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Month: March 2020

A Call to Protect Rainforest Peoples From COVID-19

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A Call to Protect Rainforest Peoples From COVID-19

A joint statement from the Rainforest Foundations of Norway, UK, and US

The novel coronavirus pandemic sweeping the world is quickly reshaping everyone’s lives in ways very few people could have imagined. Unfortunately, for indigenous peoples and traditional forest populations around the globe, there is nothing novel about this pandemic.

It is estimated that the measles, malaria, and influenza that came with colonization was responsible for two-thirds of the deaths in indigenous Amazonian communities between 1875 and 2008. More recently, the Ebola crisis has devastated local communities in Central and West Africa.

Today, rainforest peoples already experience disproportionate rates of infection and illness resulting from lower levels of immunity to Western diseases. In the Amazon, there are dozens–maybe even hundreds–of unique indigenous peoples living in voluntary isolation. With little or no contact with the outside world, they are at even greater risk of infection. Weak local health care systems are largely ill-prepared to meet the needs of routine services, let alone the level of response this pandemic demands.

Past and present, these experiences reveal that rainforest peoples may be particularly vulnerable to the devastating effects of COVID-19. Meanwhile, the unrelenting encroachment on their traditional lands for resource extraction, agribusiness and associated infrastructure development severely threatens them with exposure to the virus.

This is why the Rainforest Foundations of Norway, UK, and US have joined together to support the calls of indigenous peoples’ organizations and those of traditional forest communities from across the world to mitigate the extraordinary threat posed by COVID-19.

We join them to reiterate – to governments at all levels, to industry, civil society, houses of worship, to all those whom live or work near traditional communities, and to the broader international community – their appeals to:

1. Enforce strict travel restrictions to indigenous people and forest community territories wherever possible and in coordination with local indigenous and community leaders. This is especially true for populations living in voluntary isolation.

2. Effective measures such as Brazil’s no-contact policy should be enforced.Ensure that medical outposts near indigenous and traditional people’s territories are well equipped and staffed with qualified personnel.

3. When a vaccine is developed, ensure it quickly reaches the most vulnerable.

4. Ensure that all public health alerts and information are translated into local and indigenous languages and are widely broadcast.

5. Consult early with local and indigenous leadership in any decisions that affect them, especially in anticipation of possible coronavirus outbreaks in their territories.

Protecting the rainforest and defending the rights of those who are their true guardians–indigenous peoples and traditional forest populations–is vital to the protection of life on Earth as we know it. Science proves that forests protected and managed these groups store more carbon, harbor more biodiversity, and experience lower rates of deforestation than any other forest management systems.

While this pandemic reminds us of the vulnerability faced by the guardians of the world’s rainforests, it is in the interests of us at all times to protect them and the forests they call home.

May you all stay well and safe.

Rainforest Foundation Norway
Rainforest Foundation United Kingdom
Rainforest Foundation United States

 

Rainforest Foundation was founded 30 years ago to promote the rights of indigenous peoples living in the rainforest and to support them and other forest communities in their effort to protect and defend their territories. Since its founding, the Rainforest Foundations of Norway, the UK and the US have together supported indigenous peoples’ efforts to protect more than 13 million hectares across four continents.

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Amazon Emergency Fund Scales Up

The Amazon Emergency Fund (AEF) received a $2 million donation from the French Government to deliver COVID-19 relief to indigenous communities.

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In the News: How Crypto Will Change the Face of Charity

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In the News: How Crypto Will Change the Face of Charity

How crypto will change the face of charity: Cryptocurrency donations are set to rise as charities embrace the technology’s transparency, immutability and traceability.

By Robert Stevens
Originally published Mar 28, 2020 on decrypt.co linked HERE

In brief

  • Charities are opening their doors to cryptocurrency donations and crypto projects.
  • Leaders from the field see 2020 as a turning point in charitable crypto adoption.
  • Charities will increasingly hold crypto donations without immediately converting them to fiat currency.
  • Cryptocurrencies and charities seem like a match made in heaven. Transparency, immutability, and traceability: everything charities need to work effectively.

Correspondingly, charities are opening their doors to both crypto donations and crypto projects. Binance has raised millions (albeit, mostly from money it’s donated to itself) for charity projects, and United Nations organizations such as UNICEF have incorporated blockchain technology into many of their work and fundraising campaigns. Countless others have followed suit.

