An Overview Of Our Solution
Amazonian indigenous organizations together with Fundación Pachamama are promoting a collaborative initiative aimed at permanently protecting 60 million acres of tropical rainforests in the Amazon River’s headwaters –the Napo and Marañon River Basins of Ecuador and Peru–an area referred to as the Sacred Headwaters of the Amazon.
Here, the ancestral territories of indigenous nations are adjoined by a number of protected areas, together forming a vast mosaic containing the most biologically diverse ecosystem on Earth. To protect this significant ecosystem, and help ensure a livable climate future, the Initiative will convene indigenous peoples, NGOs, and governments to establish a bi-national protected region, governed in accordance with traditional indigenous principles of cooperation and harmony that foster a mutually enhancing human-Earth relationship.
- Population Impacted: 330,710 people
- Continent: South America
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Context Analysis
The Amazon River Basin houses the planet's largest tropical rainforest and is home to one-third of all species on Earth and 20 percent of the World's freshwater and oxygen. The Amazon also functions as the pumping heart of the Earth's hydrological system. Billions of trees in the Amazon generate columns of water vapor bringing rain to the entire continent and helping to stabilize our global climate.
The Amazon Sacred Headwaters refers to a region of highly biodiverse rainforests and wetlands in Peru and Ecuador. The region boasts the highest concentration of plant, bird, mammal, and amphibian species in all of the Amazon and very likely the entire world. These rainforests are critical carbon sinks and help to stabilize our global climate and rainfall and yet, they are facing a chronic and ever increasing risk from extractive industries. In particular, the governments of Ecuador and Peru are relentlessly seeking to expand oil and mining activities deeper in the heart of this area.
Describe the technical solution you wanted the target audience to adopt
At its core, the Sacred Headwaters Initiative is built on an overarching theory of change with a proven track record in the Ecuadorian and Peruvian Amazon: Backing indigenous peoples’ collective stewardship of their biodiverse ancestral lands delivers the greatest level of protection for the Amazon rainforest.
The Sacred Headwaters Initiative’s overarching theory of change, then, encompasses several supporting theories of change for its related components, including:
1) Strengthening the capacity of indigenous nationalities and their regional alliances will lead to greater protection of their rainforest territories and the pursuit of more equitable and ecologically sound economic models.
2) Advancing the international visibility of the Amazon Sacred Headwaters and its value propositions will translate into: a) greater public mandate for indigenous-led solutions, and b) increased pressure on the governments to pursue alternatives and a transition to a carbon-free economy.
Type of intervention
Describe your behavioral intervention
The role of indigenous territories and protected areas in maintaining the Sacred Headwaters region’s ecological integrity is both critical and at risk. Currently, the governments of Peru and Ecuador are in the process of granting drilling rights to nearly 22 million acres of mostly roadless areas within the headwaters region, on land legally titled to indigenous peoples and in protected areas. In Peru, the government revived the process for approving oil production in the massive Block 64, which overlaps the Achuar's ancestral lands. The Achuar are currently suing the Peruvian government to win legal recognition of their territorial rights.
Other threats to the Napo-Marañon basin include a network of roads, oil palm plantations, and both legal and illegal logging operations, which typically follow in the path of oil and gas development. Oil exploration, extraction, and transportation have severe ecological and human health impacts, as has been tragically seen in the Amazonian communities of Ecuador’s Oriente region, where Chevron, left a devastating and persistent legacy of toxic pollution.
On the other hand, researchers confirm that in the Amazon basin, strategies to legally recognize indigenous peoples' land rights and support traditional community-based forest stewardship practices are more effective in conserving rainforests than establishing protected areas, such as National Parks, which are wholly managed by federal governments.
As needed, please explain the type of intervention in more detail
The development of the Initiative includes four interrelated tracks:
1. Convene the indigenous nationalities of the region to forge a shared vision for the future of the headwaters region and strengthen their capacity to protect their territories
2. Conduct research into relevant regional ecological planning models and frameworks; and strategies and options for long-term funding for the Initiative
3. Develop and advance the international visibility of the Amazon Sacred Headwaters region
4. Engage key industries, civil society, scientific/academic institutions and governments in the deliberation of alternative economic scenarios that also ensure the region's ecological integrity
Describe your implementation
Planned Activities
● The Amazon Sacred Headwaters Initiative – with support from NGO allies and with leadership from CONFENIAE and AIDESEP – is facilitating a participatory strategic planning process, bringing together indigenous organizations of the Napo-Marañon region to articulate and adopt a shared vision. This process is beginning with 12 sub-regional gatherings and workshops for the Napo, Pastaza, Morona Santiago, Alto Marañon, Pastaza/Corrientes regions to assess threats and future scenarios; to discuss and articulate a future vision; and to strengthen alliances and map strategies.
