By Melanie Fine
Waking up before the sun, Betty Rubio Padilla boarded a piki piki — Kitchwa for a small canoe with outboard motor — to the regional capital Santa Clotilde. There, she boarded a larger boat known as the Rapido. The Rapido is anything but its namesake, taking six hours along the Napo River to Iquitos, the capital of the Peruvian Amazon. Betty has made this trip many times before. Before Covid-19, she would never do so alone. Things have changed.
Six hours later, Betty deboarded the Rapido in Iquitos, borrowed one of the waiting motorcycles, and rode the rest of the way to the ORPIO offices. ORPIO stands for the Regional Organization of Eastern Indigenous Peoples, and it represents and advocates for the 20 indigenous peoples and 30 federations of the Peruvian Amazon.
Betty is president of one of these federations, the Federation of Communities of the Middle Napo and Curaray and Arabela River Basins (FECONAMNCUA), an unusual role for a woman. But then again, she is unusual. Betty grew up in the Amazon, as did her parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents before her. And now, at age 39, with six children of her own ranging in ages 11 to 22, Betty is doing all she can to protect her way of life for her family, her community, and generations to come. And the only way she can do that is by protecting her home, the Amazon Rainforest. And protecting the Amazon Rainforest protects us all.
The Amazon Rainforest, spanning Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Guyana, Suriname and French Guiana, is the world’s largest land carbon sink, which means it absorbs the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. As such, it naturally reverses global warming. The rainforest provides 20% of the world’s oxygen supply, and 20% of the world’s river water.
Unfortunately, the Amazon Rainforest is in sharp decline, which is disastrous not only to Betty’s federation and all the other peoples indigenous to the rainforest, but to stemming the tide of climate change.
Recent years and policies have had devastating effects on the rainforest. Higher temperatures caused by climate change create warmer and dryer forests which increase the risk of forest fires. In fact, the fires in the Amazon in 2020 surpassed the incredibly devastating and news-making 2019 fires by . Not only do these fires threaten the future of the forests, but themselves send the very harmful greenhouse gases back into the atmosphere.
Approximately one million square kilometers of the Amazon Rainforest have been destroyed by deforestation. Whereas deforestation in the past has been limited to local farmers who needed to clear enough land to grow crops for their family and local consumers, the large industrial-scale agriculture that has swept into these regions has catalyzed its destruction at an alarming rate, far faster than its ability to regenerate. In addition, the immensity of the rainforest and its limited regulation attracts illegal agriculture, such as the growing of the cocaine source, coca.
Deforestation of the Amazon rainforest Trees are usually cut down illegally. GETTY
Carlos Nobre, a climate researcher at the University of São Paulo, wrote that the Amazon is than was once believed. If just 20–25% of the rainforest were cut down, it would turn irreversibly into a savannah-like ecosystem.
Additional researchers agree that the tipping point is imminent. Others say it has already been breached.
When Betty arrived in the ORPIO office, she presented the documentation required to elicit the support of law enforcement — cell phone images of illegal deforestation and mining in her territory, along with critical latitude and longitude coordinates.
Once law enforcement is alerted, officers will travel to Betty’s territory to pursue the law breakers. Unfortunately, since there’s only one way in and one way out of the area, the law breakers will have already disbanded, having been warned in time. These criminals rarely if ever get brought to justice. Still, territories that are monitored this closely tend to keep most bad actors away.
During her stay in Iquitos, Betty will also use the local internet to download up-to-date satellite images to her phone, which is what she uses to monitor patches of deforested land.
As the president of the federation, Betty rarely monitors the land herself these days. There are monitors in her community who do that.
The non-profit provides the technology and training to communities like Betty’s, having learned that the best way to combat deforestation is to enhance the ability of the locals to protect their own lands. In addition to technology, RFUS also provides legal support and advocacy. Many other rainforest NGOs work outside of and around the native populations in order to protect the rainforest.
For RFUS, it was crucial to work from within. Tom Bewick, RFUS Peru director, notes that “these are the communities and people who have inhabited the rainforest for millenia, and leveraging their traditional knowledge and collective natural resource management is imperative to long-term conservation and mitigating climate change.” In fact, it has been shown that RFUS’s partnership with the indigenous peoples has been the most effective way of combating deforestation.
When RFUS first came to her village, Betty volunteered immediately to become a monitor. She was eager to learn as much as she could about her land and the technology that could help her preserve it. Most other monitors were men, but it turned out that women in general, with their proclivity for details, made for better monitors. Because of her facility with the technology, other villages naturally reached out to her for help, and soon she became a trainer of monitors. She became so well-known through her work among the communities that she was elected first female President of her federation.
Deforestation is not the only threat Betty and her people face. Lined with rivers, the Amazon territories are rich in minerals, especially gold. Whereas satellite imagery can reveal deforestation down below, it is up to Betty and her monitors on the ground to weed out illegal mining. Knowing their territory well, they frequently visit the patches along the river that are frequently trespassed.
Illegal miners, employing the easiest and not the most environmentally conscious methods to extract gold, will do so by pouring mercury into the deposits to make a gold-mercury amalgam. The amalgam is collected and the mercury is boiled off, leaving behind pure gold. And, leaving in its path, mercury-polluted land, river, and air.
And, their trespasses introduce diseases to which the indigenous people have little to no immunity, such as Covid-19.
Covid-19 has ravaged Betty’s village, even though they maintain their distance from these trespassers. Still many residents have been infected and re-infected in the second wave. Because adequate medical care is a six-hour Rapido-ride away in Iquitos, most choose to stay home and rely on traditional medicine.
A Covid-19 vaccine has yet to make it to Betty’s territory. Even so, Betty says, “A lot of people do not trust the vaccine. [They] don’t know much about it. I don’t know how many people would take it if it was there, or will take it when it arrives.”
In a culture defined by its gender roles and male machismo, Betty faces a continuous onslaught of challenges to her leadership from within. Combined with the challenges she faces as a mother, wife, and indigenous person battling the illegal actors from without, she has her work cut out for her.
“Often there's the perception that indigenous people are blocking development or progress. But it's absolutely the opposite of that,” says Betty. “We are productive members of society. But we also want to take care of the environment because the natural environment is all we have.”
The thing is, it’s really all any of us have.
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Related to SDG 13: Climate action and SDG 10: Reduced inequalities