So how will crypto change the face of charity? We asked leaders who straddle the divide between crypto and charity to share their thoughts. Here’s what they said.

Crypto donations will rise

Alex Wilson, of The Giving Block, a platform that helps charities accept crypto donations, is, perhaps unsurprisingly, optimistic. “We think 2020 is really going to be a turning point for nonprofit adoption of cryptocurrencies. We already saw the amount of nonprofits accepting crypto double last year,” he told Decrypt. Still, “double”, in this context, means an increase from, er, 1% to 2%.

However, Wilson said that in the past few years, crypto donations have totaled hundreds of millions of dollars—and when the market’s performing well, charities receive more crypto donations. At the height of the Bitcoin bubble in December 2017, an anonymous do-gooder, “Pine,” set up the Pineapple Fund, which gave away up to $86 million in Bitcoin to various charities over its lifetime.

Wilson said 2019 saw nothing like that, but there were “still a lot of multi-million dollar donations,” like a $4.2 million donation to Carnegie Mellon. “I think as soon as the market picks up, you’re going to start seeing more things like the Pineapple Fund popping back up,” he said.

But the state of the crypto market aside, Wilson said that in 2020 and beyond, crypto donations will rise because those holding crypto, generally millennials and their juniors, have begun to enter the workforce en masse. Charities “want to start building these lifelong relationships with the younger donors who are in their twenties and thirties,” said Wilson. “When they hear stats like ’20% of millennials own cryptocurrency’, that’s really exciting for them because they really struggle to connect with younger donors.”

“That’s why I’ve spent five years working on this,” said Suzanne Pelletier, executive director of the Rainforest Foundation US, a New York City-based charity. “I’m really convinced that the market will just get bigger and bigger and, by default, the size of philanthropy in that group will increase,” she said. More and more use cases are being created, and that’ll create value in the network, Pelletier says, though she acknowledges she’s by no means an authority on the matter. Still, the Rainforest Foundation US isn’t making big bucks from Bitcoin just yet: from a budget of over $3 million, just $17,000 was raised from Giving Tuesday in 2019.

Ettore Rossetti, head of global digital at Save the Children, wonders who the next Pine will be—and hopes that, by continuing to support cryptocurrencies, he’ll persuade the next anonymous philanthropist to send some Bitcoin his way the next time the market surges. The charity first started supporting crypto in 2013 in response to Typhoon Haiyan. Since then, “we haven’t raised millions of dollars” through cryptocurrencies,” he said, but “tens of thousands of dollars.”

He thinks part of the reason for a lacklustre amount of donations is that, though more people are getting into donations, speculators are likely to HODL—their reasoning being that a $100 donation to starving children now could become a $100,000 donation when Bitcoin’s price goes to the moon. If it does.

Charities keep more crypto donations in crypto

“I think we’ll start seeing some of the nonprofits getting more comfortable with actually holding on to the donations and not necessarily always converting them,” said The Giving Block’s Wilson.

For now, the Rainforest Foundation US converts donations in crypto right away. “Our board just decided we’d treat them under the same policy that we have with stocks,” converting them immediately to “decrease our risk,” said Pelletier. However, the charity’s far from stuck in the past: In 2015, The Rainforest Foundation, in fact, created its own token, BitSeeds, which ran for a while on Bittrex before being delisted. Save the Children also converts crypto donations to fiat straight away, said Rossetti.

But Christina Lomazzo, who heads blockchain for the United Nations’ children’s charity, UNICEF, has taken the plunge. In October, UNICEF started accepting cryptocurrencies without immediately converting them to fiat, the first time a UN agency has done so. There were three reasons for doing so. The first, for transparency; the second, to move assets around at speed; the third, to experiment, said Lomazzo.

UNICEF’s just dangling its toes in crypto’s drainpipe for now: to date, it’s made three investments, totalling one Bitcoin and a hundred Ether (worth around $30,000 at the time), disbursed into three blockchain companies who’d already received prior investment from UNICEF. Soon, UNICEF will open a call for another round of funding, and companies will be able to receive up to $100,000 in Ethereum or Bitcoin.

