Big Bet: Create the world’s largest Biodiverse Edible Forest to protect nature, ancestral knowledge and create economic opportunity for local communities to put biodiversity on the plate.
Project: Create the largest cross-country corridor of regenerated forest producing edible native species. This innovative approach leverages downstream food systems to protect, strengthen, expand, and reconnect natural ecosystems and cultural diversity of indigenous peoples across northern Latin America. This project conserves primary forest in its pristine state; monitors biodiversity; restores deforested areas with regenerative methods; promotes sustainable gastronomy and ecological tourism as sources of transversal economy; and trains future generations to continue the work.
Rodrigo Pacheco is an Ecuadorian chef, who fulfills the diplomatic role as Goodwill Ambassador in Ecuador, at the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. He attracted the attention of the world through his culinary art and his innovative project “The largest Biodiverse Edible Forest in the world” that he develops as Executive Director of the Bocavaldivia Foundation, to address socio-environmental causes, through a mechanism of conservation, restoration and strengthening catalyzed by gastronomy.
His vision, his career and his extraordinary participation in the gastronomic competition “The Final Table” produced by Netflix, in addition to his outstanding performance as a jury at the Bocuse d’Or world gastronomy competition, have been well recognized by the press and international organizations.
Rodrigo, in addition to being the executive chef and founder of Bocavaldivia restaurant and Foresta restaurant, is a specialist in sustainable tourism and defender of nature, who bases his gastronomy on restoring and connecting, ecosystems, knowledge and flavors. One of his main life goals is to create the most extensive natural, cultural and community corridor on the entire planet.