About a month ago I was invited by the nascent Fins Initiative to attend and contribute to their project during COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan. Having been observing the “commitments” and “talks” for a few years I was curious to actually witness these in person at the yearly Conference Of Parties.

As many of us are aware, the convention has been held in different countries for the last 29 years. Resulting in many treaties, agreements, negotiations and so on. The most celebrated and well known was the Paris Agreement signed in 2015 that had the goal of limiting temperature rise to 1.5°C– and which no country is on track to meet 9 years later.

Many boycotted Baku calling on the hypocrisy of a petrol-state hosting the climate talks. However, my main takeaway from my Azerbaijani week was just that, in my opinion Azerbaijan itself is the country that benefitted the most from this year’s summit.

Over 60,000 delegates from around the world flew into Baku to attend COP29. Most conversations are held in the Blue Zone, where a special “political” pass is needed, and no commoner or civilian is allowed to enter. I went to the Blue Zone only one day, invited by the Azerbaijani delegation. The energy was chaotic and intense. There are pavilions for panel discussions as well as big conference rooms and of course the many break-out stalls that are rumoured to host back-door deals for fossil fuel lobbyists to mingle with high-level diplomats.

The Fins Initiative that I participated in was hosting a pavilion in the Green Zone, the area open to the public where mainly Azerbaijani and Brazilian funded pavilions and NGOs hosted panels, talks, and exhibitions. I was told Brazil was overtly present at COP29 because they are hosting COP30 and therefore needed to show what they’re working on from now.

The streets of Baku were mysteriously quiet for the two weeks of COP. With dedicated buses taking you to and from the blue/green zones into the city center. Rumor has it that the government incentivized locals to work remotely for those two weeks, in order to easily host the biggest influx of tourism in the country’s recent history.

Despite the controversies behind COP29, I find that its biggest win was exactly that it was held in a country with little environmental track record. All of a sudden, the environment was on its agenda, and as I met more and more Azerbaijanis I listened to how COP was making being “green” cool as well as opening up funding for local organisations and engaging eco talks in the school curriculums.

This made me wonder, does a country really need 60,000 international delegates, politicians and fossil fuel lobbyists to encourage conscious development? Wouldn’t a local version of COP have a larger impact on the community? Couldn’t a country-specific COP actually make a bigger difference? I’m Italian, and sometimes I feel like I know more about the environmental movement happening in remote areas of the world than I do of what’s happening in my home country. I would love to partake in an Italian-led COP that invited all of the cool organisations (governmental and non) as well as businesses, leaders, entrepreneurs and everyone in between to talk about their contributions to a more eco-friendly society. I feel that when the conference is hyper-local, the chances for impact are amplified. Imagine this: you’re an impact investor and your next-door neighbour has a bio-gas start-up. Do you really need to fly across the world to meet each other?

So, in terms of my personal experience at COP29 I’m happy and satisfied to say that Fins Initiative did have a large local impact. Fins was the only pavilion focused on ocean conservation and as it was founded by two local Azerbaijanis they knew that they needed to stir the curiosity of their fellow Bakunians that have had few experiences with the deep blue. To do this they brought a large installation of a dead sperm whale on the Baku Boulevard. This ensured that our talks were consistently well-attended by locals and hopefully inspired a future generation of marine biologists in the land-locked country of Azerbaijan.

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Back in 2020 I read an amazing book that I have constantly reflected upon: Wilding, by Isabella Tree. It was covid lockdown, and I was lucky enough to be spending it in the Swiss mountains. Every morning, rain or shine, I would do a hike through what I thought was a corner of Switzerland’s pristine forest. After reading Wilding, it hit me. I wasn’t hiking through forests, I was walking in a pine plantation. Let me explain to you why.

In the West the difference between a forest and a plantation isn’t taught in school. The fact that the UK was home to a temperate rainforest, has been conveniently forgotten, replaced by the idea of the English countryside being “beautiful” rolling moores. In Germany and Switzerland every tree is numbered by the government. Most rivers in Europe are channeled, the fact that salmon used to migrate up them to most sounds like a long-lost fantasy. European bison used to criss-cross the plains of Belgium and Germany, while beavers naturally dammed the rivers. Deforestation in Europe happened so long ago, that culturally we don’t even know what our primary forests looked like, which animals roamed and what plant medicines our ancestors foraged.

What I find even more troublesome, is what we interpret as “nature.” We can easily recognise agricultural land, but many still confuse a plantation for a forest. Right now, as wildfires ravage central and northern Portugal, experts are finally pointing the finger to Portugal’s paper and timber industries that dominate the area with eucalyptus and pine plantations. Did you know that eucalyptus is now the primary tree species in Portugal, despite being native to Australia?

“Eucalyptus covers 845,000 hectares in the Iberian countryside, or 26 percent of forests. Technically these are cultivations that feed the paper and cellulose sectors, with eucalyptus grown exclusively for pulp, which is used to make various paper products.”

Monocultures are highly flammable, you can imagine matchsticks being planted next to each other. This is why, when a fire starts, it can quickly spread across hectares and hectares of land, from one plantation to the other, creating monstrous human-made disasters.

In 2017, northern Portugal suffered similar wildfires in Pedrogrão Grande area, the fires killed 66 people and burned through 50,000 hectares of land. Many of the remaining pockets of native forests survived through those fires. Since then the local community has started to question the government’s plan to increase eucalyptus plantations, looking for an economic alternative to paper production in this rural area.

Just last week, seven firefighters lost their lives trying to quell the wildfires. When will justice prevail against the culprits of these disasters? 
A local NGO, Quercus, that has been active in the area since 1985, is highly critical of the paper industry’s destruction of native flora, and has been working hard to restore and maintain what’s left of Portugal’s diverse biome.

“The pulp industry depends on eucalyptus plantations in this area. Together with the pressure on the government to expand eucalyptus acreage in Portugal, this means that there is no meaningful promotion of a diverse landscape that is more resilient to fires. When such landscapes are planted, or at least experimented with, it is in small areas near watercourses. There is nothing being done at scale to reduce the risk of fires.” says Domingos Patacho, director of Quercus.

We hope after this last two weeks where Portugal officially declared a state of calamity, the government will listen to Quercus’ pleas and finally support the regeneration of native forests and put an end to the paper domination of the Iberian coast.

The post Plantations are not forests appeared first on eco-nnect.

scroll down for the Italian translation

Chiara Vigo, is the last known master of the byssus sea silk. She lives in the southernmost tip of Sardinia, on the island of Sant’Antioco. She was trained as a master by her grandmother. In fact the Vigo women can trace back their lineage of byssus weaving to 500 years ago.

“A master comes, a master goes. It has been done in my family for 28 generations now.”

For millennia the secret of how the byssus sea silk is woven from the slime produced by a Mediterranean clam, the Pinna nobilis, has been passed down from grandmother to granddaughter with very strict instructions that the sea silk must never be sold and the knowledge must remain within the female bloodline. Legend says that whoever breaks this pledge will be cursed.

Earlier this year, I traveled with a few friends across Sardinia and we met with Chiara Vigo in her workshop in Sant Antioco. When we entered, we were three Italian women, following a thread: an urge to connect with the native mysticism that was buried by millennia of ecclesiastical persecution. Chiara greeted us warmly, like a grandmother welcoming her family. Her demeanour was gentle yet she spoke directly.

“Your generation is fascinating. You travel the world, to other cultures, to the Far East, to learn how to meditate, yet you don’t have to actually travel far, the knowledge is also right here in your home country. Do you know how to weave?”

She asked us simply. No, we replied in unison. Her workshop is home to her 200-year-old loom, an imposing and beautiful wooden structure that seems incredibly complicated to maneuver.

“In every culture across the world, women’s connection is through the art of weaving.”

Chiara only unveils the teachings of the art of byssus sea silk to her nine year old granddaughter, however she teaches weaving to everyone. Her door is always open as long as you’re not in a hurry, a sign on the door reads.

“A few years ago, it was about creating the thread that connected women. Which is neither given by the flashy dress, nor by showing off your brain. We don’t need to prove anything. As long as we are what we want to be. But what’s missing in my opinion right now is the essence, people just do things, but they don’t do it consciously.”

I asked, what makes byssus sea silk special?

“Byssus can never be traded, it can only be gifted. In the Old Testament when King Solomon says ‘the king went out at the door and at the sound his clothes were covered with gold’, He is talking about the byssus. There is no other fibre that changes with sound, how the vibrations hit the material the silk captures the light and makes it its own. This is why the byssus is placed in a sacred situation and how it becomes golden.”

Little is known about the Nuragic civilisation (1600-750BC) from Sardinia, yet the island is full of archeological sites from that era: from the tombs of the giants, to fairy portals and water temples. The Nuragic people were an oral culture, and no written accounts of their tradition have been found, only paintings and small bronze sculptures.

Every Spring, protected by nightfall on a full moon night, Chiara dives in a secret cove on the island to retrieve the pinna nobilis’ slime. It will take her about 100 dives to retrieve only 200g of slime, which becomes about 30g of yarn and 21 meters of thread.

The pinna nobilis is a species endemic to the Mediterranean. In 2016 a parassite known as Haplosporidian endoparasite spread to the Mediterranean via surface currents, which killed over 99% of the mollusc’s Spanish population. Since then, the disease has been slowly spreading across the Mediterranean. Today, it is a critically endangered species in desperate need of protection.

“The pinna lives for 25 years, reaches heights of one metre and ten, is the largest Mediterranean bivalve, and is stuck in the seabed for two thirds of its height. He has a jokester enemy: the octopus. If the octopus finds it open, it sticks out its tentacles, eats it and makes its home there, therefore she defends herself equipped with a sieve gland that is connected to her orifice. When she feels threatened, she swells the gland and closes the entrance with the slime.”

It’s thanks to the symbiotic relationship between the octopus and the pinna nobilis that we get the byssus, as without the octopus the pinna wouldn’t secrete the slime.

Chiara showed us a ball of byssus yarn, then told us to close our eyes and hold out our hand. She then asked us if we felt anything. No, we replied. When we opened our eyes she had placed a fist-size ball of byssus yarn on our hands. It is weightless, as thin as a string of hair.

“Once cleaned, it no longer has the weight and you can no longer feel it. Just cleaning this small ball of byssus can take 90 years, because when it comes out of the fin it is liquid, then as it touches the substrate it solidifies and becomes silk. To turn it into thread, you need to first clean it delicately with a brush. Imagine how much work goes into making a ball like that. So imagine how much work goes into making a shawl. What are we talking about? It takes years, unless you destroy half the Mediterranean, which is why I took the Water Oath.”

Chiara took the Water Oath in 1983. Her grandmother used to fish for the pinna nobilis by retrieving the slime and then eating the flesh, back when the Mediterranean was abundant with life. However, Chiara has had to adapt to the reality of the emptying seas, and with her oath she promised to retrieve the slime without killing the animal.

