"Down with oil. Up with Life": Amazonian communities at the front line against climate change by ADAM PUNZANO and JOE TUCKER
Indigenous communities
of the Ecuadorian Amazon are facing considerable threats to their territorial
integrity from the Chinese-owned Andes Petroleum. This puts them once again on
the front line to preserve the Amazon on which the international community
depends in its battle with climate change. Their resistance is inspiring and
sees them pitted against some extremely powerful interests, but by employing an
internationalist approach with partners drawn from across the world they have
had some remarkable successes over recent years.
In the wake of the
recently ratified Paris climate change agreement, which gives formal
recognition to forests, and with the increased drive to enhance conservation efforts
through the
REDD+ (Reducing
Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation) mechanism, it is becoming
increasingly clear that the efforts of those at the front lines resisting the
detrimental effects of the global reliance on fossil fuels need to be
recognised and their voices included to a much greater extent within the
debate.
In spite of their
frequent exclusion from the debate, i Most notably the community of Sarayaku
have presented the ´Kawsak
Sacha´ or ´Living Forest´ proposal at COP 21, which argues for a “shift
from a modernizing model of development –a model that treats nature as material
resource– to the alternative of Kawsak Sacha”, which treats “the economic
system as an ecological web; the natural world as also a social world.”
The motivation to
share their belief systems with the world is also held by the President and
Spiritual Leader of the Sapara nation, Manari Ushigua. Manari has taken an
active role in building a relationship with the international community through
the ´Naku project´, a community-lead initiative inviting people to visit and
stay with the Sapara to experience first-hand the spiritual relationship with
nature and ceremonies that are carried out to facilitate this profound connection
with the natural environment. He explained that “the Naku project is to get to
know whether this forest is alive or dead and, more than anything, explaining
how the indigenous communities, in general all the cultures, connect with the
spiritual world”. It is understood that the more thoroughly they are able to
communicate their beliefs and relationship with the forest the better chance
there is of enacting the necessary change at the national and global level. The
revenue generated through this project facilitates the participation of
community leaders in vital international forums on indigenous rights and the
Inter-American Court of Human rights...Read more:
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