I work on a project that has, through years of lessons learned, laid the groundwork for this type of coexistence. As one of South America's last remaining coastal rainforests, the reserve is at the center of a debate with profound social, economic and environmental consequences. But with the encroachment and growth of modern civilization, the demand for lumber in Ecuador has grown apace, and with it, the exploitation of the forest by lumber companies has grown as well. Sometimes these companies work through local communities, other times they take action without consultation, or against the wishes of the indigenous people. Either way, harvesting has been largely indiscriminate and has left vast barren tracts of land without much thought for the regeneration of the forest.
Locals now harvest the forest sustainably.
The reserve is located in a bioregion classified as one of the world's 10 hotspots in terms of conservation priorities. For that reason, some environmentalists would like to see the forest left untouched, logging companies turned away, and indigenous communities divorced from their natural environment, arguing that their presence constitutes an ecological threat. In the midst of these competing priorities, CARE is working to find a sustainable balance between man and nature in the Cotacachi-Cayapas Ecological Reserve. And by integrating conservation and development interventions, we've achieved interesting results. However, these communities never had official title to their forest homeland.