Monetizing Environmental Preservation & Its Ethical Implications

Saving the Amazon is a pioneering enterprise that has monetized environmental and cultural preservation through a self-sustainable and profitable business model. Their monetization of environmental preservation may very well be an example of a free market solution to a global crisis, that it had created in the first place. It is certainly an original approach. Saving the Amazon is an NGO that does not operate as a typical charity, but instead has a sustainable business model selling individual trees, whole forests, and seminars to both individuals and corporate organizations for the preservation of the Colombian Amazon rainforest. They are partnered with thirty indigenous communities that reside in the rainforest and have a symbiotic relationship with them. They help develop their communities and the communities agree to plant and care for the trees. Similar to charities where donors adopt an animal in danger of extinction and support them monthly, every six months donors receive information and pictures of the animal, or in this case tree they are helping to “raise.” They plant their tree, mark it with their name, share pictures of the tree and the indigenous person who planted it with them and its coordinates, so they know the geolocation of their tree. Saving the Amazon is partnered with organizations like Johnson & Johnson, and they are currently exploring a partnership with National Geographic. The organization started in Colombia and focuses on Colombian indigenous communities and seven hundred thousand kilometers of Colombian rainforests, but not exclusively. They also approach corporations with green agendas that wish to lower their carbon footprint and offer to plant entire forests in their name. Saving The Amazon's main business model works through the adoption of trees by people and companies around the world. In this way, they are giving the whole world an opportunity through the application of technology to take responsibility for their consumption and offset their carbon footprint, while supporting the most vulnerable communities. They continually send content to their social media followers and in that way have become an important voice in Colombia that encourages responsible production and consumption. Likewise, the Saving the Amazon business model has allowed to make the most out of products that come from planting trees and works with communities to adapt to the challenges of globalization in a sustainable way. Saving the Amazon has fostered the creation of green jobs, carrying out reforestation activities, where maximum use is made of the resources produced from sowing, that is, edible seeds produced by the fruits are replanted and the byproducts generated by the trees are used by the population to meet their daily needs. The local communities live without affecting the subsistence of the plants or land, emphasizing the protection of the environment.1 Something from which the Western Eurocentric worldview can learn from. For example, the Tayazú community of the Wanano ethnicity located by the Vaupés river is characterized by their impulsive creativity and great skill in the development of ancestral and modern homes and malocas. In this community, the mixture of architectural styles is living proof of the harmony that can exist between different peoples and times.2 The work Saving The Amazon does attempts to learn from these indigenous communities and approaches reforestation of the Colombian Amazon through a humble lens of openmindeness. That is to say, there is acknowledgment that commodification of nature has brought on the current Climate Crisis, however it is worth the risk if we can learn from the collaboration, or as Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing calls it, from the contamination3 of this partnership. This is an intriguing intervention and though not a sole solution, it is well worth exploring the reciprocity of all players involved to begin formulating a partial solution.

Date

2021

Resource Type

Text

Resource Subtype

Masters Project
Paper

Full item page