Environmental justice and activism are growing global concerns, especially in Ecuador’s Amazon rainforest, where the visible and measurable impacts of extractive industries pose a threat to the biodiversity and the economic stability of Indigenous peoples. With the support of Fundación Pachamama, the Achuar people are actively challenging this threat through ecotourism.
Ecotourism is a type of tourism that prioritizes the sustainable conservation of nature and the well-being of its communities experiencing external threats.
Fundación Pachamama promotes the conservation of the Amazon rainforest through alternative models like ecotourism to advance environmental justice and support the self-determination of Amazonian Indigenous nationalities.
The organization works closely with the Achuar people, an Indigenous nationality located in Ecuador’s Pastaza River Basin, which spans two million acres of ancestral land on the borders of Ecuador and Peru, according to Pachamama Alliance, Fundación Pachamama’s sister organization.
Javier Félix, executive director of Fundación Pachamama, has worked for the organization for 15 years and explains that their relationship with the Achuar people is bound by their commitment to protect their territories and their way of life.
“We have cooperation agreements with [the Indigenous people] and we work on different projects in these territories to preserve the Amazon tropical rainforest and strengthen the Indigenous organization,” Félix said. “But also to improve Indigenous people’s lives…especially [facing] threats coming from different industries like oil, mining, and agriculture.”
Fundación Pachamama supports the Achuar people through their Forest Economies program, which promotes sustainable solutions and bio-entrepreneurship in the Amazon region. This ecotourism model consists of organizations that offer employment and economic opportunities for Indigenous communities while protecting their rights and the rights of nature.
Kapawi EcoLodge is a bio-entreprise supported by Fundación Pachamama that produces an economic alternative. Fully run and managed by the Achuar people, it offers employment, income, and a pathway to fund land conservation for ecotourism.
Ramiro Vargas, the president of the Achuar community, has been a local guide at Kapawi for the past 28 years and describes the importance of exchanging cultures and cultural experiences with people from around the world.
“Transmitting knowledge, teaching them, raising awareness among visitors of the importance of preserving the Amazon itself because it is the lung of the world, but we also say that it is the heart of the world,” Vargas said in Spanish.
However, Vargas emphasized that preserving and passing down these important teachings depends on the survival of the rainforest where they originate.
For the past 50 years, Amazonian communities like the Achuar have suffered the impacts of oil and gas industries that “pollute their rivers, destroy their food sources, and damage the health of the forests and other Amazonian territories,” according to Fundación Pachamama’s website.
The destruction of the rainforest directly threatens ecotourism, the Achuar people’s source of employment and income.
“We would never accept the mining companies that would come to destroy us here in this living jungle,” Vargas said. “We stay active among the members of the communities, of the associations, and of the whole Achuar people to be together.”
When local communities need financial assistance, they face the delicate balance of conserving the environment while simultaneously depending on it to live.
“The construction of roads makes the people of the Achuar communities start selling their wood...thus destroying the forest and driving the animals away from their natural habitat,” said Vargas.
Fundación Pachamama works to prevent this issue by implementing bio-economy projects which support and promote bio-entrepreneurship aimed at coming up with solutions for the sustainable use of forest resources and financial potential for communities.
These bio-economy initiatives are practiced at the local school in Kapawi, Colegio Tuna, where students learn about producing and preserving local food items, such as vanilla, fish, pepper powder, and medicinal plants. This endeavor preserves the cycle of income, food security, and plant knowledge, according to Pachamama Alliance’s website.
“We are working with them and giving them more capacity and tools to work in new alternatives so they can have a different kind of income that‘s traditional for them,” Félix said. “For instance, in the vanilla value chain, they can grow and cultivate vanilla, where just one kilogram of vanilla could cost between $200 to $1,000, which could represent a lot of money for this kind of community.”
According to Isabela Morelli, digital communications manager at Fundación Pachamama, they ensure their financial support reaches the community directly, making a meaningful impact.
“We implement projects at a local level,” said Morelli. “In most organizations, the money that is donated may get lost, but for us, the money goes to the territory, directly supporting the local people.”
Félix added that transformative ecotourism models like Kapawi positively affect Amazonian biodiversity by increasing tourism, which in turn supports the rainforest and its communities.
“They have created different zones where activities are prohibited to keep the biodiversity well-preserved, so they don’t hunt in these areas,” Félix said. “They don’t go fishing in these areas because they have seen that biodiversity is important for tourism. Having pink dolphins, a lot of birds, and different kinds of monkeys, for instance, has been very important in their relationship with tourism.”
Vargas believes that his Indigenous peoples made the right decision to implement the ecotourism project with Fundación Pachamama because of the positive impacts it has had on the land and community.
One of the biggest misconceptions Félix hears about when it comes to ecotourism programs is that it is all for show.
“It‘s actually how they live,” Félix said. “It‘s people that have been unconnected with the outside world for a long time. They don’t have access to roads, so the place they live in is very well preserved. This is how they have been living for centuries…it‘s their traditional way, and they want to share part of that with people from the outside.”
Vargas added that the media falsely depicts Indigenous communities like the Achuar as “aggressive and animalistic.”
“It is the opposite here,” Vargas said. “The tourists, visitors, and hosts who have come here to visit us have noticed that we are also human beings who live in our own habitat in a simple but harmonious way with nature, maintaining a good relationship between people…because that leads to the unity of an entire Achuar people as an Achuar nationality of Ecuador.”
According to Morelli, Ecuador is the only country that legally recognizes nature as a right. Their ecotourism model enables local communities to protect and preserve the rights of nature while also becoming economically empowered.
“This program is seeing positive effects as communities are choosing to replicate this economic touristic model, creating a joint effort in protecting the local biodiversity of that area,” Morelli said.
Ecotourism helps raise awareness about the authentic realities of the Achuar people while simultaneously defending the rights of people and the rights of nature.
“Ecotourism for us is conservation,” Vargas said. “Keeping everything alive. Preserving, taking care and protecting our culture. Because imagine, what would the Amazon be without the Indigenous peoples?”
Editor’s note: This article has been updated to fix a spelling mistake and correctly identify Indigenous peoples. A previous version referred to them as “Indigenous tribes."