Ecuador’s new big bet: Monetizing environmental conservation

Ecuador is increasingly convinced that the new currencies are not cryptocurrencies but conservation mechanisms, which is what it is betting on.

That is, to receive funds in exchange for the ecosystem services it provides, such as conserving water, capturing carbon, or generating oxygen, considering that it is one of the most biodiverse countries on the planet.

It was explained to Bloomberg Línea by the Minister of Environment, Gustavo Manrique, who considers that these efforts put Ecuador “on the world map as a conservation leader”.

“Our currency is biodiversity; it is conservation; we are giving ecosystem services to the world,” said Gustavo Manrique, Ecuador’s Minister of Environment.

PAYMENT BY RESULTS

He says when explaining the new initiative in which the country is immersed, hand in hand with the Payment for Results Program REDD+ Ecuador, which is nothing more than the channeling of international climate finance that will promote long-term projects in the Amazon.

This agreement will activate an investment of US$2.5 million that has been delivered to Ecuador for meeting deforestation reduction goals and will benefit more than 300,000 people from 750 communities of the 11 Ecuadorian Amazonian nationalities, which will promote ecotourism projects, conservation, and protection of primary forests, environmental education, restoration and reforestation of altered ecosystems.

The funds come from the Green Climate Fund, an organization attached to the United Nations funded by different nations and institutions to finance programs that help combat climate change worldwide. Each country has an account that can be accessed through the projects in conjunction with other organizations.

Thus, in Ecuador, the government will work with the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of the Ecuadorian Amazon (Confeniae) with the support of the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) as the financial management agency.

“There are hundreds of dozens of needs in the populations; we must continue demanding, working, managing at the international level. Comrades, let’s continue working together, united, practice the ecological transition, let’s go down that road,” said Confenaie president Marlon Vargas during the program presentation.

AN IDEA THAT TRANSCENDS

But for Ecuador, beyond the amount, there is the impact that an initiative like this will have, especially because it will generate employment and lift thousands of families out of poverty.

“A community that does not have enough to eat cuts down a tree and sells it… but if that person can have a business, a restaurant, a hotel, they will no longer deforest,” Manrique explained to Bloomberg Línea.

“They cut the tree because there is poverty and no employment, so when they are given the capacity for bio-entrepreneurship, they no longer need to deforest because they are no longer starving,” the minister notes.

In other words, in addition to environmental protection, employment opportunities will be generated, especially in a country where only 30% of the population has an adequate job, and the Amazonian population is one of the most impoverished.

ABOUT THE FUNDS

The minister informed that Ecuador has already received US$2.5 million for the results of environmental conservation, which “is a payment for ecosystem services” that will be disbursed as the projects require it.

“It is that this is the new currency that the planet needs, it is an exchange currency for survival, it is not the Bitcoin, it is not Crypto, the new currency is the mechanisms of conservation,” he points out.

The program will last 36 months, and at the moment, territorial work is being carried out to identify the projects that will be worked on.

OTHER TRANSITION INITIATIVES

Also, a few days ago, in the province of Morona Santiago, the Ministry of Environment, Water and Ecological Transition, together with the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), formalized the channeling of US$450,000 of investment to strengthen actions against deforestation in the Amazon.

This cooperation is linked to the execution of actions with indigenous peoples and nationalities, injecting financing that will improve the quality of life of more than 14,000 inhabitants of the Shuar nationalities: Santiak, El Pangui, Sevilla Don Bosco, and the Masek Saapapentsa Association.

“The Government is convinced that it is time to have greener production and development, and every time international organizations facilitate access to these resources, they allow us to go further, promoting forest conservation and encouraging sustainable and deforestation-free production in the Ecuadorian Amazon,” said Manrique during the formal delivery of this investment.

For his part, Juan Manuel Murgía, IDB representative, said that “this is a great opportunity to work with Ecuador and promote sustainable development projects that contribute to climate change mitigation and adaptation”.

Dari Aguinda, president of the Kichwa Women’s Association of Napo, mentioned that her group works with bamboo, but they need support from the public and private organizations for their projects to materialize.

In addition, Ecuador plans to present a secondary regulation by the end of the year to measure a company’s emissions or economic activity as part of its Ecuador Zero Carbon program.

“This system will make it possible to measure the capture of CO2 that makes a certain ecosystem service, and countries or companies that want to offset these gases will give economic resources to countries like ours because we are conserving, because we are providing ecosystem services,” added the minister.

With information from Bloomberg Línea