The Ecuadorian Amazon is currently a hugely valuable carbon sink, sucking up more carbon
dioxide than it emits.
But human activity has scarred and drained the land.
Stripping it for resources.
Why are we fighting?
Because this fight is for the benefit of mankind.
We have to fight for the power to protect our big house which is the planet.
For the land!
For the water!
But it’s no longer just about protecting this forest, it’s about learning from it.
In 2022, a group called The Circular Bioeconomy Alliance ventured to the Sacred Headwaters
of the Amazon River in Ecuador.
The Alliance are trying to change the way the world thinks about our environment, both
within the Amazon Forest, and around the world.
The Prince of Wales established the Circular Bioeconomy Alliance to connect finance to
action on the ground.
It is formed by a diverse partnership that involves NGOs, scientific organisations, companies,
banks, funds, but all sharing the same vision that we need to develop a new economy that
prospers in harmony with nature.
We are inviting the world to enter into an alliance, a real alliance so that we can take
the next step.
The Alliance was created because we have reached a tipping point.
We are now in the Amazon, in order to see how for thousands of years, the indigenous
communities have been already implementing a living economy that should inspire the new
economy of the 21st century, the bioeconomy.
We have learned above all how to keep nature without destruction.
We’ve been here for centuries, and we haven’t destroyed it.
We’ve lived in balance.
The forest, or the Mother Earth as we call it, is part of humanity.
We are part of the forest.
The Circular Bioeconomy Alliance is very important, because the proposal of the work is to keep
the Amazon intact as well as the cultures of the indigenous territories.
Of course, we need to admit that it's difficult to replicate the circular bioeconomy that
indigenous communities implement in the Amazon to other parts of the world.
But what we can replicate is some of the principles they use to develop the circular economy.
We need to work with the indigenous people because they have the knowledge.
And they have the intimacy with their forest.
So it's their project.
But we are here to provide support.
And the first type of support we can provide is identifying the value chains.
We need a market, it can be a local market, it can be a global market.
But then we can help as well on how to scale reforestation, starting from a small project
to a large project is not easy.
You need logistics, you need to contract with the villagers.
And you need the communication tools as well.
So we provide this technical expertise.
And we have also the network of companies that can buy their product.
Banks and funds play a crucial role.
Without the investors and the banks providing the capital, deploying the right amount of
capital to make this transformation, it will not be possible.
They need to start recognising and valuing nature as the basis for any sustainable economy
for the future.
We don’t want to be capitalist millionaires.
We want to live with dignity, with health, happiness, pure and clean.
And the generation to come enjoys life like we did when we were young.
When we talk about the global problem of climate change, we have to sit down and start a new
path.
This new path is for all of us.
To all the bankers, those who invested in oil, oil that has been extracted but has polluted
so much, I invite them now to invest in restoration, in reforestation, in the cleaning of polluted
rivers, and to invest in the rainforest, which is the life of humanity.