichuu in Peru (taken by my friend Pablo Corral) where I hiked the Inca Trail and looked down on Machu Pichuu it in the early morning. Now that will take your breath away!
Love and peace, Eliza© источник