“Instead I chose to maintain through the Water Oath what it already was without modifying its essence. Naturally I have all the byssus of my grandmothers and my great-grandmothers to clean still. This ball is 300 years old.”

This makes me realise what a true Master Chiara is, she dives each year to retrieve byssus that she most likely will never weave. She is retrieving it for her granddaughter, just like her grandmother did before her, leaving behind a method that does not interfere with the ecosystem.

“Now I will use sound, I will change the fiber and make it capable of capturing the light, making it its own and becoming gold in light.”

Chiara walked over to her loom and began chanting a deep chant, in a mysterious unintelligible language. It reminded me of Buddhist monks, and I realised what she meant when she told us that we didn’t have to travel to the East to find truth.

“To me, making byssus is not using a spindle and it is not weaving. It is preserving for those who come what already was, without modifying it in the manufacturing and delivery ritual.”

Throughout Italy, a country synonymous with textiles and fashion, Chiara’s mastery has become a legend. Directors of large fashion houses have descended upon Sardinia ready to pay fat cheques for the mysterious golden thread. Yet if anyone else tries, the slime will not turn to thread, and the thread will not become golden. Chiara is a true testament to ancestral Italian wisdom, despite the contemporary capitalist and patriarchal Italian culture that surrounds her, the silk is not for sale, her mastery is only for her granddaughter’s ears. Yet her door is always open for those willing to listen to her wisdom, her integrity is as rare as the sea silk. She is a true master in a world where almost everything is for sale.

“If each of us followed what he has in his soul, there would be no climate crisis. If you love without ifs or buts, time passes peacefully. Masters of the arts should simply love and do nothing, love everyone as they are. Just take the beauty of each individual. We try to make the ugly become beautiful.”

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Chiara Vigo è l’ultima maestra vivente di bisso, la seta del mare. Vive nell’estremità più meridionale della Sardegna, sull’isola di Sant’Antioco. È stata iniziata come maestra di bisso da sua nonna. Infatti, il suo lignaggio risale al 1500.

“Un maestro viene, un maestro va. Nella mia famiglia si fa ormai da 28 generazioni.”

Per millenni il segreto di come si tessesse la seta marina di bisso, prodotta dal muco di un mollusco mediterraneao, la Pinna nobilis, è stato tramandato  da nonna a nipote attraverso istruzioni molto rigorose: la seta marina non deve mai essere venduta e la conoscenza deve rimanere all’interno della linea di sangue femminile. La leggenda narra che chiunque infranga questo giuramento sarà maledetto.

All’inizio dell’anno ho viaggiato con delle amiche attraverso la Sardegna e abbiamo incontrato Chiara Vigo nel suo laboratorio di Sant’Antioco.

Tre donne italiane all’insegna di una trama: l’urgenza di connetterci con il misticismo nativo sepolto da millenni di persecuzione ecclesiastica. Al nostro arrivo Chiara ci ha accolto calorosamente, come una nonna che accoglie la sua famiglia. Il suo atteggiamento era gentile ed il suo esprimersi schietto.

“La vostra generazione è affascinante. Viaggiate per il mondo incontrando altre culture, in Estremo Oriente, per imparare a meditare, ma in realtà non dovete viaggiare lontano, la conoscenza è anche qui, nel vostro paese. Sapete tessere?”

Ci ha semplicemnte chiesto. No, abbiamo risuonato all’unisono.

Il suo laboratorio è la sede del suo telaio centenario, una struttura bella ed imponente che sembra incredibilmente complicata da manovrare.

“In ogni cultura del mondo, il legame delle donne è sempre stato attraverso l’arte della tessitura.”

Chiara rivela gli insegnamenti dell’arte del  bisso solo alla sua nipotina di nove anni, ma insegna a tessere a chiunque. La sua porta è sempre aperta, purché non siate di fretta, recita un cartello sulla porta.

“Un po’ di anni fa, la mia intenzione era di tessere il filo che collegasse le donne. Questo non è dato dal vestito appariscente, né dal cervello che non funziona. Non abbiamo bisogno di dimostrare nulla. Basta essere ciò che vogliamo essere. Ciò che manca, secondo me, è l’essenza. Le persone fanno le cose, ma non lo fanno consapevolmente.”

Ho chiesto, cosa rende così speciale il  bisso marino?

“Il bisso non può mai essere commercializzato, può solo essere donato. Nel Vecchio Testamento quando il Re Salomone dice ‘Usciva il re sulla  porta ed al suono le sue vesti si coprirono d’oro’, sta parlando del bisso. Non c’è altra fibra che cambi con il suono, come le vibrazioni colpiscono il materiale, la seta cattura la luce e la rende sua. Ecco perché il bisso è collocato in una situazione sacra e diventa dorato.”

Poco si sa della civiltà nuragica (1600-750 a.C.) della Sardegna, eppure l’isola è piena di siti archeologici di quell’epoca: dalle tombe dei giganti, ai portali delle fate e ai templi dell’acqua. La leggenda narra che questa civiltà fosse un matriarcato molto evoluto, simile agli Etruschi nel Mar Tirreno, e con connessioni fino ai Fenici e agli antichi Egizi. Le Somme Sacerdotesse alla guida di questa società erano conosciute per indossare abiti con fili d’oro di bisso. La seta è menzionata in diversi testi sacri, incluso un’iscrizione sulla pietra di Rosetta tolemaica che risale al 196 a.C.

Ogni primavera, al calare della notte protetta dalla luna piena, Chiara si immerge in una baia segreta dell’isola per recuperare il muco della pinna nobilis. Le serviranno circa 100 immersioni per recuperare solo 200g di muco, che diventeranno circa 30g di gomitolo e 21 metri di filo.

La pinna nobilis è una specie endemica del Mediterraneo. Nel 2016 in Spagna, il parassito Haplosporidian endoparasite ha ucciso oltre il 99% della popolazione spagnola del mollusco. Da allora, la malattia si è diffusa lentamente attraverso il Mediterraneo. Oggi è una specie gravemente minacciata che ha bisogno urgentemente di protezione.

“La pinna vive per 25 anni, raggiunge altezze di un metro e dieci, è il più grande bivalve mediterraneo e si infissa nel fondale per due terzi della sua altezza. Ha un nemico monello: il polpo. Se il polpo la trova aperta di notte infila i tentacoli, la mangia e ci fa la casa. Per questo si difende con una ghiandola a setaccio collegata al suo piede, una valvola che attraversa il mantello e si appoggia nell’orifizio esterno. Quando si sente minacciata, rigonfia la ghiandola e chiude l’ingresso con la bava. Quando il polpo si rintana, spruzza il muco all’esterno che come tocca l’acqua si solidifica e diventa seta purissima, imprigioando tutto ciò che incontra”

È grazie alla relazione simbiotica tra il polpo e la pinna nobilis che otteniamo il bisso, perché senza il polpo la pinna non secernerà la bava.

Chiara ci ha mostrato un gomitolo di bisso, ci ha chiesto di chiudere gli occhi e tenere la mano tesa. Ci ha chiesto poi se sentissimo qualcosa. No, abbiamo risposto. Quando abbiamo aperto gli occhi, aveva messo un gomitolo di bisso nelle nostre mani. È talmente leggero da essere impercettibile, sottile come un filo di capelli.

“Una volta pulito, non ha più peso e non lo si sente più. Solamente pulire  questo piccolo gomitolo può richiedere 90 anni, perché quando esce dalla pinna è liquido, poi quando tocca il substrato si solidifica e diventa seta. Per trasformarlo in filo, devi prima pulirlo delicatamente con una spazzola. Immagina quanta fatica ci vuole per fare un gomitolo del genere. Quindi immagina quanto lavoro ci vuole per fare uno scialle. Di cosa stiamo parlando? Ci vogliono anni, a meno che non distruggi metà del Mediterraneo, ed è per questo che ho fatto il Giuramento dell’Acqua.”

Chiara ha fatto il Giuramento dell’Acqua nell’anno 1983. Sua nonna pescava la pinna nobilis recuperandone la bava e poi mangiandone la carne, quando il Mediterraneo era ricco di vita. Tuttavia, Chiara ha dovuto adattarsi alla realtà dei mari che si svuotano, e con il suo giuramento ha promesso di recuperare il muco senza uccidere l’animale.

“Invece ho scelto di mantenere attraverso il Giuramento dell’Acqua ciò che già era, senza modificarne l’essenza. Naturalmente ho ancora tutto il bisso delle mie nonne e delle mie bisnonne da pulire. Questo gomitolo ha più di 300 anni.”

Questo mi fa capire che tipo di Maestra sia Chiara, pura ed integra, si immerge ogni anno per recuperare il bisso che probabilmente non tessera mai. Lo sta recuperando per la sua nipotina, proprio come sua nonna fece prima di lei, lasciando dietro di sé un metodo che non interferisce con l’ecosistema.

“Adesso userò il suono, cambierò la fibra e la renderò capace di catturare la luce, farla sua e diventare oro nella luce.”

Chiara si è avvicinata al suo telaio e ha iniziato a cantare un canto profondo, in una misteriosa lingua incomprensibile. Mi ha ricordato i monaci buddisti, ed ho capito cosa intendesse quando ci ha detto che non dovevamo viaggiare verso est per trovare la verità.

“Per me, fare il bisso non è usare un fuso e non è tessere. È preservare per coloro che verranno ciò che già era, senza modificarlo nel rituale di produzione e consegna.”

In tutta Italia, un paese sinonimo di tessuti e moda, la maestria di Chiara è diventata leggendaria. Direttori di grandi case di moda si sono recati in Sardegna pronti a pagare grosse cifre per il misterioso filo dorato. Ma chiunque altro provi non riuscirà a trasformare la bava in filo ed il filo non diventerà dorato. Chiara è un vero esempio della saggezza ancestrale italiana. Nonostante sia circondata da una cultura capitalista e patriarcale la seta non è in vendita; la sua maestria è solo per le orecchie della sua nipotina. Eppure la sua porta è sempre aperta per coloro disposti ad ascoltare la sua saggezza, la sua integrità è rara quanto la seta marina stessa. È una vera maestra in un mondo in cui quasi tutto è in vendita.

“Se ognuno di noi seguisse ciò che ha nell’anima, non ci sarebbe la crisi climatica. Il problema non si risolve perchè non ci si vuole mettere insieme e collaborare. Se ami senza se e senza ma, il tempo scorre serenamente. Il Maestro dovrebbe semplicemente amare e non fare nulla. Amare tutti così come sono. Basta cogliere la bellezza di ogni individuo. Cerchiamo di rendere bello ciò che è brutto.”

