Amazon Beauty and independent beauty company Rahua have put their passions for saving and actively preserving veteran trees in the Amazon rainforest to work in order to achieve beyond carbon neutrality.
Related: Envisioning Climate-positive Beauty
This work to preserve the natural environment of the Amazon rainforest and all that lives there is imperative to counteract climate change and offset CO2 emissions. According to The World Bank, each American produces 16.5 tons of CO2 per year, so there is much to do on many fronts.
Fabian Lliguin, co-founder of Rahua and founder of non-profit organization Ecoagents, is on a mission to defend, protect and preserve the natural environment of the Amazon rainforest by empowering local indigenous communities.
On the journey towards this mission, Lliguin devised a plan. Lliguin, an Ecuadorian of Inca/Quechua heritage, explains how he is working closely with the indigenous communities to achieve the title of private property to their own land.
Historically, indigenous people had the right of ownership of their own ancestral land. However, without a title of property their ancestral land rights have been broken or violated by corporations, government, fires, etc., and lost.
After many years of working with the U.N. and many other NGO’s about defending ancestral land rights, Lliguin realized that the current methods were non-effective, and the land was still being destroyed or set on fire.
That’s why Lliguin himself envisioned a plan to change history. This new plan entails Rahua, Amazon Beauty and Ecoagents financially supporting the legal and financial framework for securing private property titles for the tribes and communities.
Lliguin, along with his business partner and wife, Anna Ayers, work with people in the Ecuadorian province of Pastaza, by the Bobonasa River and have now extended the work to many Amazonian nationalities including the Achuar, Saparas, Waorani and Quichua tribes, among others.
Regarding the progress so far, Lliguin said:
Thus far through these means (in under one year), we have saved 37,500 hectares (95,000 acres, that’s over 6 times the size of Manhattan) of pristine and biodiverse tribal lands with oxygen producing trees in the rainforest. This land is now protected through collective private property of the tribes for perpetuity, enabling the production of oxygen and offsetting the carbon emissions (CO2). We are continuing this work with more tribes and communities, one community at a time, providing them with the most powerful tool in history—the legal land titles to their private property. The protection of ancient forests and its veteran trees are not only producing oxygen and preserving precious biodiversity; but most importantly, sequestering CO2 output for approximately 100,000 people per year. Our work has made our company Beyond Carbon Neutral. We are generating oxygen and we have only just begun.
