To accompany our guest blog from the journalist Rachel Stine, Unexpected Ecuador, we are delighted to publish a series of Rachel’s photographs, taken on her Rainforest Alliance trip. We hope you enjoy then as much as we do.
The 19,347 foot peak of Cotopaxi as it emerges from the clouds. / Photo by Rachel Stine
Last month, Ethical Corporation Magazine’s Rachel Stine visited Ecuador with our tourism team. In this guest blog, Rachel talks about visiting the mouth of a live volcano, the importance of sustainable practices and guinea pig bartering…
As a freelance journalist, I am fairly accustomed to going wherever a job may take me. I am used to starting with a small piece on city bus renovations for a newspaper and then being landed with a feature on Boston’s first all-male burlesque troupe the next day for the same publication. I am used to starting an assignment on a small disruption at a local school and having it turn into a three piece feature on first amendment rights for students. Essentially, doing freelance means I need to expect the unexpected. Read the rest of this entry ?
As we continue to mark the UN’s International Day of the World’s Indigenous People with a blog series this week, we’re staying in Ecuador with part three. Rainforest Alliance’s Communication’s Associate in Ecuador, Yessenia Soto takes us along one of the oldest tourism trails…
Some say that South America’s first tourists were the travellers who hiked the Inca Trail 500 years ago. That pre-Columbian highway, built in the 15th century to connect the distant regions of the Inca Empire, once stretched from what is now Ecuador south almost to Patagonia, Argentina. Scattered along that cobbled route were way stations called “tambos” where travellers could obtain food and lodging. Read the rest of this entry ?
In part two of this week’s blog series highlighting the Rainforest Alliance’s work with indigenous communities around the globe — a recognition of the UN’s International Day of the World’s Indigenous People — we’re putting the spotlight on a project with a group of tourism businesses in Ecuador. David Dudenhoefer writes…
Community lodges in Ecuador offer travellers a unique vantage point from which to experience the country’s ancient cultures and impressive biodiversity. However, not all community lodges offer the kind of service and comfort that international travellers demand. To help indigenous communities improve their tourism businesses, generate additional income and become more effective environmental stewards, the Rainforest Alliance has been working with the Huaorani Ecolodge, Kapawi Ecolodge, Sani Lodge, Secoya Lodge and Napo Wildlife Centre.
Sani Lodge is owned and fully operated by the Kichwa Sani Island community. With more than 143 square miles of forest, Sani Lodge controls and protects the largest expanse of tropical moist forest in all of Ecuador. (Photo credit: Sani Lodge)
Interest in third party sustainable certification is on the rise, demonstrated by an uptick in businesses responding to consumer demand for sustainability and transparency, despite continued instability in the global economic environment. This trend accounts for the significant growth we’ve experienced in our sustainable forestry, agriculture, tourism, climate and education programmes during 2010.
We are proud that the portfolio of our work has expanded into more than 70 countries. The combined efforts of each farm and forest that has earned Rainforest Alliance certification represent a huge global impact, conserving the environment and promoting healthy ecosystems while benefitting the lives of millions of farm and forest workers, and their communities.
Cloud forest of the Mombaco volcano, one of the many attraction to be found around Grenada
During the Frog Blog’s recent trip to Nicaragua we were able to look at another aspect of the work of the Rainforest Alliance and how it is benefiting both local people and the environment. Having visited a local Rainforest Alliance Certified coffee farm (see blog entry – Coffee on the slopes of a volcano) to see the benefits of certification we then went on to look at the sustainable tourism programme in action.
The city of Grenada, sitting on the north-western shore of Lake Nicaragua, is fast becoming the centre of Nicaragua’s tourism hub. This brings many exciting economic opportunities to a city, region and community who have traditionally relied on the timber, gold and silver mining industries. But as with any new economic development there is a cost as well as many potential benefits. Tourism is the world’s biggest industry and has the potential to have a huge positive impact upon sustainability. Currently much of it doesn’t. But thanks to the work of the Rainforest Alliance and others that is beginning to change.
In Grenada there are a number of hotels that have been verified under the Rainforest Alliance Sustainable Tourism Programme. This offers training to tourism businesses — including hotels and lodges — that provides them with the tools and techniques they need to run efficiently and sustainably. Businesses that have completed the programme earn the right to use the Rainforest Alliance Verified™ mark on promotional materials. Read the rest of this entry ?
Every job has its perks, and being with the Rainforest Alliance those perks can be awesome. A recent visit to a Rainforest Alliance certified coffee farm in Nicaragua is a case in point.
