Dr. Erika Berenguer measuring an Amazonian tree. (Photo Credit Marizilda Cruppe Rede Amazônia Sustentável)
“The relationship I had with the land, the little routines I had developed about where we ate lunch or which trees to check for fruit—all that was gone. It was like walking through a cemetery,” Berenguer said, taking a deep breath.
“It’s hard to talk about.”
A Brazilian native and senior research associated at the University of Oxford, Berenguer stayed until December that year. She returns annually for six months, so was in the Amazon again in 2023 when more fires burned. She developed pneumonia from inhaling the smoke, as well as a trauma-related gastric condition.
Climate change is having a direct impact on my health.
Dr. Erika BerenguerScientistUniversity of Oxford and Lancaster University
Dr. Erika Berenguer on top of a canopy tower in the Brazilian Amazon. (Photo Credit Dr. Berenguer)
Berenguer said stronger policies may be needed to enforce environmental protection. Fire detection sensors might help achieve her goal, once they are adapted to function in the Amazon’s thick forest and with the low-lying fires.
Though it’s a challenge, she insists on hope. “The forest is what makes me get out of bed every day and feel everything is not lost,” she said. “The six months I spend there every year is my chance to reconnect with myself and the place I find most important in the world.”
A Chef Cooks for Biodiversity
What is A Walk in the Piedmont Garua Forest?
Not a stroll, but a dish. A collection of delicacies designed by Ecuadorian chef Rodrigo Pacheco and placed inside the compartments of an edible tagua nut and sometimes served to patrons when they visit Bocavaldivia Restaurant in Puerto Cayo, on the rural coast of Ecuador’s Manabi Province.
Maybe instead of that, they will partake of a smoked oyster tart topped with fresh onion flowers, or a quinoa and wild herb salad, or Amazonian fish with plantain.
Before dinner, they might join Pacheco in what he calls his “cupboard” – the forest that surrounds the open-air restaurant and is home to more than 80 types of fruits, vegetables, flowers, roots, and seeds.
For nine years, Pacheco has been harvesting and serving sustainable food at Bocavaldivia. He says his guests have increased appreciation for biodiversity, cultural diversity and the need to protect the planet.
Now through the Bocavaldivia Foundation, he has launched a mission to connect ecosystems and create the Biodiverse Edible Forest, a corridor of land set aside to protect biodiversity, promote ecotourism, and encourage sustainable living.
“Gastronomy is a vehicle to convey an important message,” he said.
A Strip of Protected Land from the Galapagos to the Amazon
Pacheco grew up in Quito, Ecuador, and “the kitchen was always the heart of the home,” he said. “I was a hyperactive kid, so to keep an eye on me, my mom gave me tasks. I was always chopping, or mixing, or helping with the dough to make traditional Ecuadorian sweets.”
After ten years studying and working in Chile and France, Pacheco moved to Puerto Cayo 12 years ago with his wife and partner Dayra Reyes.
“It’s isolated, and I didn’t want to travel 180 kilometers just to buy ingredients,” he said. So he turned to the land.
His foundation has acquired 150 hectares (370 acres) and is working with donors to protect even more, prioritizing lands that can connect to their reserves on Ecuador’s Pacific Coast. The long-term goal is to establish a strip of protected land extending from the Galapagos to the Amazon.
A Walk in the Piedmont Garua Forest, a dish of forest fruits served in the tagua palm seed. (Photo Courtesy of Rodrigo Pacheco)
“I want to scale this to 50,000 hectares—a corridor of sustainability,” he said. “When you create a forest, you are creating carbon capture, nutrition, water retention, and economic opportunities for communities.”
This climate solution aligns local communities with the private sector, local and international philanthropies, academics, and scientists, he said. As he seeks investments and support, his forest restaurant where this movement started–as well as Foresta, the restaurant he owns in Quito with staff hired exclusively from Indigenous communities–continues to play a role.
A good meal means a closed deal.
Rodrigo PachechoEcuadorian Chef
An Activist is Born on the School Bus
Xiomara Acevedo during a climate justice panel in Baku in 2024. (Photo Courtesy of Xiomara Acevedo)
It started with noticing.
On her 25-minute bus ride to school, then-10-year-old Xiomara Acevedo observed that some neighborhoods seemed cleaner and greener than others in her Colombian seaport city of Barranquilla.
Environmental justice was not the first phrase that occurred to her as a child. But it was one she settled on later.
Why Are Women's Voices Crucial?
- 1.Climate change disproportionally impacts women, so their viewpoints need to be front and center. “Women are in the frontlines, but often not among the decision-makers," Acevedo said.
- 2.Women often take on the bulk of a community’s caretaking role, and may be best positioned to anticipate the concerns of a community’s most vulnerable members.
- 3.Women have a deeper recognition of power imbalances, and this leads to more inclusive practices is needed to center inequities while addressing climate change.
The Sound of Rain
The cicadas of summer. An ice cream truck’s jingle. The recess bell. These are among sounds that reignite a sense of childhood joy.
For young Carlos Magno growing up in a semi-arid region of northeastern Brazil, that special sound that hinted at something good to come was the drumbeat of rainfall.
“Until today, that sound makes me smile,” he said. “In the city where I live now, though, the response is very different. Rain is a problem here; it causes flooding and property damage and can even kill” as evidenced when 133 people died in 2022 landslides and flashfloods triggered by intense rainfall.
Magno is from Paraiba, an agricultural state some 600 kilometers (375 miles) from his current home in the city of Recife.
Generations of his family have farmed there, working as laborers on a large estate. He remembers helping his parents on the cotton fields starting when he was about 12 years old. When he reached young adulthood, farming in Paraiba no longer seemed to offer a viable life. His two siblings also left, all of them climate migrants.
His heart remains with Paraiba, though – it is still “home. So he is working with the Latin America Semiarid Platform to help create a cross-national strategy to scale technologies aimed at ensuring water, food, and land rights in territories where his parents still live, and across Latin America.
People don’t want to leave their homes. We have big challenges, but I believe we can change the reality together.
Carlos MagnoLatin America Semiarid Platform
More in this Matter of Impact Edition
The Isolated People are the Amazon’s Essential Climate Warriors
The Indigenous communities that favor isolation are critical custodians of biodiversity and guardians against the encroaching tide of climate change in the Amazon rainforest.
read more