● The Ecological Planning Working Group of the Initiative will conduct research, analysis, and surveys, and facilitate indigenous peoples' own bio-cultural mapping. Compiling and integrating layers of information such as industrial threats, wildlife corridors, ecosystem types and biodiversity data, population data, access routes and fluvial links, helps the alliance establish priorities and make sound governance decisions.
● Conduct research focusing on solutions and alternatives to current growth-focused economic models that are based on export-driven resource extraction industries and that instead focus on alternative indicators of wellbeing such as psychological and spiritual health, community vitality, and ecological health and resilience.
● Lastly, legal analysis of existing laws and proposed legislations and policies affecting the region and stakeholders will be carried out by the legal working group including research into new legal frameworks for indigenous managed conservation areas that also recognize cultural and spiritual values and the reforms necessary to implement such a designation here.
● The national governments of Ecuador and Peru, as well as local governments, will be key stakeholders in the process of moving this vision forward and will need to be engaged accordingly. Additionally, concerned global citizens need to be engaged strategically.
External connections
The five organizations that are collaborating on this initiative, namely Pachamama Alliance, Terra Mater, Amazon Watch, and the indigenous federations CONFENIAE (Ecuador) and AIDESEP (Peru), have formed specific working groups to implement this initiative.
Who adopted the desired behaviors and to what degree?
The overarching vision of this Initiative is for the rainforests of the Napo-Marañon to be protected as a globally significant region and to gradually form a mosaic of mostly indigenous titled lands and protected areas that are off limits to industrial scale resource extraction. Broader long-term outcomes include:
● The Ecuadorian and Peruvian governments and extractive industries recognize this region as a “No-Go Zone” for industrial-scale resource extraction.
● The Napo-Marañon River Basin is branded as a region of global ecological significance.
● Indigenous peoples have the capacity and resources to develop and implement their life plans.
● The governments of Ecuador and Peru opt for financial compensation in exchange for transitioning their economy to a post-carbon era based on the conservation of nature.
● This region is governed under principles that adhere to indigenous peoples' traditional systems for community-based forest and biodiversity conservation.
How did you impact natural resource use and greenhouse gas emissions?
The Amazon Sacred Headwaters region holds an exceptional opportunity for conserving global biological diversity and climate resilience. Unless the industrial onslaught is successfully challenged, this culturally and biologically critical region is at risk of irreversible fragmentation, degradation, deforestation, species loss, and toxic pollution. The consequences would be severe not only for indigenous communities but also for the entire Amazon region and for our global climate. In this context, exploring and developing any new fossil fuel reserves is counterproductive to stabilizing our global climate, and particularly egregious in the most biodiverse rainforest on Earth.
What were some of the resulting co-benefits?
Outcomes envisioned will be: (a) a functioning regional alliance of key stakeholders—indigenous peoples, governments, civil society—aligned around a shared vision for the protection of the Sacred Headwaters; (b) a regional ecological economic plan for the Sacred Headwaters agreed upon by all of the key stakeholders; and (c) a long-term funding plan agreed to by stakeholders with initial commitments in place; and (d) no further expansion and a commitment to a managed decline of extractive industrial development including oil and mining in the region.
Sustainability
The Funding Working Group will identify possible mechanisms and sources for funding from multilateral and bilateral funds for climate mitigation and adaptation public crowd sourced funding, cryptocurrencies, private foundations, individual donations and impact and mission related investments to support Ecuador and Peru in accelerating their economic and energy transition beyond fossil fuel dependence and for promoting indigenous territorial governance, conservation and livelihoods.
A solid foundation has been established for developing the Initiative. We are in discussions with potential funders for the Initiative and working to secure financial commitments for core activities planned for 2018-2019.
Return on investment
The projected cost for the two-year development phase is estimated at $3.3 million. Pachamama Alliance, Amazon Watch and Waterloo Foundation are committed to providing $450,000 during the first year.
This Initiative offers an exceptional opportunity to create and demonstrate a new ecologic-economic model to usher in the post-carbon era – one that both safeguards the vital heart of our Earth's biosphere and enhances human wellbeing.
How could we successfully replicate this solution elsewhere?
It is necessary to identify possible pathways for replacing the loss of income to national and regional governments from their phasing out of extractive industries in the Sacred Headwaters region. This requires focused research and analysis into existing, national revenue models and investment vehicles, Yasuni/ITT types of initiatives, multilateral and bilateral debt financing agreements – in particular, financial agreements between Ecuador and China, and Peru and China. Identify avenues and evaluate the feasibility of engaging Chinese debt-holders around debt forgiveness and/or renegotiation.
It is also important to identify financing mechanisms already employed by other, similar large landscape conservation initiatives and economic transition zones (e.g. jurisdictions where coal mining or logging has been halted). Incorporate the lessons learned in Canada's Great Bear Rainforest and in Brazil’s Xingu Indigenous Park.