Canada and Brazil: Rainforest Exchange

We're not in the Amazon anymore! Amazon indigneous leaders bundle up for a boat tour of Hartley Bay in Canada's magnificent Great Bear Rainforest. Photos © David Cleary/TNC

In her own words

Michelle Beeman, Director of Conservation Strategy for The Nature Conservancy’s U.S./Canada Partnership, traveled to the Great Bear Rainforest with the group and shares her experiences.

Read Dispatches from the Great Bear Rainforest!

Amazon indigenous leaders visit counterparts in Canada’s Great Bear Rainforest

Canada’s Great Bear Rainforest has become an international model for balancing the protection of natural resources with ensuring opportunities for economic activities. First Nations communities in Great Bear have played a critical role managing and protecting the spectacular temperate rain forest in which they reside.

Brazil’s Amazon Rainforest is similarly home to indigenous groups. As pressures on the Amazon mount due to agricultural expansion and illegal logging, indigenous communities have come to recognize the need to promote ecosystem-based management within their territories.

This past May, indigenous leaders representing the Coordination of Indigenous Organizations of the Brazilian Amazon (COIAB), a key partner of The Nature Conservancy, traveled to British Columbia to meet with First Nations representatives to learn more about ecosystem-based management practices, particularly related to sustainable timber harvesting and fisheries.

In many ways, the struggles over land management uses, such as illegal timber harvesting, unsustainable logging and fishing, poaching, in large, intact rainforests are the same all around the world. Like the conflicts in the Amazon, British Columbia's coastal rainforest was once the setting of the so-called “timber wars” between environmentalists and loggers. It was a place of polarization and conflict, endless frustration and heartbreak.

But in the last few years, dramatic changes have taken place on both fronts. A unique set of consensus solutions was crafted among environmentalists, the timber industry, governments and the First Nations creating a model for compatible conservation and sustainable human use in the Great Bear Rainforest. Additionally, the province and First Nation communities have negotiated far-reaching agreements defining new co-management relationships within First Nation traditional territories.

The leaders from indigenous communities in the Amazon Brazil came to the Great Bear Rainforest to share stories and learn from their counterparts among indigenous communities in Canada. Though they come from far places, they share many common challenges and desires: how to preserve their native cultures and the rainforests that have sustained them for hundreds of generations. At the conclusion of the trip, the groups discussed next steps, including the possibility of indigenous land managers from Great Bear visiting the Amazon- sharing their own lessons learned with Amazonian indigenous groups on-the-ground.

The exchange was facilitated by The Nature Conservancy in partnership with COIAB, Turning Point, Forest Ethics, Greenpeace Canada, and Sierra Club Canada.

Leia sobre o Intercâmbio nas florestas úmidas, na página da TNC em português.

___________________________________________________________________

From Great Bear to the Amazon. Accompany Kelly Brown, indigenous leader from the Great Bear Rainforest, on his voyage to the Amazon to meet indigenous counterparts.

COIAB and The Nature Conservancy open Amazon Indigeneous Training Center (CAFI) in Manaus, Brazil, to support conservation on indigenous lands across the Amazon Basin.