Conservation Agreement Promotes Indigenous Stewardship
A new conservation agreement between UAC and the Ashéninka community of Dulce Gloria focuses on planning, vigilance, and sustainable livelihood initiatives.
The community of Dulce Gloria is located in the headwaters of the Yurúa River, in one of the most remote parts of the Peruvian Amazon. It covers more than 35,000 hectares of intact forest, and shares a border with both the Yurua Communal Conservation Concession and the Murunahua Indigenous Reserve for isolated tribes. This Ashéninka community of approximately 300 people has long had a strong conservation ethic, and serves as an example to the other 15 Yurua communities.
In January, we signed an agreement with Dulce Gloria to help implement various activities to promote sustainable and profitable economic activities while strengthening its capacity to protect its lands as well as the adjacent protected areas. Initial activities will include leading development of a “Life Plan,” a several-week participatory process that will help the community strategize about their future by answering: Who we are? What do we want? And how do we do it?
The Life Plan will identify priority, future projects that utilize abundant resources in both a sustainable and profitable manner. Among these will be a fishing project that the community already identified as a priority.
”The communities of Yurúa must carry out projects with a sustainable approach. We in Dulce Gloria are now starting the community fishing pilot project. I talk a lot with the community members that we need to work, because if we want to eat cassava, we must first plant our fields to be able to eat, that is what I always tell my community members. Thanks to the agreement signed with Upper Amazon Conservancy, we are achieving the implementation of our project. Now since we have this opportunity, we are going to take advantage of it to grow and increase our production to improve our quality of life in the community."
–Arlindo Ruiz, chief of the Ashéninka Community of Dulce Gloria.
In February, we began training men and women sustainably manage fishing activities in the community’s many oxbow lakes. Among the project’s objectives is to enable the community to bring fresh fish to market in the region’s small town of Puerto Breu, a several day trip downstream, before spoiling, thus increasing the price they receive from store owners and other buyers. Initial investments included a freezer and solar power system.
This small investment is allowing community members to increase income from fish, while generating new interest in the sustainable management of Dulce Gloria’s abundant resources.
The Ashéninka community of Dulce Gloria is located on the Yurúa River, close to the Murunahua Indigenous Reserve for Indigenous peoples in voluntary isolation.