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Thank you, again, for helping support our efforts in the Amazon! Since launching our website in March, the Acaté team has been hard at work on all fronts.
Stateside, we have been intensively networking with like-minded individuals, companies, and foundations with shared interest in protecting the rainforest and the peoples that depend on it for their livelihood. In Peru, Bill Park, Co-Founder of Acaté, and Dr. Dave Fleck, Acaté’s field coordinator who lives with and is an integrated member of the Matsés people, met with tribal leaders. Their discussions, held over a week, focused on how best Acaté can address the needs and challenges of the Matsés people. Central to this conversation was a bilateral commitment for nothing less than total transparency and accountability in operations and financial transactions.
This month Bill returns to the rainforest to join Dave to head to the villages on the Remiyacú and in the upper reaches of the Chobayacú river. They will meet with the Matsés communities there and work together on Acaté’s ongoing field projects, one of which is the Sustainable Commerce Initiative.
Economic opportunities are all too scarce for Amazonian communities. Too often, the only work available is in social or environmentally destructive activities, such as hunting to provide bush-meat for illegal loggers or working in petroleum extraction. The world has been horrified by images that have emerged from deep in the rainforests of Ecuador where shoddy safeguards by multinational oil companies led to poisoned waters, sickness, and environmental devastation. As you read this newsletter, petroleum companies are surveying the rainforests that the Matsés call home, forests that serve as the lungs of our planet and support an incalculable myriad of life.
Acaté is partnering with the Matsés tribe for the sustainable harvesting of renewable non-timber forest products to provide economic alternatives for the younger generations. One of these is copaiba, a valuable resin with medicinal qualities that is also used a base for cosmetics. In most areas of Amazonia, copaiba trees are extirpated, long felled and processed into hardwood timber. In the tractless expanse of pristine rainforest protected by the Matsés, numerous copaiba trees thrive that can provide a renewable source of the resin and much-needed income for their communities. Acaté is partnering with the Matsés to develop infrastructure for commerce and channels for marketing based on our team ‘s extensive experience in natural products.
This important project can only happen with your support. By helping this sustainable initiative get off the ground, you provide a self-sufficient future for a proud people.
Thank you again for the support, donations, and love for preserving this cradle of life on our planet.
By supporting Acaté, you are making a difference.
— The Acaté Team
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