Scritto da/ Written by: Isabella Cavalletti, tradotto da / translated by Carola Rovati

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Established in 1959, the Galapagos Islands is Ecuador’s oldest National Park. Renowned for each island’s unique flora and fauna, which inspired Charles Darwin’s Theory of Evolution, most tourists are attracted by the underwater life that surrounds the Islands. This is thanks to the Galapagos Marine Protected Area (MPA) that was established in 1998, and turned the islands into an important refuge for marine wildlife, which is sharply declining throughout the world.

In January, I travelled to the Galapagos and boarded a small sailboat that promised a low-impact tour of the isles. In Puerto Ayora, Santa Cruz, I was greeted by our naturalist guide, Johnny Alvarez, who took care of us on our ten day journey visiting the wonders of the Galapagos National Park.

“Life has been so beautiful and so peaceful here.”

Johnny is a family man, born and raised in Santa Cruz in the third generation of a family of Galapagos residents and fishers. When he was a teenager he was told to kill a sea lion that was caught in a net, an experience that inspired him to train to become a guide instead. After fifteen years guiding tourists among the wonders of the Galapagos, Johnny has gathered a wealth of knowledge. I ask him if anything has changed with the increase in tourism?

“Galapagos is becoming something different, a place that everyone uses to make a lot of money. There are many companies from many parts of the world that have come to the Galapagos. And we, the people who live here, who were born and raised in this beautiful place, feel that many are taking advantage of the Galapagos, including NGOs. There are several NGOs that use the name of the Galapagos to ask for a lot of donations.”

Every year around 270,000 tourists visit the Galapagos, almost 10 times the resident population of 33,000, and every year the number of tourists is increasing. Before travelling to the Islands, each tourist must contribute $200USD to the Galapagos National Park

“Who decides where the tourism licenses are allocated? Who ensures that the big foreign companies Royal Caribbean, Golden Galapagos Cruises, National Geographic, to name a few, pay their fair share here? Recently, the entrance fee to the National Park doubled from $100 to $200… Where is all that money going? Let me tell you, it’s not staying with the local community.”

Despite the Islands’ fame, the increase in attention and tourism, and the institution that the Galapagos National Park has become, the local community has been left behind the tourism boom that has swept the Galapagos in the last decade. In December 2023, the municipality of Santa Cruz declared that it was in too much debt to begin building a proper sewage system or even to provide the city with potable water. The largest city in the Galapagos, Puerto Ayora in Santa Cruz, doesn’t have proper wastewater management: over 90 percent ends up directly in the ocean, the Marine Protected Area.

“It is a truth that no one knows, that here everyone pays attention to the animals, but no one pays any attention to the people. A basic hospital, drinking water, a sewage system, good internet for schools, apparently all of that is too expensive, yet the tourists keep increasing…”

“So it’s painful because as tourism increases, living here becomes more complicated. The inhabited islands could have the conditions to grow their own fruits and vegetables, yet over 90 percent is still imported from mainland Ecuador.”

Many of the Galapagos Islands are volcanic, making their soil lush and fertile. However, the municipality claims it doesn’t have the means to provide any support for local farmers. Listening to Johnny made me wonder where all of the tourists’ money is going? As a tourist, along every street and at every corner, a fee is charged to do almost anything. Disembarking on the dock? $5 to the National Park. Entering a certain beach? Another $5. So, as Johnny says, how is it possible that the municipality is too broke to implement proper wastewater treatment? And what are the many foreign NGOs conserving if they can’t even ensure that gray water doesn’t enter the marine protected area?

The two leading Galapagos NGOs, just as Johnny claims, are foreign based. The Galapagos Conservancy has its HQ in Connecticut Avenue, Washington DC, while the Galapagos Conservation Trust is located on Dover Street, London. Meanwhile, the Galapagos National Park that is administered by the Ecuadorian government barely provides any online information of its activities, and clearly doesn’t provide much support to the municipality of Santa Cruz.

“It’s complex, but that’s our reality. Tourists should buy the tour from local operators. This would be an ideal solution for all the taxes to stay in Galapagos, stay in Ecuador, and for the local community to also reap the benefits from the influx of tourism.”

Listening to Johnny, made me wonder how many tour operators were actually owned by local Galapagueños? And if foreigners mainly sold the wonders of the Galapagos to other foreigners, was this another form of economic colonisation?

In our group, a local girl had been gifted the cruise as part of a program that offered the opportunity of visiting the islands by boat to locals who wouldn’t otherwise be able to afford it. Johnny stressed the importance of these programs as few locals appreciate the natural abundance of their home.

“We should be able to oblige all tourist cruises to take at least two or three children from the Galapagos. Large ships can accommodate 100 passengers and could easily sacrifice five spots to bring locals. Because we can’t talk about conservation if the local people don’t know what they have. They do not have the economic possibilities to go for a cruise and see how beautiful it is to be in the water with a sea turtle, with a shark, with iguanas.”

For the last five years, Johnny and his father have been taking children out on their boat to swim with wildlife and teach them about the local flora and fauna. Again, I wonder what the Galapagos National Park, the Galapagos Conservancy or the Galapagos Conservation Trust are doing if they’re not educating the local children on the wonders of their world famous home? If these organisations are solely focused on conservation, surely they know that community-based conservation models are by far the most successful? So I wonder, for a relatively old National Park and MPA, have their conservation efforts been successful? I ask Johnny if, during his years as a guide, he’s seen a decline in wildlife?

“Yes, both above and below water. The sharks and fish are not nearly as abundant as they were twenty years ago.”

Johnny advocates for a local economy that flourishes along with the increase in tourism. He dreams of a community-led conservation that educates local children to learn to love and protect their home. Whereas the NGOs that are currently profiting from the Galapagos are following an outdated model, one that is congruent with the western worldview that separates humans from nature, alienating the local population from the process of “conservation” while filling their own pockets. Perhaps it’s time that conservation in the Galapagos focused on its human inhabitants and valued them for what they are: an intrinsic part of nature.

“I think it is time to shout to the world what is happening in Galapagos so that the world finds out the truth.”

So if you’re thinking of visiting the Galapagos, make sure you book a local tour.

Isabella Cavalletti is a storyteller and co-founded eco-nnect.

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Three months ago, I boarded a Sea Shepherd ship, the Sea Eagle, in Paola, Calabria, in southern Italy.

Sea Shepherd Global is an NGO that protects wildlife and combats illegal fishing in direct-action campaigns around the world. You might have heard of them as the good pirates of the sea. Today its fleet, also known as Neptune’s Navy, is made up of eight refurbished fishing vessels a one custom-built ship, each one is crewed by volunteers that share a deep love for the ocean and defending its voiceless creatures.

I had traveled by train from Florence and by the time I made it to the ship it was nightfall,  past dinner time. Most of the crew was already asleep but the First Officer, Yuval Elroy, had stayed awake to greet me and offer me some delicious vegan food. As I ate, we got to know one another, and towards the end of our conversation, I asked Yuval what was the plan for the following day?

“Removing longlines from dawn ‘til dusk.”

For the last six years Sea Eagle’s Operation Siso has been focused on removing abandoned or illegal longlines, octopus traps and FADs (fish aggregating devices) from the Mediterranean. Since its inception the campaign has decreased illegal fishing in Calabria by 70 percent. When I boarded the crew was searching for longlines, a very harmful method of fishing, where floating nylon lines connect a buoy to the seabed with several hooks and baits attached to it. Once attached fishers go and check, every once in a while, to see whether a swordfish has taken the bait. About 300,000km of abandoned longlines are currently floating in the Mediterranean, which is the same distance between the Earth and the Moon. As a result, the population of swordfish in the Med has decreased by 90 percent. Every day, the deck crew on board the Sea Eagle work tirelessly to remove thousands of abandoned longlines that, despite not being in use, still catch hundreds of marine wildlife as bycatch.

The following morning, the core team met at 7:30am on the bridge where the Captain suggested the plan for the day as well as locations of possible abandoned longlines, then everyone flocked to the dining room to share a nutritious vegan breakfast. Apart from the core team, everyone else onboard are volunteers — from the oiler to the deckhands, the cook and the photographers — exchanging their time and work for food, shelter and an experience out at sea. After breakfast, everyone dissipated to their respective work areas and the day began. It felt as though every crew member has an important role to play to keep the ship afloat and its community safe and healthy, just like a buzzing hive, where each working bee is aware of where they have to be and what they have to do to ensure smooth sailing.

We set sail in search of longlines. Once we anchored, I joined the deckhands pulling longlines out of the water on the bow. Finally, I had a longline in my hands, actually touching what had been an abstract fishing method until now. Only twenty minutes into pulling, we found a dead swordfish.

There’s a conceptual dilemma in ocean conservation that is referred to as the “out of sight, out of mind” problem. Arguably, only a tiny fraction of the world’s population has a direct relationship with the ocean and an even smaller number has actually spent time out at sea. This is exactly why the fishing industry — which now numbers over four million vessels — can get away with destructive methods of fishing: nobody sees what they’re up to, except for the volunteers of Neptune’s Navy.

After spending the morning working on the deck, I approached Yuval and asked her about her experience in several Sea Shepherd ships. Over the past six years, she has worked with Sea Shepherd in almost every ocean: the Sea of Cortez in Mexico, the Southern Ocean of Antarctica, the Atlantic near West Africa, the Pacific near Latin America, and the tranquil blue Seas of the Mediterranean and the Caribbean. I asked her what have been the most intense operations she has worked on?

“When I was working on the campaign in Peru, all the time I kept thinking this is so far away from the public eye, I can’t believe that I’m witnessing this brutality. I couldn’t believe the amount of fishing vessels, probably more than many other countries combined. In Peru fishers are mostly looking for tuna. I remember being on watch and at some point our radar was packed with vessels coming in and out to sea, at least a few times a day. Each time they were probably taking between 200 to 300 tonnes of fish. That coast has a huge population of seals, and of course they were attracted to the tuna the fishers were catching, and they just kept coming in until there were thousands of them, and they were constantly getting caught in those nets. I remember looking with the binoculars and watching them trying to escape from the fishing nets, their heads popping out of the water under the black nets, trying to find a way out that they will never find, because that’s it, it’s over. And all of this is just because the fishing industry gets away with killing thousands of other animals as bycatch. Few people realise how much damage they’re truly causing.”

Bycatch is a term used to describe animals that are not intended to be caught by that fishing operation. An estimated 300,000 cetaceans and 500,000 turtles are killed each year in unintentional entanglements, but the real number is probably higher.

Where else did you see a lot of bycatch? I asked.

“While in Mexico during Operation Milagro, patrolling the Sea of Cortez, when we were out spotting gillnets.”

Gillnets are another destructive method of fishing, they look like floating curtains that are anchored to the seabed and attached to buoys on the surface. They entangle anything that tries to swim through it, from small juvenile fish to whales.

