Slated for Destruction

Well, folks, this is my delayed post in honor of Blog Action Day, wherein bloggers are encouraged to somehow address a particular theme. This year's theme is the environment, and what a difficult theme to write about! Whenever I start thinking about the environment, my mind immediately goes to destruction and strife, melted ice caps, depleting fresh water sources, exploited lands and indigenous peoples, petroleum extraction, blah blah blah. So for today's blog, while titled Slated for Destruction, I don't want to belabor the obvious, that 98% of the Peruvian Amazon is slated for petroleum extraction, including the largest national reserve in Peru. Instead, I'd like to take a moment to praise efforts being made to limit this fact by good friends of mine involved in good projects in Iquitos.

My old roommate Cesar Gil works for the World Wildlife Fund, where he heads the Indigenous Education committee. Cesar develops curriculum designed to raise awareness among indigenous children who live in the Pacaya Samiria Reserve and how they can best manage their resources and keep poachers, petroleum companies, and loggers away from their land. It's a roots project that has impressive, longterm goals and its focus - young children - is truly the best way to truly make changes.

My dear friend Monica Hernandez works for a Spanish cooperative as a forestry engineer. She, too, works with indigenous communities in the Pacaya Samiria Reserve where she helps them realize their own longterm goals from sustenance farming to reforestation.

Sandrine Forzy is a French political scientist who is bringing the possibility of fair trade to indigenous communities in the Reserve, so that they might be less dependent on unfair, commercial offers from outside, capitalist forces to which they are largely unaccustomed.

Graciela Blanco operates a planned parenthood / sex education program in the reserve in order to increase the quality of life of those who live in the reserve and also to help cut down populations that are putting pressure on their environment.

Mario Meder Seretti owns a lumber yard, but he has recently made the conscious (and financially difficult) decision to not purchase endangered hardwoods, and to deal only with sellers who are from heavily forested, secondary-growth areas, so as to not endanger primary growth forest.


You'll notice that a good number of these good deeds are directed toward people and there is good reason for that. If you can change the way people think from an early age (imagine what would have happened if someone had gotten a hold of the Bush babies when they were only five years old), you can change the world. I was raised to recycle. It sounds silly, but I have a horrible pang of guilt any time I use Styrofoam, or any time I throw away something recyclable. I have friends who were not raised like me and don't understand the importance of small actions. I am grateful to my parents for having instilled in me a reverent respect for the earth, shown to me through behaviors, canoe trips, bird books, and gardens.

Anyway, despite the fact that the Amazon is slated for destruction (I was really just trying to get your attention), there is hope.