Working with Local Indigenous Communities to Achieve Sustainable Landscapes

Ecuador’s role as a global biodiversity powerhouse requires a very specialized approach integrated directly with local communities and governments. This requires a deep understanding of the landscapes that compose Ecuador. This is why we work on iconic global landscapes such as the Amazon, as well as key agricultural landscapes in the Andean center region. We look for global and local solutions, specific yet scalable, to protect the benefits provided by the biodiversity on this geography. At the same time, we promote socioeconomic and environmental sustainability framed by three main strategies: 

• Community-based conservation and land-use planning with indigenous peoples and local governments.
• Sustainable livelihoods and productive activities.
• Climate change mitigation and ecosystem-based adaptation.

Work must be addressed on different scales: we incentivize the appropiation of sustainable economic activities for single and community beneficiaries, such as the Kichwa, Cofán, Sápara, Shiwiar and Andwa peoples, and at a policy scale we work with national, regional, provincial, and municipal governments, all with the intention to contribute to a science and traditional knowledge-based decision-making.

Where we do it

The Sustainable Landscapes team works mainly in the Ecuadorian Amazon, within the Napo and Pastaza river basins, and focuses on freshwater landscape conservation. The team also works in the Yasuní Biosphere Reserve, focused on terrestrial landscapes conservation, which includes over 3 million hectares and the active involvement of provincial and municipal governments.

Landscape territorial governance

Decision-making on a territorial scale requires the adequate integration of national government, local government and local communities’ stakeholders, on a shared space to agree on intervention and implementation strategies. This is the definition of sustainable and collective landscape governance.

TNC works on ethno-zoning maps that will allow communities to negotiate the implementation of possible investment projects within their territories, with this information to be used as a mechanism to face external threats to their territories. These efforts are also intended for indigenous peoples to organize and face internal threats such as the expansion of the agricultural frontier.

This is where capacity building, training and assistance contribute to integrate territorial cosmovision of indigenous cultures with land, forests, water, and biodiversity use on local and national policies that develop system-wide planning processes.