“Those nets were full of marine life, as the Sea of Cortez is known to be as the aquarium of the world. It is just so rich, it’s teeming with life. Every night that we were pulling in nets we found tens of caught marine animals. Sometimes we would pull those nets and we could tell that those carcasses had been there for a long time. Probably the fishers took what they needed, which was the bladder of the totoaba, and just left. It’s frustrating because they don’t clean up after, it shouldn’t be the end for more animals, but the nets become ghost nets and keep killing. Every day we pulled between 10-14 nets. When we’d find a dead animal we’d put the carcass in a tarp in the bow of the ship. I remember one day that tarp had about 20 stingrays.”

In Chinese medicine, the swim bladder of the totoaba fish is thought to cure ailments. Due to overfishing the totoaba can’t be found anymore in Chinese waters, increasing the price of one bladder to nearly $20,000 – $80,000 per kg. In Mexico, the intense fishing of the totoaba with gillnets has caused the quick decline of the world’s smallest cetacean, the vaquita.

Technically, since 2017, the use of gillnets has been banned in Baja California in an effort to save the elusive vaquita porpoise. However, laws out at sea are hard to enforce, which is why Sea Shepherd works with local authorities to support the enforcement of fishing regulations and apprehend illegal fishers. Sea Shepherd’s presence in Mexico has encouraged more regulation in the sector, as they have provided strong evidence against destructive forms of fishing. Last October, Sea Shepherd managed to secure an agreement with the Mexican government to help expand the protection area for the vaquita porpoise and therefore expand the area where they can patrol and operate. I asked Yuval, where else has Sea Shepherd successfully worked with local law enforcement?

“In West Africa we collaborated quite closely with the local governments: we provide the ship, the crew, the fuel, and the country will provide the local authorities to make all the required inspections and investigations that are needed to tackle and eventually apprehend illegal fishing operations in the water. With each operation we are showing the area that illegal fishing is not tolerated, giving the fish and the animals and the ocean the opportunity to thrive again.”

So what happens when you find an illegal fishing vessel?

“When we find a ship suspected of illegal activity, we board with the local authorities to begin the inspection. Usually our field medic will also join as workers’ conditions on these ships are horrible, they lack basic safety gear and hygiene. So the first thing our medic does is to treat wounds, infections and cuts — many fishers are not even allowed to leave the ships, there’s a lot of forced labour out at sea, essentially modern day slavery. Then our media team joins us to capture footage as evidence of what is happening onboard. What is really shocking to witness is how much bycatch is caught in these fishing vessels that just goes to waste. For example, we’ve found shrimp boats that throw away 90 percent of their catch, hundreds of fish and marine life are just thrown overboard, it makes no sense.”

Shrimp trawlers are notorious for having the worst bycatch ratio, the standard amount is shocking: for every pound of shrimp caught, six pounds of bycatch is thrown overboard, including sharks, turtles and rays. In September 2021, during Sea Shepherd’s Operation Albacore, a trawler was arrested in Gabon that had an even worse ratio of 0.2% shrimp to 99.8% bycatch. Gabon’s Minister of Fisheries Maganga-Moussavou was present during the arrest and was completely dumbfounded by the waste:

“It was important for me to see firsthand the impact of the shrimp fishery off Gabon’s coast. These wasteful practices cannot be tolerated in Gabon. I have commissioned an official inquiry into the shrimp fishery and pending the outcome of the investigation, I am prepared to suspend the fishing season until a solution can be found to the bycatch problem.”

Yet 65 percent of the world’s seas don’t fall under any jurisdiction, the high seas or Antarctica are no man’s land, places where Sea Shepherd can’t apprehend vessels with local authorities. In those areas their strategy is different. Last winter, Neptune’s Navy’s newest addition, the Allankay, headed to the Southern Ocean for Operation Antarctica Defense to document the fishing industry’s furthest endeavour, supertrawlers catching krill. Yuval was onboard.

“There are several supertrawlers that are out there looking for krill, and one of the biggest challenges in Antarctica is that this is perfectly legal, because they are licensed by the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR). So the best thing we can do is to go down there and just do a lot of documentation and show the world what happens when they choose to consume krill.”

In the last five years, krill fishing has increased five times. Krill are vital for the survival of the Antarctic ecosystem. As a keystone species they are the main source of food for whales and penguins. In early 2023, the Bob Brown Foundation joined the Sea Shepherd’s Antarctica campaign to dive deeper into this topic. Their research shows that one supertrawler catches around 50 tonnes of krill per day, that’s enough to feed 30 whales.

“Mainly, krill is used for the colouring of salmon in fish farms or it’s used for omega 3 supplements. I think few people are realising how much this industry is decimating Antarctica’s marine life. This is a marine area that is so rich with life, whales, seals, truly the last wilderness on Earth. Yet these supertrawlers are huge, huge floating factories, and they are literally taking food away from those animals’ mouths.”

Technically, the CCAMLR is also supposed to protect Antarctica’s wildlife and nature. Last year, the krill industry was directly lobbying CCAMLR in an effort to increase their yearly catch allowance. Thanks to the Bob Brown Foundation’s report and Sea Shepherd documentation of Antarctica’s destruction, the CCAMLR rejected the krill industry’s request, a win for the whales and the world.

It was another success for the replicable system that Sea Shepherd has created, which can actually protect the ocean from its worst enemy: industrial fishing. Sea Shepherd’s campaigns support local law enforcement, encourage more regulation, deter illegal fishing activities all while showing the world what is happening out of sight and out of mind on the High Seas. One could say that they’re the much needed eyes watching our oceans. This has made Yuval, along with the rest of Neptune’s Navy, a key witness of the fishing industry’s shady and murky business: from slavery, to absurd amounts of bycatch and destructive and senseless methods of fishing in giant floating factories. The sad reality of how the fishing industry operates is miles away from their idealistic marketing image of a fisherman with his rod.

Thanks to this passionate and global community of volunteers, the oceans and its creatures finally have some protection. After four days, I disembarked the Sea Eagle with a heart full of hope and admiration for this floating crew of dedicated activists.

Isabella Cavalletti is a storyteller and co-founded eco-nnect.

You might also like: Making a Marine Biosphere

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Earlier this year on a warm May morning, I volunteered with a friend, Cesare, at the Ortobioattivo farm, in Bellosguardo, a town a stone’s throw away from Florence. Every Monday morning, Cesare volunteers with the NGO Fili d’Erba, which takes care of children with disabilities. At Ortobioattivo Andrea Battiata, the founder, teaches the children of Fili d’Erba how to grow their own vegetables, which they then sell on Thursdays at a farmer’s market in central Florence.

That morning, after tending to the garden with the kids, Andrea showed me around his farm and offered me a sweet strawberry that was circling around the hedge that held his biodiverse vegetable garden.

“I am Sicilian by origin, I lived my first twenty years in Trapani, in Western Sicily. And perhaps my propensity for good food derives from these origins, because in my family we ate very well. When you got up in the morning everyone’s first thought was what are we eating today? And then our day revolved around the meals.”

Andrea has a gentle yet jovial demeanor, as an observer it seems that he runs his farm with ease and positivity.

“Here we do everything by hand and everything with good will. We put the wellbeing of the people who work here in the foreground. We’re a small team of four people, and run a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program that delivers a box of seasonal and bioactive produce to 120 families every week.”

A few months later, this September, I moved to Florence, and remembered the sweetness of Andrea’s strawberries. Andrea is known to accept a new subscription to his program only after he has personally met you. So I called him up to see if he remembered me, he did, so I signed up to his weekly box of goodies. After a week of tasting his scrumptious salads, tasty aubergines and the last of the summer’s juicy tomatoes, I was hooked. I wanted to learn about Andrea’s method, so I returned to the farm to understand the magic of Ortobioattivo.

“About 12 years ago I got sick and a doctor advised me to decrease my meat intake. I began to feel much better and became vegetarian. One day I complained to my wife and said ‘how can we eat this supermarket salad, it tastes like plastic to me.’ My wife replied, ‘you’re an agronomist, you run a company that already works with plants, you should be able to figure out how to grow your own salad.’”

Andrea studied agronomy at University, then he had to run his family’s meat and dairy farm in Southern Tuscany for many years, traveling the world to sell the meat and milk they produced to large companies. This experience developed his understanding of the broken industrial food system from within. With this understanding, he broke away from the family business and settled in Florence. Once there he opened a company with a subscription service of house plants for hotels and offices.

“My wife’s comment caused a spark in me, she was right, I had spent many years on a dairy farm yet I had never grown my own vegetables. So with my wife’s challenge in mind, I remembered a trip I had done a couple of years before to the Amazon Rainforest. After seeing the natural fertility of the Amazon and its exuberant and abundant vegetation, I began to wonder how to replicate that fertility for my vegetable garden’s soil. So I asked myself, is fertility what we create with our tractors, with fertilizers, or is it with the biodiverse black soil of the jungle? So I closed my eyes and dreamed about how to replicate that fertility. The morning after, when I woke up, I realised that it could be done.

“So I started my own vegetable garden in my lawn. I added compost and volcanic sand, to replicate the Amazon I had to activate the soil, so I also added several key bacteria and fungi. I had started from scratch, and after a mere month I had an incredible vegetable garden. I said to myself, wow this is incredible, I need to tell everyone. So I started to host meetings to spread the word within my local community, to teach them how they too could start their own abundant vegetable garden with this method, because it’s simple and the results are amazing, and they’re within everyone’s reach. In one of the meetings two ladies got up and said ‘look Andrea, you have a company, you know how to do it, we can’t do it, we have families and work, why don’t you do the work for us.’ And so that is how the CSA program was born in 2012. We started with 25 families and from there it was all a crescendo.”

Andrea not only grows organic produce, he grows bioactive produce. He describes this as food that has certain nutritional compounds that are scientifically proven to be better for you. In fact he has been working with the University of Florence’s medicine department and with doctors at the main hospital hosting clinical trials that prove this.

“I had a father who was a pharmacist, back then they were apothecaries. I guess in my lifetime I witnessed the transition from formulated and personalised medicine to the evolution of modern pharmacology. I remember watching my Dad create what looked like potions out of powders, liquids, plants. He worked in alchemy. So I think he instilled some of this alchemical passion in me.

“Today, I see people getting sicker and sicker, the system profits on these diseases, it has reduced food to an almost annoying, daily commodity, without thinking that we are what we eat. This is a rather banal phrase, but it actually encompasses the human being very well, because we are made of light. Plants transform this light into organic substances that we eat, so we eat light. But if this light is turned off then we eat rubbish and therefore we are turned off, and we get sick. For some reason, few doctors are focused on food, which is the true source of one’s wealth, one’s health and one’s positive thoughts.”

In most western medical degrees, nutrition is not part of the curriculum, so the fact that Andrea is encouraging the medical community to look into the benefits of food is a much needed step in incorporating nutrition into the west’s understanding of medicine.