Charities will work with blockchain and crypto more

If donations don’t pan out, the Rainforest Foundation, like a growing number of other charities, is working on integrating blockchain into one of its projects. It’s using blockchain to integrate satellite data for deforestation in the Peruvian rainforest. Then, after training leaders of indigenous communities to analyze that data, the Foundation will have members of their communities collect evidence of deforestation.

Recording tasks such as these on a blockchain, said Pelletier, makes it easy to reward community members on the blockchain; otherwise, remunerating members of communities is “just too onerous a process.” But, “within the next year or two, the communities themselves will have the wallets and the transactions will go directly to that,” she said.

Raphaël Mazet, of Alice, a blockchain company that’s geared around social impact, told Decrypt that blockchain and crypto has a bright future in the charity sector. “Public trust in nonprofits has been declining for years, and it’s starting to affect donation levels, especially amongst smaller donors. Crypto provides a transparent payment trail showing how the money was used,” he said.

He spoke not of the “accountability to donors,” which “can be dangerous if it leads to charities slashing overhead costs to unsustainable levels or catering to donor vanity metrics,” but of the “the operational efficiencies they can gain from blockchain technology: automated reporting, giving agency to their beneficiaries, and scalability.”

However, with charities bracing themselves for a hit to fundraising activities as coronavirus lockdown measures take effect, they may have other things on their mind than crypto adoption.

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Rainforest Foundation US is tackling the major challenges of our day: deforestation, the climate crisis, and human rights violations. Your donation moves us one step closer to creating a more sustainable and just future.

Indigenous Peoples in the Amazon Mobilize to Prevent COVID-19

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Indigenous Peoples in the Amazon Mobilize to Prevent COVID-19

Members of different indigenous communities in Peru share the infographic made by, and for, indigenous peoples. Indigenous coordinator Enoc Chanchari Garcia explains the graphic to women in the Tikuna community of Buen Jardin del Callaru

Indigenous peoples across the Western hemisphere are mobilizing quickly to inform their communities of COVID-19, repurposing existing networks and technologies to share information from national and international experts.

Indigenous communities are vulnerable to disease due to their historically marginalized economic and social status, their remote location, and, all too often, the lack of easy access to medical facilities. Where there is access, medical facilities can be under-served and under-resourced. As a result, under normal circumstances, community members often do not receive adequate treatment. Many community members suffer from underlying, chronic conditions such as diabetes, malaria, dengue, dysentery and malnutrition, among others. Meanwhile, they can also experience a naturally low immunity to exotic diseases. Traditional customs of communal living and eating further increase the risk of indigenous peoples contracting and spreading COVID-19.

Informing citizens of the dos and don’ts to prevent infection is key to contain the spread of the virus. In much of Latin America, however, useful and verified information doesn’t always reach vulnerable and remote populations, including indigenous peoples, and misinformation is in abundance.

Francisco Hernandez Cayetano shares the infographic with members of the Yagua community of Eden de la Frontera

To address this, indigenous peoples are taking proactive measures to inform their communities and prevent the spread of COVID-19. In Peru, the Indigenous People’s Organization of the Eastern Amazon (Organización Regional de los Pueblos Indígenas del Oriente, or ORPIO) prepared their own culturally-relevant infographics to reach the 430 member communities of ORPIO across the northern Amazonian region of Loreto.

Distribution of these infographics have been accelerated across the region in particular thanks to the existing network of community-based forest monitors that Rainforest Foundation US supported ORPIO to design and implement. In the absence of printing facilities, community monitors have downloaded the infographic onto the phones and tablets that they normally use to track deforestation and are now using them to present the information to members of their communities.

“Thanks to this network of monitors implemented with the support of Rainforest Foundation US, we have managed to inform the most remote indigenous communities. This information has been collected from official sources such as the World Health Organization and the Peruvian government’s Ministry of Health. Though ORPIO is not a health institution, but an indigenous organization, we are organizing to inform ourselves to confront this pandemic together.”

— Jorge Pérez Rubio, President of ORPIO

 

Fernando Geman Sandi presents COVID-19 information to a community assembly in Copal Urco.

Rainforest Foundation US is now supporting the translation of the infographic into other languages to reach indigenous communities in other countries across the Amazon and Mesoamerica. The infographic is available below in a number of languages. This list will be updated as new country versions are developed.

