The solution to the Amazon wildfires that no one is talking about

In our development work in the Amazon, we’re teaching local farmers techniques to protect and regenerate the rainforest while still facilitating agriculture.

The world’s attention is sharply focused on the raging wild fires in the Amazon rainforest within Brazil. French President Emmanuel Macron characterized the fires as an “international crisis”, stating “The Amazon rain forest — the lungs which produces 20% of our planet’s oxygen — is on fire.” Canada’s Justin Trudeau Tweeted “We need to act for the Amazon and act for our planet — our kids and grandkids are counting on us.”

The two leaders raised the issue at the G7 conference in Biarritz France a few days later, and the group collectively committed $20 million towards efforts to protect the precious rainforest, which Brazil and its new President, Jair Bolsonaro, promptly rejected.

Environmentalists around the world are increasingly concerned about Bolsonaro and his support for scaling back protections of the Amazon rainforest in favour of expanding logging, ranching and mining industries. Bolsonaro went so far as to initially blame environmental NGOs for starting the forest fires in order raise money for themselves.

The fires, and the stubbornness of Brazil’s leader, have left many feeling hopeless about our chances of protecting the rainforest and combatting climate change. After all, even if Brazil accepted the G7’s $20 million, what effect would that have?

But the mass media is missing the larger story. There are tangible ways to protect and regenerate the rainforest while still facilitating agriculture and ensuring the livelihood of local farmers who are dependent on their crops. I’ve seen the evidence first hand and it doesn’t take pledges from world leaders to act.

The solution is agroecology. Unlike modern industrial agricultural methods which require massive deforestation and lead to water scarcity, soil depletion, loss of biodiversity and high levels of greenhouse gas emissions, agroecology is a sustainable and integrated approach to farming based on ecological and social principles.

The concept is based on optimizing the interactions between plants, animals, humans and the environment while taking into consideration the social aspects that need to be addressed for a sustainable and equitable food system.

WE Charity teaches agroecology skills to local farmers in the Amazon at our WE Agricultural Learning Centre in Ecuador. The free courses and workshops it offers help enhance Ecuadorian farmers’ traditional knowledge and skills by empowering them with new agroecology techniques, tools and diversified knowledge.

Here’s how it works: Traditional industrial farming greatly depletes the soil in which cocoa is grown, rendering it unusable for months after a harvest, and leaving small farmers with no income while the earth recovers its nutrients. Industrial farming also often relies on clearcutting, which leads to forest fires and the elimination of habitats for the animals, plants and insects that are critical to the biodiversity of the region. Under an agroecology approach, natural solutions like intercropping (growing pest repellent plants alongside the more fragile cocoa plants) are used to control pests and promote growth, allowing the farmer to replant crops in the soil much sooner after harvest, creating more income.

Agroecology also naturally increases crops’ resiliency against extreme weather, an increasingly important trait in the era of climate change. It employs contour cropping (planting against the slope of hillsides), intercropping with “cover crops” that protect the sensitive crops from drought, and agroforestry, which involves planting trees on and around to both physically protect the crops but also provide farmers with food, timber and fuel.

By educating farmers in Ecuador with the skills and knowledge to ensure sustainable cacao production, the WE Agricultural Learning Centre is helping protect the Amazon rainforest while empowering local farmers who can meaningfully provide for their families.

Promoting agroecology throughout the entire Amazon region would help ensure the regeneration and future protection of the rainforest while creating sustainable and reliable incomes for thousands of farmers and their families for generations to come.