“I was always intent on the idea of food as medicine. Our objective with the garden is to grow hyper-functional and nutritional food. This is what then led us to engage with university studies that give scientific backing that our produce has bioactive compounds that are much better for us. If you think about it, plants absorb all of the nutrients of their environment, they can’t move, so our method ensures that they have as many minerals, vitamins, bacteria–essentially bioactive substances–around them as possible. Sometimes I wonder, with the CSA program, is the community supporting the farmer or is the farmer supporting the community?”

I found this a very compelling comment. The term CSA implies that agriculture needs support from its community. However, if bioactive food is a form of preventative medicine, then Andrea’s clients need this type of agriculture as much as he needs them. This reminded me of a Quechuan philosophy known as Ayni, where achieving health is finding balance and energetic reciprocity. A beautiful concept when applied in a community context.

Through this work of deepening his and the medical community’s understanding of the nutritional value of food, Andrea began analysing the biochemical properties of unusual, albeit edible plants. This is how he rediscovered the amazing value of certain leaves that are not being consumed anymore. This is his latest initiative called “Mangia la Foglia”, which translates to “Eat the Leaf.”

“Mangia la Foglia came about as I was learning about leaves that are not your typical lettuce or chard, but other less common leaves that have several incredible benefits. We already have some products that are doing well: olive-tree leaves, dried pomace leaves and the laurel. Did you know that the healthiest part of the olive tree is not in the oil but in the leaves? For example hydroxytyrosol and olioromycin, are two powerful antioxidant substances for humans that are abundant in olive leaves.”

Alongside deepening Ortobioattivo’s relationship with the medical community, Andrea has also established partnerships with local high schools, designing educational and interactive vegetable gardens for students.

“We design projects for schools. For example, for Dante High School in Florence we designed it with their computer science department. We did this to be able to speak to the students in their language, technology. So we not only grew a vegetable garden but also programmed an app and a digital greenhouse that could go with it. On the app the students can monitor the changes that are happening in the greenhouse in realtime. From the CO2 levels, to the temperature changes, and the oxygen and glucose levels. The greenhouse is powered by solar panels, so the app also tracks the electrical energy transfer, as well as the chemical energy that a plant gives off. This enables the students to compare the energy that a solar panel consumes to the one that the plant produces, electrical energy versus organic energy. This helps them relate to everything that is happening in the greenhouse.”

Other than the clear educational aspect of the school partnership, Andrea hopes that the gardens will widen the students’ worldviews too.

“My mission with this project is to encourage students to observe deeply, and thus develop critical thinking to go beyond what they’re taught. I think education goes further than learning from books: it is the ability to see something that might not be obvious to everyone else. You know, when you’re in the traditional school system you believe everything they teach you, because that’s the system. Only when you go out on your own do you begin to question and to build your own path. It is people that have the ability to observe keenly that are able to do this, and for me this is how I built the Ortobioattivo. This is a company that sees beyond the status quo. It really observes and sees clearly the people who work for it, the land it sows and the people who eat its products.”

I asked Andrea what has been the most satisfying aspect of Ortobioattivo since it began in 2012?

“Providing food for the same families for ten consecutive years and meeting lots of fascinating people along the way. We have never invested in any form of marketing, every new client has arrived through word of mouth. We are not interested in exponential growth. I have a personal relationship with every customer, and the business is very financially successful, we don’t rely on any government or external financing. So I think overall, I’m very happy that we can be an example to others, a concrete one that shows that there is another way of building a solid and independent agricultural business that provides health and nourishment to its community. In the end it’s simply a question of change in perspective. Not going to the supermarket and buying something ready, but rather having a more conscious diet that is seasonal, local and healthy.”

The Ortobioattivo is not a traditional organic, community-supported farm, it is a hub that attracts people from every walk of life that want to learn about the healing power of plants. Andrea’s innately curious personality and constantly positive attitude are its guiding force, a humble leader on a mission to improve lives through the wisdom of food.

You might also like: Forest Gardeners 

Isabella Cavalletti is a storyteller and co-founded eco-nnect.

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Alberto Ruz Buenfil is the kind of spirited soul that shakes society.

His father was a notable archaeologist that unearthed the tomb of Pakal in the ancient Mayan city of Palenque, in the Yucatan region of Mexico, where he grew up. In 1968, at the tender age of 22, Alberto left Mexico and embarked on a long journey. Influenced by the global counterculture movement, he travelled with a group of friends across North America, Europe, North Africa, the Middle East and India. In each town they’d stay in an eco-village or community and learn from their alternative ways of living. With old beaten cars, they would drive in “caravan”, and upon arrival they would put on a theatrical show as an offering for the welcome of that community.

“We ended up travelling as a group for eight years. In those years, our nomadic tribe went everywhere: from communities in Sweden to ashrams in India and eco-villages in Greece. As the years went by members of the tribe began having children and so we decided it was time to stop. The kids were asking for more permanent friends and the women wanted a place to build a nest, so we went back home to Mexico.”

This tribe, now composed of 20 adults and 12 children, searched the country for the ideal settlement to start their own community. They travelled the country until Alberto stumbled upon Tepoztlan, a charming town just one hour south of Mexico City.

“This place called us, he searched for us, he found us. I was the one who arrived first and what most attracted me was a tree, a fantastic tree. After seeing that tree, I saw the possibility. Even though it didn’t have wells or springs, and it was a very dry spot, we had learned in our travels how to deal with arid landscapes from our time in a Kibbutz in Israel. If they could grow anything in the desert, then we could live here too. So we settled here in 1982 and named it Huehuecoyotl.”

Huehuecoyotl is the god of the arts, music and ceremonial dance in the Mexica tradition.

“Each community tends to have a common interest that brings them together, from our years traveling the World we knew that ours was our passion for the arts.”

Huehuecoyotl also means “old coyote” in Nahuatl, which is also how eventually Alberto received his nickname, El Coyote.

“The first thing was to open up a path, then we built a water catchment to be able to sustain ourselves. When our children grew up we built a school. Of course we were the teachers. Then parents from the town began sending their kids to our school, because we offered an alternative system. This also allowed our children to meet kids from outside of the community.

“As a community we developed what we call ‘eco-techniques’ and began hosting workshops and teaching them here. As my father was an archaeologist, I knew the importance of preserving history, so throughout the years of travel I had kept testimonies of everything that we had lived, which became the content of our conferences, shows and books. We even had a monthly magazine.”

The magazine focused on stories of community, land rights, and eco-techniques to live in harmony with nature, avant-garde content for Mexico in the 1980s.

By 1996, at the age of 50, El Coyote felt the call of the road again and embarked on another epic journey, this time he headed south.

“I was always inspired by movement. Movement opens the head, opens the heart, opens your vision of the world, opens everything it has to offer. And I have always been like that. All my life I’ve tried to learn more and more and more from everywhere I go and from the people that I meet. So in 1996, I left with a bus from here and headed to Tierra del Fuego, to the end of America. I started a new caravan. We left here in June of 1996 and had enough money for gasoline to get to Puebla.”

Puebla is a city two hours drive south from Huehuecoyotl. The bus had already journeyed from Colorado, a classic American school-bus, a gift from a close friend. After converting it into a mobile home, El Coyote set-off, accompanied by a new group of young adventurers.

“About ten other people got on the bus, and at the last moment a lady with a van joined too. That’s how “the Caravana Arcoiris por la Paz” (the Rainbow Caravan of Peace) was formed. So once we arrived in Puebla, we thought how are we going to get to Veracruz? Well, we are going to host workshops and give presentations on eco-techniques, because that’s what we know how to do. In my opinion when you arrive somewhere you have to offer something. Not see what you can get, but what you can give. So that’s what we did. I have friends in Puebla who received us and helped us organise the workshops. Then from there we went to Veracruz and did the same. In Veracruz, the Zapatistas heard about us and invited us to go to Chiapas. So we headed down to Chiapas.”

The Zapatista Army of National Liberation is a far-left political militant group that has been at war with the Mexican state since 1994. The group takes its name from Emiliano Zapata, the commander of the Liberation Army of the South during the Mexican Revolution. They aim to continue Zapata’s work of land reforms and Indigenous Rights, to this day they control large areas of the region of Chiapas.

“At that time, the Zapatista movement was hosting a meeting of thousands of people, about 6000 left radicals from all over the world. The Zapatistas built a tent city for them, with bathrooms and dining rooms and all. So we got there with our bus and the other little truck, and brought some gifts, among them my books and our music, and we gave it to Subcomandante Marcos, we then interviewed him too. Then we settled in the Zapatista community and did the same thing: first bring out the theatre and then give workshops about eco-techniques. We stayed there for about a month. The event had ended and everyone left, but we stayed there, living, coexisting with the Zapatista community and learning a lot from them too.”

Initially, El Coyote thought the journey south would take him two to three years, instead it lasted thirteen. From war zones to crowded favelas and remote Indigenous villages, everywhere they went the Rainbow Caravan for Peace would first put on a theatre show and then host workshops teaching eco-techniques to the locals, just how they had done for the Zapatistas. Their workshops taught locals different things: from how to build solar panels and rain catchment technologies, to composting and alternative eco-schools. In many towns and cities they would also convene gatherings of local environmental and Indigenous groups, so they could share their knowledge too.

“We also organised and convened two huge international gatherings, one in Peru, at the foot of Machu Picchu and the other in Brazil, in Alto Paraíso. We hosted other smaller gatherings in communities across Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, in each place we travelled to. The gatherings attracted environmental groups, Indigenous groups, artists and everything in between. They would usually last a week and they were the impetus for what then became the Council of Visions of Guardians of the Earth and CASA: the Council of Sustainable Settlements of Latin America.

“In some countries we stayed for months, in other countries we stayed for over a year. That is why it took us so long. Although we were travelling at an interesting historical moment, where neoliberal governments were being replaced by social, leftist governments. So borders that before would’ve been closed to us, all welcomed us instead. Doors were opening everywhere for us to continue working with communities, hosting workshops, conferences, gatherings, shows. So yes, we left a mark, a very beautiful mark everywhere we went. And on those trips, we began to form relationships with the locals, people left the caravan, new ones joined, couples were formed and new projects were mushrooming everywhere we had been.”

In 2005, the Rainbow Caravan of Peace made it to Tierra del Fuego, Argentina, nine years after leaving Tepoztlan.

“Once we arrived in Tierra del Fuego, we had the invitation to hold another great gathering in Brazil, ‘The Second Great Call of the Beijaflor (Hummingbird)’ in Alto Paraíso. Well technically the trip was done, we had reached Tierra del Fuego, which had been my commitment to the Great Spirit, to reach Tierra del Fuego and raise the rainbow flag, the flag of the land and the flag of peace among the glaciers. I had lowered the Argentinian flag and put up ours instead, but nevertheless we headed back north to help setup this large gathering.”

