Stemming the tide of environmental damage on the Amazon
By Mary Randolph
Program manager
“We are paddling against the current,” said one of the women showing me around Cotijuba Island, near the mouth of the Amazon in Brazil. She wasn’t talking about the pull of the huge, muddy brown river we were looking at. She meant the fight against trends that are damaging the environment of her beloved home island.
One of those trends is unregulated tourism. Cotijuba is a quiet place. There are no cars on the island, just tuk-tuk taxis. (And a full-sized bus—which, because it lacks an engine, is pulled down the dirt roads by a creaky tractor.) The leaders of our project partner there, the Belém Islands Women’s Movement (MMIB, pronounced Me-Be), support community-based tourism but worry about reckless growth.
People from the city of Belém have been buying up land on the island, throwing up houses and digging new wells for water and pits for waste. There are no limits on building, and no realistic prospect of any being imposed. Near the beach, new owners hire someone to “clean up” the space—that is, rip out the mangroves that protect the coastline and shelter aquatic and terrestrial wildlife.
Other impacts are cultural. Islanders give up their land and then give up their weekends catering to tourists. Parents worry that young people will emulate the party-at-your-vacation-house lifestyle of the city folk.
MMIB, which has been working in the area’ islands for 25 years, is pushing back against the toll that tourism is taking on the environment. One of the main programs encourages “backyard agroecology,” helping women grow valuable native plants (açai, for example) at their houses. This is good for the environment and also reduces the economic pressure to sell to outside developers.
Field representative Marcio Halla, right, goes over project details with MMIB leaders.
One of our project partners tends seedlings in a nursery funded by the project.
The women of MMIB say that Seacology support came at the right time. With it, they are repairing their community center, where they offer a wide range of services for women that reinforce island community values: craftmaking, agroforestry advice, exercise classes, a place to sell handicrafts, and more.
MMIB has also committed to replanting several acres of severely eroded cliffs by the shore. The nursery that will supply the native plants is operated by another NGO, Friends of the Amazon Forest Institute. It is run by a cheerful, knowledgeable, and efficient woman and a staff that pays meticulous care to the young plants, down to moving them several times each day so they get just the right amounts of sun and shade. Last year, they planted 1,200 mangrove seedlings of two species in a different area and had great success.
As part of the Cotijuba Island Seacology project, our MMIB partners will plant during the rainy season. They are not afraid of the hard work required to repair damage done by poor management in the past. The current may be against them, but they are determined to keep paddling.
Our partners are working to replant areas along Cotijuba's shoreline to reduce erosion.
Seacology's Mary Randolph, center, and Marcio Halla, second from right, meet with our local partners.