If you are an indigenous people’s organization or network and find that these infographics could be useful for outreach to communities in other countries or languages, please do not hesitate to contact gro.y1713613648nffr@1713613648noita1713613648dnuof1713613648tsero1713613648fniar1713613648.

Peru

Spanish

Kichwa

Ticuna

Panama

Spanish

Ngäbe

Wounaan

Brazil

Portuguese

FRENCH GUIANA

French

GUYANA

English

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Rainforest Foundation US’ response to COVID-19

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In response to COVID-19, four indigenous leaders prepare bags of food and medical supplies to distribute to communities

Rainforest Foundation Response to COVID-19

The COVID-19 crisis is disproportionately affecting vulnerable populations and indigenous communities are no exception. 

Rainforest Foundation US (RFUS) recognized early on that the needs and responses to the crisis would change over time, which is why we implemented an array of short- and long-term interventions. 

These responses leverage existing relationships, networks and tools, while also seeking new collaboration and investments from a variety of organizations, including governments, foundations, other non-profits, and on-the-ground partners. 

RFUS is both a forest protection and a human rights organization. As such, we take our role in protecting the lives of indigenous peoples just as seriously as our role in supporting them to protect forests. 

This crisis is personal. Our partners are family.

How the COVID-19 Crisis is Affecting Indigenous Peoples

Indigenous communities are especially vulnerable to COVID-19. While there is no evidence to suggest that indigenous peoples’ immune systems are more susceptible to the COVID-19 virus than other populations (as has been the case with many introduced diseases in the past) impoverished community members often suffer from chronic health conditions such as diabetes or kidney disease that can increase the risk of extreme illness and death from the virus. Meanwhile, indigenous peoples’ communal lifestyles, remote locations, and the lack of health care services mean that outbreaks in indigenous communities or often pervasive and difficult to contain. Indigenous elders – key to a community’s social fabric and holders of vast knowledge about rainforest land and life – are especially at risk. Already a number of elder members of indigenous communities in the Amazon have died from coronavirus simply for lack of a five dollar oxygen tank or because they could not make it to a hospital in time.

How Rainforest Foundation US is Tackling the COVID-19 Crisis

From the moment the pandemic hit Latin America, in early 2020, RFUS has been working around the clock to provide communities with four primary types of assistance:

Information and Communication

Indigenous organizations across the Amazon (and elsewhere) immediately recommended that communities go into voluntary self-isolation. 

A lack of appropriate information compelled RFUS to work with partners on the ground to produce posters, radio spots, and videos in indigenous languages and share them with communities to inform them of the seriousness of the pandemic and key prevention measures.

Support provided through November 2020:  US$ 19,027

Humanitarian Support

Many communities are safest if they stay in place, which means that they must minimize exposure to visitors and forgo travel to outbreak areas. Such measures make it difficult for communities to sell goods and access some basic necessities, such as the fuel, cooking oil, and salt that they have come to rely on. In order to support their self-isolation, our partners have initiated campaigns to raise funds and supplies.

Support provided through November 2020:  US$ 77,760

Medical Supplies and Protective Equipment

Indigenous organizations are actively coordinating with  the government to ensure it fulfills its obligation to provide medical supplies and equipment, PPEs, and disinfection kits to all, especially leaders, monitors staffing barriers, and indigenous health workers.  Now that the disease is spreading more widely, these supplies have become all the more important.

Support provided through November 2020: US$ 171,606

Supporting Sustainable Economic Activities

Remote indigenous communities, most of whom live in extreme poverty, are particularly vulnerable to the short- and long-term impacts of the COVID-19. Quarantine measures and the paralysis of global trade and travel have made a bad situation worse. Therefore, RFUS and indigenous organizations are developing strategies and projects that will allow these communities to safely generate income.

Support provided through November 2020:  US$ 11,000

The COVID-19 crisis is a challenge to leaders around the world. This is especially true for indigenous organizations and leaders operating in historically neglected areas that lack basic public services. But the pandemic is also an opportunity to strengthen  local, regional and national indigenous governance systems. This strengthening is very much at the core of our work across tropical Latin America. Indigenous organizations in Peru, Brazil, Guyana and Panama are quickly adapting and stepping up to address the unique demands that the global pandemic has created as it steadily seeps into the most distant corners of the forest.