At the Second Hummingbird Gathering in Alto Paraíso, El Coyote met Gilberto Gil, then the Minister of Culture of Brazil. Gil knew about El Coyote, he had read his latest book on his caravan travels and was inspired by all of the work he had accomplished across the continent. Gil is one of Brazil’s most notable figures, a famous musician from Bahia and a vocal opponent of Brazil’s previous military government.

“So Gil told me ‘I want you to join us here in Brazil, to become part of the project we are doing now. The money that is allocated to culture, for the whole country, always goes to the same things: opera, art, dance, carnival. But now we are going to allocate it to living culture points. And I need a caravan that goes to different towns across the country and brings the communities together and celebrates their local traditions and knowledge. And you already have the caravan and the know-how. You already did it in 16 other countries, you have the experience. Please, do it here.’”

The Rainbow Caravan for Peace spent four more years travelling around Brazil. This would be the first funding the caravan and its tribe received.

“The only time when we had institutional money was when we were working with the Ministry of Culture of Brazil, with Gilberto Gil. There he gave us money to repair the vehicles, to buy a truck, to have better equipment, and for the first time each of the members of the caravan received what was equivalent to 100 reais a month. The rest of the time, there were no wages, there were no privileges. I was never privileged, I worked in mechanics, in the dry latrines, in everything that had to be done. The caravan years took me from 50 to 64 years. Then I remembered the Beatles song ‘When I’m Sixty-Four’, and I decided that it was time to head home.”

In 2009, the World Social Forum Gathering was taking place in Belem de Para, where the Amazon River meets the Atlantic Ocean. The event attracted 150,000 people and discussions ranged from the protection of the Amazon Rainforest to alternative economic models. El Coyote decided it would be the ideal setting to end the Rainbow Caravan of Peace’s epic voyage.

“When we got to the forum we built a circus tent for 500 people. Sound, lights, costumes, cooking, everything. By then we knew how to set this stuff up, we called it ‘The Village of Peace’ and hosted talks and shows. After it ended, I told the tribe ‘this is where my journey ends, I’ll stop here. Whoever wants to continue, can continue.’ And I gave away one of the buses, and the other one I sent to Mexico thanks to donations. The one that is parked here.”

In the 13 years of travel, 450 people joined and left the Rainbow Caravan of Peace from a total of 17 different countries. El Coyote was the only one that travelled the entire time.

“I have done all this as a service to Mother Earth, as a volunteer for humanity. On that trip it became very clear to me, especially after having lived for a long time in the towns around the Andes with the Aymara peoples, that Pachamama comes before anything else. We ecologists knew it, we knew that the Earth was not ours, but that we belong to the Earth, but it is one thing to know it and another to live it.

“The Aymara, they live it. Their concept of Sumak Kawsay (good living) is still alive, which means caring for Mother Earth. So having learned that lesson, at a certain point I realised we cannot exclude the legal part of the rights of Mother Earth, it can’t just be a ceremony, it has to become law. And then I read that Evo Morales, who was the President of Bolivia at the time, had brought the first Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth to the United Nations, and I said to myself ‘wow, well that’s what I want to do from here on out.’ So in 2009, I closed the chapter of the caravan in Belén de Para.”

Back in Mexico, El Coyote returned to Huehuecoyotl. He was then hired by the local municipality of Coyoacán to implement his workshops at the neighbourhood level, he called these “eco-barrios” (eco-neighbourhoods) and he spent three more years holding the same eco-technique workshops around the southern part of Mexico City, with the same bus that had criss-crossed the Americas.

“We created a small group of ten people and travelled to ten neighbourhoods of Coyoacán. We mainly held a training program of 40 to 50 eco-techniques, from how to build an ecological house to how to teach at an ecological school. The idea was to give the local leaders of the communities the tools so that then they could develop their own projects.”

Many of the neighbourhoods they entered were dangerous, controlled by gangs and narcos. Yet, El Coyote and his team would arrive and the first thing they would do was put on their signature theatre show, this would make them stars with the neighbourhood children and therefore grant them protection from the local gang leader. El Coyote reminisces that despite the areas of high risk that he worked in, nobody from his team was ever hurt. At the end of the training courses they would bring the students back to Huehuecoyotl for a weekend.

“We brought them here to camp and for three days we showed them how to build what they had learned in the workshops. For example how to make a solar panel, or how to make a rain catchment system, build compost toilets, etcetera. Many of the attendees had never lived a week without witnessing a shootout. We would host singing circles around a fire and cook-outs outside. Everyone always left inspired.”

After his neighbourhood work, El Coyote was engaged by the Governor of Morelos to become the State’s Director of Environmental Culture.

“So I started doing things like I’ve always done. I still had the truck, we still had the samples, we still had a number of things, and I started trying to do them in the state. And it didn’t work. I began to see that there was a blockade on the part of the Secretary of Sustainable Development, who did not want me to do anything but sit there from eight to five every day. So I knew I wouldn’t stay long, but during that time I did manage to install an ecological house in Cuernavaca’s main park. A beautiful ecological house with ten eco-technologies: ten solar panels, bicycle pumps, a rain catchment system, an orchard, everything. Next to it we set up a large cultural centre and began hosting events that celebrated Earth Day, Water Day, the day against open-pit mining. Such were the things that we celebrated, instead of ‘Saint Day’ or ‘Independence Day’ or ‘Revolution Day’. Everything we celebrated was related to ecology. That didn’t go well with the Governor.”

After his stint in Mexican institutions, in 2015 El Coyote returned to his home of Huehuecoyotl and shifted his attention to the realisation he had had at the end of his voyage, to focus on spreading the Andean vision of giving legal rights to nature.

“In the summers I would go to Italy and friends would organise a tour for me all over the country in several different towns. I would usually stay two to three days in each place. One summer I visited 25 towns. In each I gave talks, hosted gatherings, opened temazcales and at the end of each visit I delivered ‘The Universal Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth’ to the Mayor, as well as a flag of peace to put in their municipality. I did the same in Switzerland and Spain too.”

Since the pandemic El Coyote has been promoting the legal rights of Mother Nature online instead, while also publishing memoirs of his adventurous life.

“I decided from a very young age not to live a normal life and not to live only one life. So all those who speak of their past lives and how their souls had reincarnated from Napoleon or Cleopatra etcetera. Well I decided not to investigate my past lives, but instead live many lives in one.”

Alberto Ruz Buenfil lives his life in service to Mother Nature. Many projects and organisations emerged thanks to the Rainbow Caravan of Peace’s work across the Americas. The eco-techniques developed in Huehuecoyotl are now being taught at universities in Mexico; his legendary gatherings still bring hundreds of environmentalists together every year; and Coyoacán is the neighbourhood in Mexico City with the most urban food farms, thanks to his eco-barrios initiative. El Coyote’s achievements are a testament of how environmental change emerges through strengthening communities with creativity and consciousness.

“I always quote the same phrase from Martin Luther King: ‘even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree.’”

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Isabella Cavalletti is a storyteller and co-founded eco-nnect.

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The sea, for me, is the place I go to for deep contemplation and connection. It’s where I feel suspended in time, as one with the elements, in touch with the deeper layers of my soul. Saltwater washes away my doubts, it heals my wounds, it quells my fears. Nothing compares to the sense of peace that pervades my senses when I’m submerged and surrounded by the graceful creatures of the mysterious blue.

I grew up with the Mediterranean Sea. It envelops every shore of Italy, and my childhood is etched with memories of the sun disappearing into its depths. Our family would look for a type of vongole in shallow waters, and collect the plastic lollipop sticks on the beach. I remember when I was ten, a dermatologist prescribed me the sea for my dry skin, and my parents made sure every once in a while my feet touched the Med to heal.

In my 20s my passion for the deep deepened, and I was very privileged to witness the beauty of several other seas. From the volcanic islands of the Pacific, to the mystic force of the Atlantic, and the abundant coral reefs in the Indian Ocean and the Red Sea. As I traveled abroad in search of the euphoria I felt from a pod of dolphins swimming around me, I realised a disturbing truth: the Mediterranean is dying. The monk seals left, the whales rarely visit, the turtles avoid it, the coral has become jewellery, the schools of fish a by-gone memory, and its sharks are killed every day. Meanwhile, everyone in Europe happily refers to it as a swimming pool (including my past self).

A deep sadness overwhelms me now when I swim the empty blues of the Mediterranean Sea, longing for a creature to swim with me. Perhaps it’s time Mediterraneans took responsibility for their dying Sea. Perhaps it’s time it was officially recognised as a swimming pool, a place of recreation devoid of the ecosystems that support life. Maybe then its human inhabitants will start regenerating what was once the enchanted sea of sirens.

Isabella Cavalletti is a storyteller and co-founded eco-nnect.

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“Marine regulations in Mexico either have their origin in the fishing law or in environmental rules. Historically, the fishing industry has always influenced regulation to the point that fishing laws were pretty much written by the industrial tuna companies, that of course protected their interests above all. And in the case of the environmental laws, well, those laws were drafted in my house.”

I met Mario Gomez on a warm February morning in the restaurant of the La Catedral hotel in La Paz, Mexico. He was in between important visits — meeting a seventh generation shark fishing community in Agua Amarga and then speaking at the Our Ocean Conference in Panama — so I felt fortunate to cross paths with him and his team and join their weekly breakfast briefing.

Mario runs a myriad of organisations, all working together to achieve the same final goal: increase the amount of functioning Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) in Mexico. It all started with his work in public policy in the 80s. 

“In the 80s I was part of an ardent group of activists, we were all friends. Mostly we worked to protect Mexico’s forests and jungles. During that time we thought it was necessary for the Mexican government to establish a Ministry for the Environment and Natural Resources, including fishing. This is why Beta Diversidad was formed, a policy lobbying NGO. Eventually through this governmental work, we were part of the long process that established the National Commission of Natural Protected Areas of Mexico (CONANP). This is the governmental body that now has the ability to operate and administrate Mexico’s protected areas. Within these there are seven different categories: Voluntary Conservation Area; Sanctuary; Natural Monument; Protected Area of Natural Resources; Protected Areas of Flora and Fauna; Biosphere Reserve; and National Park. Then within our activist group we each chose an area to focus our public policy work on, I chose the oceans.” 

As we sit down for breakfast, Mario has an easy yet commanding demeanor. In classic Mexican hospitality he offers me anything from the menu. The team begins to order every style of egg available. We are 12 people, and every so often someone walks by and stops to catch up with Mario. Clearly he is a very admired and known figure within the community. I already knew that he had been instrumental in establishing the Revillagigedo National Park (Revi), North America’s largest no-take MPA. It has been a dream of mine to explore Revillagigedo’s underwater beauties for years. Revi is on every experienced diver’s bucket list and sits on top of mine. So I asked him, how did he achieve that?    

