This is the first of our three-part series on Cisco Foundation grantees working in the Amazon and South America region.
This series will introduce you to eight Cisco Foundation Climate Impact & Regeneration grantees working to support preservation and protection of the Amazon basin through three main avenues, all of which are deeply entangled and in tandem serve to promote enduring environmental protection and preservation: Prioritizing Indigenous Sovereignty, Promoting Sustainable Livelihood Opportunities, and Scaling Innovative Financing Opportunities.
The Amazon is a vast tropical rainforest, spanning nine South American countries, and is known for its rich biodiversity and cultural vibrancy.
The numbers are breathtaking: the Amazon covers 6.7 million square kilometers, is home to over 47 million people,, stores an estimated 200 billion tons of carbon, and is home to approximately 10% of the world's remaining biodiversity.
Our work in the Amazon seeks to uphold these values, and enthusiastically supports several partners operating from within the region.
The ecological significance of the Amazon bioregion is clear, but what often takes a backseat in modern discourse is its immense biocultural vitality.
We cannot discuss Amazon preservation without centering and prioritizing Indigenous voices and acknowledging the necessity for Indigenous peoples to exercise self-determination within the lands they steward.
Around the globe, some of the best-preserved and most resilient bioregions are those areas inhabited by Indigenous peoples.
Land stewarded by Indigenous communities holds 80% of the world's biodiversity.
Within the Amazon, there are over 500 Indigenous groups who have inhabited over 300 million hectares of land since before European recorded history; and satellite imagery from the rainforest does show that land fully managed by Indigenous nations is the most well preserved.
The Coordinator of the Indigenous Organizations of the Amazon Basin is the preeminent leading organizational body acting on behalf of all 511 Indigenous groups in the Amazon.
Despite this data, very little funding for conservation and climate mitigation actually reaches Indigenous territories in regions across the globe.
To effectively invest and support resilient ecosystems, it is crucial that we shift the main paradigm of ecosystem preservation and protection into the hands of the forest's original stewards: Indigenous peoples.
Two Cisco Foundation grantees are taking monumental strides to herald in that future by prioritizing Indigenous sovereignty through governance and digital access.
Cisco Foundation grantee Amazon Sacred Headwaters Alliance is an alliance founded in 2017 by Amazon Indigenous federations in Ecuador and Peru, including COICA with a goal to permanently protect and restore 86 million acres of rainforest within the Amazon headwaters, in the Napo, Pastaza, and Marañon basins.
The alliance has now grown to include 24 Indigenous organizations and 3 non-governmental organizations.
Another Cisco Foundation grantee, Digital Democracy, partners with remote front-line communities to help them address climate change and defend their rights through accessible technology.
Digital Democracy's custom and flagship product Mapeo fills this gap: it is a free, open-source digital toolset that allows users to document, monitor, and map many types of data, completely offline.
Uniting the Cisco Foundation, Amazon Sacred Headwaters Alliance, and Digital Democracy is a singular vision: one of a thriving, harmonious and resilient Amazon ecosystem, in which local Indigenous communities are active leaders, fully sovereign on their lands, leading the driving paradigm of preservation and protection.
Stay tuned for the next article in our series about ecosystem restoration and regeneration through sustainable livelihood opportunities in the Amazon and South America.
This Cyber News was published on feedpress.me. Publication date: Fri, 26 Jan 2024 01:13:04 +0000