Hacienda El Progreso coffe farm in Nicaragua
Hacienda El Progreso is a family owned and run coffee farm sitting between 700 and 850 metres on the slopes of the volcano Mombacho. It is part of the buffer zone that surrounds the national nature reserve, which makes up a large part of both the cloud and dry forests which blanket the volcano. A beautiful place to grow coffee, with both the farm and volcano overlooking the city of Granada and the spectacular Lake Nicaragua, the largest lake in Central America.
With certification the farm has established a reputation for some of the finest coffee in Nicaragua and is a major tourist attraction in its own right. Unusually, the farm doesn’t just sell green beans into the market. Hacineda El Progreso grows, dries, roasts and produces the coffee, bringing it to market under the Café Las Flores brand. Unfortunately for us this coffee is mostly aimed at the domestic Nicaraguan market. But for real coffee fans the wonders of technology means that you can by it online. Read the rest of this entry ?
In celebration of the International Year of Forests, we are highlighting those individuals, communities and businesses actively safeguarding the lungs of the planet. Read the rest of this entry ?
After more than twenty years with the Rainforest Alliance – serving first as a board member, later as executive director and now as president – Tensie Whelan has seen the organisation change and grow tremendously. At the close of 2010, we sat down with her to reflect on another wonderful year and to talk about her hopes and goals for the coming one. Read the rest of this entry ?
Welcome to the next instalment of journalist, Richard Lofthouse’s guest blog about his trip to the Amazon with the Rainforest Alliance…
The Inkaterra Canopy Walk - an amazing way to see the forest
One of the finest eco-Lodges in the area is Inkaterra Reserva Amazonica, which opened in 1975 and has become a beacon of best-practice for the all important question: what is an eco-Lodge? I was fully expecting to have to slum it and had even brought my own mosquito net bought, I chuckled to myself, on Amazon! But no. I was greeted by a magnificent classroom/laboratory full of scientific samples and species, and following that taken to a private lodge, one of 35 rooms connected by a special path that is lit at night by aromatic citronella candles. At the centre of the complex is an enormous, mind-bending canopy walkway 30 metres above the ground, and a giant common area and restaurant serving up cold beers, superb local cuisine and wi-fi. It’s not skin deep either, although your skin can get deeply pampered if you go to the spa next to the Madre de Dios river, where the only products used are made from locally sourced jungle products such as the Brazil nut.
No, Inkaterra has gone deep. They have even worked out a formula whereby the rainforest services it provides to travellers offset the airmiles they incur to get there, a miniature model for what is being debated globally. The difference: in this case it’s already happening. By the same token, the trail system at Inkaterra, the black Caiman watching trips, the twilight and dawn canopy watching, the butterfly house and the visit to the Hacienda Concepcion, a
A butterfly feeding on a plaintain, one of hundreds of species unique to the Peruvian rainforest
botanical garden with medicinal plants, are all drawn out of serious academic research projects. It was educational but never boring. It was actually not tourism at all in the Disney sense, but being granted privileged access to something precious. I realised my own ignorance bit by bit, and imperceptibly began to realise that the forest is not just gawping through binos but what actually sustains whole ways of life there, since times immemorial. Most stunning of all was the realisation that numerous species are still being discovered every year, very heartening if you’re accustomed to only hearing about their loss. Dr E.O. Wilson of Harvard University surveyed 365 ant species in 1995, a world record. Multiply this by flora and fauna, birds and mammals, and you’re left speechless.
Another highlight, perhaps the highlight, for me, was the nearby Sandoval Lake, adjacent to which is another award winning eco-lodge, Lake Sandoval Lodge. A shallow, landlocked lake, it has become an extraordinary habit for the threatened giant otter. We didn’t see any otters, but we did see black caimans lurking in the creek shallows, and dozens of other bird and mammal species including a whole troupe of red howler monkeys. At dawn, following a three kilometre walk through the jungle, the moment at which we paddled out of a narrow, dark creek onto the steaming, sun-streaked lake was one of those extraordinary moments that you fully believe you’ll take to the grave.
Other remarkable lodges we visited included Tambopata Eco-Lodge, which is linked to a research centre.
Later in the same trip we were introduced to all manner of common efforts to combine thoughtful tourism and travel initiatives with social progress and the alleviation of poverty combined with sustainability. Also, I saw slash ‘n burn fires by day and out of control forest fires by night. I never quite got used to the incongruity. Admittedly, we were in Peru at the end of an unusually intense dry season, just ahead of the rains. It would not normally be smoky. But since coming home I’ve been on websites showing satellite images of half of the Bolivian Amazon on fire, not to mention all manner of other aberrations of fires from northern Canada to Indonesia. The tensions between development and sustainability are palpable, as is the backdrop of global warming, but so are the conspicuous successes. The lodges can’t succeed without visitors, and nor can the forest, so if you are contemplating a life-time trip and want to retain a good conscience, you might consider going to an eco-lodge in the Amazon.