“Six years ago we established the National Park of Revillagigedo. Within the seven categories of protected areas, National Parks are the most restrictive, no fishing or industrial activity is allowed. Revillagigedo today is one of the largest protected marine areas in the world, measuring 147,933 kilometres. We managed to secure this because we demonstrated to the Government that it wouldn’t affect local fishing communities. The archipelago of Revillagigedo is 400 kilometres south of Cabo San Lucas, artisanal fishers don’t go there, nor do sport fishermen, only the large industrial tuna and shrimp vessels can. We also conducted a study to prove to the industry that only 4.8 percent of their total catch came from that area. Of course now the industrial vessels fish along the margin of the MPA and their catch has overall increased.”

MPAs are a controversial topic within ocean conservation. This is because they are used as political instruments rather than for true conservation. For example in Europe bottom trawling, one of the most destructive forms of fishing in the world, is still allowed within so-called MPAs. This is what makes Revi stand out, absolutely no fishing is allowed.

The Revillagigedo archipelago is in the Pacific Ocean, off the coast of Baja California Sur and it’s Mexico’s most remote territory. Composed of four volcanic islands and right on the Pacific corridor, it’s teeming with life: from great whites, schools of hammerheads, hundreds of dolphins, whale-sharks, oceanic manta rays and many species of migratory whales. 

“Worldwide Revillagigedo is heralded as a conservation success. The MPA measures five percent of the Exclusive Economic Zone of Mexico. So when it was approved as a super rigid, highly and fully protected area it was a direct assault to the tuna and sardine industry that had been controlling the chamber of fishing for the previous four decades. They were not used to a total fish ban, rather the industry was used to deciding where the subsidies went, setting the quotas, creating their own sustainable labels etcetera… but with Revillagigedo a strong precedent was set.”

In Mexico, many fishing laws only benefit the industry’s interests. For example, a handful of companies retain full exclusivity of certain highly commercial species: sardines, shrimp and tuna. Despite their high revenues, the industry also takes home over 80 percent of the national fishing subsidies. Conversely, Mexican artisanal fishers’ livelihoods are being threatened by the stark decline of fish stocks due to the industry’s destructive methods. The whole system was written and designed to benefit a few big corporations and ultimately the Baja California Sur’s local fishers are the ones suffering the consequences.

I asked Mario if there is a way to help artisanal fishers access more subsidies?

“Yes, we run an NGO called Depesca (Desarrollo Pesquero Sustentable). Depesca represents the interests of artisanal fishers. Technically they already have shares within the fisherman confederation, but the industrialists, the fish farmers, and the authorities are also in the confederation, so the voice of the coastal fishers is severely diminished. And since they have no resources, they are not well organised. Meanwhile, the industrialists have money for management, lobbying, and to convince legislators, authorities, etcetera… So the idea with ‘Depesca’ is to help the fishermen organise. However, in the last five years, we’ve been focusing on a new strategy, we are trying to implement another MPA, a Biosphere Reserve that would span the coast of Baja California Sur, we call it Dos Mares.”  

A Biosphere Reserve is a category below National Park status. This means that artisanal fishers would be allowed to continue operating, whereas industrial vessels would not.

“To do this, first we have to convince the commissioner of natural protected areas to decree a Biophere Reserve, and last week he told us: “the only thing I need is for the coastal fishermen to raise their voices and publicly ask me to implement it.” So, we launched a communication campaign so that the Commissioner of Natural Protected Areas, the Minister of the Environment, the State Governor, and the President himself, feel that the fishers are asking this of them, but it is a difficult process.

“Essentially, the process is that of socialising the Biosphere Reserve, and socialising the reserve is very complicated. Wendy Higuera is a leader in her community and in her town, and half love the idea and the other half oppose it. So we are learning why certain people have issues with it, and it’s basically due to lack of knowledge and misinformation.”

At the weekly meeting, Wendy and Manuel Higuera are present. They are two local fishers from the town of Lopez Mateos in Magdalena Bay, about 300 kilometres north-west from where we are. Wendy is leading the campaign to push for the reserve and is the President of Depesca. They drove here to visit another fishing community near La Paz, Agua Amarga. Wendy explained how local fishers will benefit.

“We know that by conserving we are going to increase the mass of fish, we are going to improve our fishing and we are going to take advantage of resources that we have not been able to due to the industry’s interests. So I’m talking to other communities explaining to them that we can use our traditional fishing gear in a responsible manner, that we can use our boats for tourism purposes in certain seasons, and that our catch will be higher. I’m speaking to them in their language, from one fisher to another, so that they understand that ultimately the Biosphere Reserve would remove industrial fishing from our shores allowing our fish to reproduce. And that we don’t want to convert them all into tourist operators, we want to preserve their way of life, because our life is fishing.”

Magdalena Bay, where they live, is known worldwide as a breeding area for gray whales and for its yearly sardine runs. I had just visited the famous bay the day before and was awe-struck by the grays’ spy-hopping behaviour and friendly attitudes—spyhopping is when a whale bobs its head out of the water to check you out. To someone accustomed to the empty blues of the Mediterranean, MagBay seemed bountiful. I ask them what, if anything, has changed in their lifetimes? Manuel responded quickly.

“The shrimp industry began fishing in our hometown when I was quite young, when I first began fishing. Back then you could fish directly from the shore and there were many, many species. As shrimping increased, the species decreased. The shrimp boats drag at night and have small mesh nets that take everything with them — clams, turtles, guitar sharks, starfish, octopus, snails, small fish — everything is taken out and thrown dead overboard the next day, this continues on and on and on, night after night. A lot of the bycatch fish are juveniles and haven’t even made it to breeding size, this affects the reproduction of the species immensely. Our fish stocks have halved as a result, and many species have disappeared.” The shrimp industry has the world’s worst bycatch trackrecord, for every 1 pound of shrimp caught six pounds of bycatch are thrown out.

Wendy and Manuel have witnessed the emptying of the oceans. Their testimony reminds me of a very gut-wrenching quote by marine biologist Dr. Sylvia Earle. In a recent interview she was asked where the best diving in the world was? “Everywhere in 1970,” she replied. Essentially, before industrial fishing. Mario also spoke of their work.

“Wendy and Manuel are trying to spread the correct information and organise the various communities under one leadership. Hopefully this solves the confusion about what rules are implemented under a Biosphere Reserve and how they can benefit from it. Ultimately, the most important thing to consolidate a marine protected area is the process of acceptance and governance of the community that lives in it, this is what ensures that the protected area will be effective tomorrow. The management of the natural area is that the community understands it, manages it, knows it, and participates in its design. 

“For example, a big problem is the issue of surveillance. It is impossible for governments to put a policeman in each tree to prevent illegal fishing, it is impossible for each fishing gear to have an inspector. What has to be done is to strengthen the community in such a way that they participate in the surveillance processes and the authority simply reacts to illegalities. But persecuting constantly is impossible. In other words, the sea is so extensive that it is economically unfeasible, these community vigilance committees must be formed once they are organised, once the leadership is built.”

I asked Mario what else do you need to do for the Biosphere Reserve Dos Mares to be implemented?

“There is a process to give birth to a reserve. You first have to carry out and submit a justifying study that is required by law. That is done by CONANP together with the source, which is Beta Diversidad in this case. And that study, because it contains all the legal, technical, ecological, biological, economic, social, tourist information, etcetera, is very complex. We have submitted it to the consideration of the new Commissioner for his team to review, and a large number of institutions can participate in it or oppose it, especially scientists. 

“When you decree a reserve or a natural protected area, normally your natural enemy is the fishing industry and the fishing authority. However, in this case, we have a good number of NGOs that are either funded by the fishing industry or that work to preserve their interests.  They are dedicated to “conservation”… but through the resources and interests of the fishing industry… There are scientists who work for the fishing industry and there are scientists who work for conservation. Those who work for conservation have less recognition because the industry has invested a lot more in its scientists and has placed them so that they can directly influence fishing policy instruments: laws, regulations. So now we need to make sure that the study is fully supported by the right interests and that dubious scientists are revealed.”

Porfiria Gomez finishes Mario’s train of thought as he is interrupted by a phone call. Porfiria works for Orgcas, another NGO kickstarted by Mario. Orgcas is operated by a group of 14 women that transition local shark fishing communities into tourist operators. Orgcas coordinated the meeting between Wendy and the Agua Amarga community.

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“We started the process five years ago, when Mexico’s new President Lopez Obrador arrived, he is the one who will take the final decision. However, the Minister of the Environment has already changed three times, as well as the Commissioner, so every time these important changes happen, we have to start the legal procedures all over again. At the same time, we are pursuing all the work with the communities and establishing the scientific review, therefore this year is very important, because next year we have elections again and we can’t risk another change in leadership. We need to ensure that the Biosphere Reserve is fully supported within the next eight months.”

If approved, the Biosphere Reserve Dos Mares would bring Mexico to its goal of protecting 30 percent of its oceans by 2030, while also supporting local fishing communities. For decades Mario and his team have been navigating a sea of vested economic and political interests within a country crippled by corruption and complex bureaucracy. Their dedication, courage and hard work brings me hope for future MPAs, returning the oceans to their former glory while creating a blueprint that can be applied worldwide.

The post Making a Marine Biosphere appeared first on eco-nnect.

Last year I took a four day syntropic agriculture course in Ibiza. With my teachers Daniel Meneses and Rodrigo Marques, along with 20 other eager students, we planted a 600sqm edible forest for the Tierra Iris community to enjoy throughout the year. After the course, I kept in touch with Rodrigo and Daniel, and in March this year, I went to Tepoztlan, Mexico to visit the project they had launched with Victoria Sánchez in 2021: Solar.

Tepoztlan is a charming town, only two hours south of Mexico City. Driving in you are greeted by imposing rocky mountains, each with its own personality, peering down onto the colourful homes and cobbled streets. Rodrigo and I arranged to meet on a sunny Saturday afternoon. Solar is in the residential area of town, a 20 minute walk from the town center. When I arrived, the gates opened to reveal a light pink country home with a backyard flourishing with life. Rodrigo greeted me with a booming smile. I remembered his warm and kind approach when he taught 20 aspiring farmers last summer. He walked me to the growing food forest and I ask him how Solar came about. 

“Solar is an agroecological cultural center. The project started a year and a half ago. We had been working on similar projects for a while and were looking for a place to produce ourselves. Then a friend put us in touch with the owner of this property, who wanted to use his garden in a different way. It used to be a normal yard that only had grass. Honestly, he didn’t really know what he was getting into, but together we planted a syntropic food forest. We started with three modules, setting up a fully productive system that we could harvest and sell, then those sales paid for the next module, and so on.

“Through this financial movement from consumer growth, we grew the modules. Today we’ve planted 10. On the other side of the property we host courses and events. Our strategy is simple, we grow for the locals: restaurants and families. And little by little we established a bigger production thanks to our direct sales strategy, a classic CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) model.”