Leveraging Technology for COVID-19 Relief

Rainforest Foundation US is leveraging its extensive network of tech-enabled indigenous partners, including hundreds of remote field monitors who, under normal circumstances, are working to detect and stop illegal deforestation. These networks and individuals are now adapting their skills and tools to capture critical health information in communities. Indigenous data managers  are now compiling valuable health care information and keeping state agencies abreast of new outbreaks. Meanwhile, indigenous leaders and administrators – accustomed to pursuing criminal cases and working the levers of regional governments to stop illegal deforestation – are using their skills, connections, and political influence to improve government and international responses to COVID-19 and ongoing deforestation threats.

Deforestation During Coronavirus

 Illegal loggers and miners are not staying home and observing social distance, which is why we are also addressing the numerous secondary effects of the virus, such as increased logging, mining and illegal border crossings that threaten indigenous livelihoods every bit as much as the virus itself. 

With inspections and other activities on hold due to the pandemic, illegal actors are exploiting a dramatic drop in official inspections and other activities on hold due to the pandemic. In Brazil, this drop in enforcement has been compounded by a weakening of environmental regulations that predates the pandemic. Meanwhile, illegal deforestation and mining is increasing exponentially during this crisis, posing new levels of public health and environmental threat to indigenous territories.

Partner Initiatives

In addition to coordinating local responses, Rainforest Foundation US, our allies and partners are spearheading several large initiatives to scale coronavirus responses across the region:

  1. Amazon Emergency Fund – A collaboration between Rainforest Foundation US, Amazon Watch, COICA and dozens of other allies and partners to raise and distribute funding directly to indigenous communities impacted by the coronavirus.
  2. SOS Rainforest Live – A collaboration between the three Rainforest Foundations (US, UK and Norway) to work with artists, scientists and indigenous leaders to secure direct funding for indigenous groups impacted by the coronavirus.
  3. COVID-19 response in Peru – A new partnership among USAID, CEDRO Peru, and Rainforest Foundation US, which will regularly deliver health information and related messages to vulnerable indigenous communities in the Peruvian Amazon Departments of Loreto and Ucayali. At the same time, this project will engage existing RFUS networks to leverage instant data from communities as they report the impacts of the  COVID-19 crisis to regional organizations and the government, generating support and visibility. This is a two-year program that coordinates support among the  Peruvian government, indigenous organizations, and other allies to prevent, mitigate and respond to immediate needs.
  4. Remote monitoring and advocacy – An effort by Rainforest Foundation US and partners in Peru, Guyana, Brazil and Central America to conduct expanded monitoring of illegal activity in indigenous territories – using a combination of near-real-time satellite data, high resolution imagery and on-the-ground networks – while travel to many of these areas is restricted due to coronavirus.
  5. Fora Garimpo, Fora Covid (Miners Out, COVID Out) Campaign – A major campaign spearheaded by Yanomami organizations to remove the roughly 20,000 illegal miners operating in the Yanomami Territory in northern Brazil. COVID-19 has been spreading in communities closest to illegal mining areas, with potentially devastating results. RFUS is collaborating on the campaign together with partners and allies Hutukara Yanomami Association, Instituto Socioambiental, Survival International, Amazon Watch and many others. Click here to sign the petition at minersoutcovidout.org
  6. Supporting economic sustainability in the COVID-19 crisis: RFUS is helping communities develop and implement sustainable revenue generating activities within the parameters of health protocols, such as reforestation with income generating species and securing community level payments for their forest protection using blockchain technology. 

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Didier Devers
Chief of Party – USAID Guatemala
gro.y1713613648nffr@1713613648sreve1713613648dd1713613648

Didier has been coordinating the USAID-funded B’atz project since joining Rainforest Foundation US in April 2022. He holds a Master’s in Applied Anthropology and a Bachelor’s in Geography. Before joining the organization, Didier worked for 12 years in Central and South America on issues of transparency, legality, governance, and managing stakeholders’ processes in the environmental sector. Prior to that he worked on similar issues in Central Africa. He speaks French, Spanish, and English, and is based in Guatemala.