For people who don’t know what it is, could you explain what makes syntropic agriculture different?

“Syntropic agroforestry systems try to imitate nature and adapt it to agricultural production. We always have two dimensions in dialogue — space and time — so everything we plant needs to be high density and successional. For example we plant different vegetables with short, medium and long cycles in the same areas. In other words, what we create is a system that is resilient and that can maintain constant productivity. Each intervention that we make we improve the conditions of the soil for continuously abundant production. In this system water retention in the soil, soil fertility, carbon sequestration, root density, all these factors are always improving rather than diminishing — which is the opposite of what happens in conventional agriculture. Conventional agriculture transforms forests into deserts, we transform deserts into forests.

“Here at Solar we planted more or less 90 plant species including aromatic and medicinal herbs, vegetables, fruit trees, and biomass production plants in an area of 2,500sqm. Basically this first line of vegetables is planted close to fruiting trees. The first two to three years, we’ll be able to harvest vegetables, however as the fruiting trees grow, eventually we’ll have to stop the vegetable harvesting. This happens because we are following nature’s inner intelligence, she knows when it’s time for vegetables and when it’s time for fruit. So once the forest has grown we will harvest the fruit of the forest and plant in the shade of the trees other crops that need less light than the vegetables we have now. Our plan is to plant coffee once the forest has grown because it’s a shade loving crop.”

At Solar they also host courses and events to spread the syntropic agriculture methodology to the farming community of Mexico. Rodrigo is originally from Brasilia, Brazil, where he first learned about this method of farming.

“In Brazil the method is already consolidated, but not in Mexico. So the first barrier that we had to break was to implement our knowledge to show that it is a financially viable technique. And that it’s easy, that it’s nothing special or complicated. You simply need technical knowledge and a change in perception. This is why we started Solar, so we can show it as a successful case study, proving to visitors that it’s a profitable business. Because for a producer who comes to take a course with us, that is always his first question, can I live from this? Can I raise my children from it? So, Solar has been a bridge, to kickstart a dialogue with Mexico’s rural reality. Now we can really expand the technique and show it to all kinds of people: from rural universities to private ones, to government institutions to private landowners. Many people from different walks of life have already come to check it out.”

Rodrigo and Daniel also manage Tierra Negra, a consultancy that helps projects develop their own agrosyntropic systems. It is through their work for Tierra Negra that I met them both last summer. Although a community project in Ibiza isn’t their typical client, usually Rodrigo and Daniel travel throughout Mexico spreading the agrosyntropic farming method to rural communities.

“We’ve worked with several communities in Guerrero, Oaxaca, Hidalgo and Mexico. When we give courses for people who have a connection with the countryside, who either grew up there or are children of farmers, everything we say makes sense to them. It’s almost as though they intuitively understand that this is a better form of farming, only they didn’t have a word for it. It’s always an emotional moment for them, realizing that these types of techniques are being used today.

“Ultimately they’re observing their ancestral trajectory. Except now there’s a systematization, which is what we recognize in Ernst’s work. He managed to systematize ancestral agricultural knowledge and also to modernize its use and make it economically viable . Of course ancestral forest systems gave much autonomy and freedom to the communities, but the modern global context is very different today.”

Ernst Gotsch — the founder and leader of syntropic agriculture — was deeply inspired by indigenous people’s ancestral knowledge in land management, and with a background in agricultural science he systemized the process to be able to teach it and share it with the rest of the western world. Originally from Switzerland, in 1982 he decided to settle in Brazil and bought 500ha of degraded land in southern Bahia to test his theories. Today, it’s a flourishing forest with its own microclimate that produces more water than it consumes and sells the world’s highest quality cacao.

“You can truly admire ancestral forest systems just by understanding the Amazon Rainforest, it has so much biodiversity thanks to thousands of years of indigenous peoples’ management. At the core, agrosyntropy has very similar philosophies to indigenous cosmovisions yet Ernst managed to translate them into modern scientific terms eg. mechanisation, species density, spacing, stratification. This made it easier to commercialise the method and have the crops compete with conventional agriculture.  

“In my opinion, Ernst gave us both ecological literacy as well as a new lens to be able to observe nature in its breadth: in development, not as a static photo, rather as an ecosystem in constant development, a movie. Nature is constantly changing, it is transforming all the time, so accompanying that transformation and designing and thinking about that transformation is what makes successional agroforestry so fascinating, so powerful and so adaptable, because you can apply it to any context, any product in any ecosystem and in any soil.”

I ask Rodrigo what is the first advice he gives to communities to appease them that syntropic agriculture is in fact an economically viable method?

“Firstly I tell them to keep working with the crop that they are already selling, to keep that focus. Let’s say I meet a corn producer, if he owns a monocrop plantation he needs to use chemicals to maintain production because monocultures degrade the soil. So every year it is more difficult for him to produce and the corn has more and more diseases. The established discourse here is that they now need to buy more pesticides and fertilizers to maintain production, right? So, my first piece of advice is for them to start learning agroecological literacy, because that has been lost…

“Second we show them that through this method they can also feed their families and achieve food sovereignty. So we ask them what they like to eat and help them study what type of plants grow well next to corn. Essentially to diversify their production. Because if you have a rich ecosystem, then you have rich people, and if you have a poor ecosystem, you have poor people. So the more abundant the space where they are harvesting is, then the less misery they will have.”

We continue talking, and I ask if you’re planting a forest that also produces water, eventually you don’t even need to irrigate it, right?

“Yes, you can even measure the water production by analysing the water retention capacity of the soil as the forest keeps growing. You could eventually prove that thanks to the food forest there is more water entering the ground and being stored in underground aquifers.”

I ask Rodrigo if a person plants a forest, they are giving back to the water cycle as well as becoming independent from state water? He nods.

“And that’s not all you are independent from a lot of other external factors too. For example oil-based fertilisers or potassium fertilizers that are mainly produced in Ukraine and Russia. Conventional agriculture farmers are tied to the globalised economy and its problems too. The war in Ukraine right now is affecting them and the increase in oil prices too. It’s in the industry’s interest for farmers to lose their independence and become dependent on them for simple processes like fertilisation. Essentially, conventional farmers have lost their autonomy and have become completely dependent on a rotten system.”

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This reminds me of one of the lessons from the course in Ibiza, where Rodrigo had mentioned how tlacuaches (Mexican oposums) were not pests in their farm but actually ate the fruit that was rotting, becoming helpers instead of enemies. I mention this to him.

“We see pests as messengers, not problems. In conventional agriculture we’ve made all other beings into enemies. All other living beings are working to make the system more abundant whereas farmers now seem to be the main reason for biodiversity loss. It’s almost as though we’ve been working in a method of agriculture that declares war against life, whereas we are proposing an alternative, an agriculture of peace, a method that reconciles with life, making life an essential element that enhances production. So in this sense a mouse, an opossum, or an insect is not necessarily bad, they are fulfilling their function within a system, and if the system is sick then they will show us this. 

“Each time I learn more about syntropic agriculture in practice, I see that Ernst was absolutely right about this: all living beings are fulfilling a function moved by the internal pleasure of fulfilling that function, every being is thus equipped with the necessary tools to fulfill its function. And its whole life is guided so that this function is fulfilled, right? So a hummingbird with its long beak is able to enter specific flowers and pollinate them, a jaguar is equipped with sharp fangs to do population management of large herbivorous animals. So, what we are observing is that from the ant, to the termite, to the snake, all living beings, even the ones that today are considered pests are fulfilling their life function. So when they visit us they are actually leaving us messages.

“Plagues occur when we are not working in alignment with nature. Nature has highly developed principles and technologies. And if we get out of these technologies, there are imbalances, then those messengers come to say that there is an imbalance, right? So for us there are no pests, there are no diseases. There are only signs of a mistake that we as farmers made. I mean, a forest doesn’t have pests? Have you ever heard of a forest being destroyed by a plague? There is no such reality.

“Yes, there is this reality in the monocultures where pests end up destroying everything. And somehow the system claims that the problem is the pest? But perhaps it’s the system itself, the monocultures, because those insects and animals also live in the forest, yet don’t destroy it. It’s not that they disappeared and only exist in monocultures, they came to the field to fulfill a specific function. It’s nature sending a signal that monocultures should not exist.”

This makes me think of how in western society we seem to have forgotten what our function as humans is within nature. What’s beautiful about agrosyntropic farming is that it returns this function to human beings as well, our role within nature’s harmony. We can create more abundance and more life, just as we can also destroy it. I ask Rodrigo to expand on this topic.

“This is the result of a society that was shaped by industrial growth, right? And how it was losing that connection with the processes of nature. But if we look at ancestral cultures, they had that awareness, they knew that their intervention could be positive. Now under the pressure of the western world they are often losing these practices, but the reality is that we humans have many positive functions eg: micro-climate regulation, multiplication of biodiversity, seed dispersal, forest management, pruning.

“For example, pruning trees is necessary for the forest to renew itself and remain dynamic. If I look at the forest that covers Tepoztlan’s mountains it’s screaming for a prune, but it’s a national forest so I’m not allowed to prune the trees. Of course, this is a great law because it protects the forest from illegal loggers, however these laws are only seeing humans in a negative lens.

“Institutions need to update the way they see humans and our ecosystems and update regulations too. For example they could reward people who are doing positive things, not just ban the ones who are doing bad things. This way we could encourage a positive management of ecosystems in conservation areas.”

Classical conservation methods in the west don’t have a role for humans. They create these artificial boundaries between national parks and areas with human settlement. This is a clear demonstration of the inherent problem with the western worldview: humans are seen as separate from nature. It’s almost as though we’ve become tourists in our own homes. It doesn’t have to be this way, we can change our imposed worldview, learn from ancestral cosmovisions and have positive impacts on nature instead. This is why indigenous peoples represent only 5% of the world population yet protect 80% of the world’s biodiversity: they fulfill their life function. 

I ask Rodrigo what gives him hope in his line of work.

“For me syntropic agriculture provides a socio-economic solution as well as an environmental one. It brings economic opportunity to rural communities that are being pressured into cities. Often they are blindsided when they leave, they sell their land, go to the city, spend a couple of years there until their little money runs out and then they have neither land nor a place to stay in the city. And being poor in a city is much worse than being poor in the countryside. They survived without money and now they need money to survive, making them dependent on the system again. Agrosyntropy gives them their freedom back.”

Syntropic agriculture is empowering communities by giving them an economic alternative that not only feeds their families, but can feed the world too. All while reforesting, replenishing aquifers, regenerating soils and bringing back biodiversity. But ultimately it’s realigning humans with their life function: relearning how to be the good gardeners of the forest.

Isabella Cavalletti is a storyteller and co-founded eco-nnect.

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