Interview with Luis Castillo Mena,

After graduating as an economist, how did you become involved in conservationist movements?

When I graduated from the University, I started to work in a bank, in the financial department. I spent a few years there and I didn't feel that I could use the knowledge I learnt at the University. A friend of mine told me about AIDER so I decided to try and find a job there as an economist. They hired me four years ago. What I really like about my job is that we go to people, to native Peruvian communities, and that AIDER’s work contributes to improving their quality of life.

AIDER is a Peruvian multidisciplinary non-governmental organization (NGO) founded in 1986. AIDER works in two ecosystems: Amazonian forests and tropical dry forest, in the regions of Piura, Tumbes, Lambayeque, Ucayali, Huánuco and Madre de Dios; working at the local level with key actors at the regional and national level. Our institutional work lines are sustainable forest management, ecosystem services to face climate change, capacity building, gender, and strengthening social capital, participatory management of Natural Protected Areas (NPA), and combating the desertification and recovery of degraded areas.

We have forest conservation and sustainable development projects and initiatives, but in my favorite projects we involve local people to develop financial mechanisms, activities and programs; in order to contribute to improve their lifestyles. For example, we started working with 7 communities in a program called Communal Forest Management, now that the program is successful, we have extended it to other 21 native communities, and now  the first 7 communities  cooperate with the others as our partners. 

What are the challenges you see in Piura or in other parts of Peru that nature-based solutions can be, or is already an answer to?

The NBS initiatives help to create strategies that can face threats such as illegal logging or illegal mining, which are some of the principal threats of deforestation and degradation, that affect different ecosystems like dry and Amazonian forests.

In our case, AIDER as an NGO contributes to the mitigation of the advance of those threats by working with the people in capacity building for sustainable activities, and generate consciousness of them with the people in the sustainable use of their natural resources and providing other strategies to increase the benefits that they can obtain from the forest and lands.

In this sense, all our projects and initiatives are related to NBS, with both the human and non-human components integrated. The development and implementation of these projects and initiatives based on NBS is a good way to achieve goals with conserving the ecosystems in Piura and also at the national level.

Can you please describe the change native communities feel when you work with them?

We work with the population settled in the buffer zones of natural protected areas and with the native communities with participatory management strategies and sustainable forest management, cooperating with public actors, academia, civil society and the communities/population.

The communities/local populations are the main allies, since they are positioned in the limit zone of the forests and if we manage to work on sustainable proposals we avoid the threats of deforestation and degradation to enter the forests.

To see the change, you need to understand the reasons behind the threats,because in some cases people don’t have other ways of generating income other than i.e. implementation of sustainable productive economic activities. So, they have to go to the principal front of resources which, in many cases, is the forest and they need to log it to change it into a cultivation area.

When we work with the people in capacity building, strengthening of their abilities, promotion of sustainable practices and cobuilding of sustainable business plans we support them to leverage their natural resources in a sustainable way and at the same time secure the conservation and restoration of the forest (i.e. agroforestry systems). You’ll see a change in their behaviour expressed in more actions related to nature based solutions, discussions of sustainable practices in their assemblies, strengthening of their land governance and also the environmental education between the different generations.

 Can you mention an example where you could change the behaviour of local communities where you could convince them to manage the land in a different way and at the same time improve their lifestyles?

We have been working with native communities in Ucayali in the implementation of a communal forest management. We started to work there in 1992, and thanks to the transparency, constant communication, implementation of activities with results, the local communities trust us, which makes it possible to continue working with them contributing to achieving the management of their forest with sustainable development.

One of our major projects is related to avoiding the deforestation and degradation of the native community forests. Before we started working with them, unfortunately, some private companies used to see the forest as a bunch of trees as a basis of timber. So they only paid the communities for the wood without considering the multiple ecosystem services that the forests provide. So, we have implemented and developed workshops with the native communities and now they see all the values of the forest, not just the timber but a set of ecosystem services.

As a result of our contribution, their economic and technical point of view, and their behaviour has changed. With our technical support, they established a native entrepreneurship, a company called Forest Wonders (Nii Biri in Shipibo Conibo language) through which they sell their products in sustainable ways. They received the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certification, and they are very proud of their forest management being recognized worldwide.

Could they improve their lifestyles, their incomes as well?

Yes, Nii Biri’ sales increased 300 percent between 2022 and 2023, and a growth of 70% is projected to 2024 from the sales of 2023. The FSC certification helps to win some tenders from the government for the supply of chairs and desks for the local schools.

They are also expanding their activities to agroforestry systems: now they sell cocoa managed in a sustainable way. We contribute technical assessment through capacity building and technical following in agroforestry tasks such as pruning, maintenance, organic fertilization, etc.

More than half of your country is covered by the Amazon Forest. Perhaps we can consider the protection of the Amazon Rainforest as an international NBS as it affects the planet internationally. How do you feel when you see that people all over the world feel a kind of ownership over the protection of the Amazon Rainforest?

In Peru, the implementation of NBS is a national policy, and it is of national importance. The ministry of environment tries to generate more space in terms of providing publications and also data to support the initiatives related to the conservation and restoration of the rainforest. As a baseline, they look for nesting of all the carbon initiatives related to conservation or restoration of the forest. If that happens in 2025, Peru will be one of the first countries in Latin-America that achieved the nesting process.

As a Peruvian NGO, we provide technical data as support to the Ministry of Environment. For example, 70% of the map of deforestation of Peru has been built taking in consideration our data. For us, it’s important to provide data that is trustful in order to help other institutions to develop initiatives or projects whose final objective is to improve the livelihoods of people who live in or from the forest.

The world right now is facing real issues such as climate change, land degradation and loss of biodiversity. So, I believe that we all should work together in order to mitigate as soon as possible all the possible threats to the safety of the environment and all ecosystems. The different conferences of the parties (COP) seek to find solutions and actually call for action from the different countries. The Amazonian countries are not guilty of deforestation. For so many years, the different communities that live off and from these forests use them only to survive, but due to the lack of policies to protect these ecosystems others exploit their resources, and generate this deforestation and degradation of the ecosystems. Once again, I believe that protecting our forest is a team work, and all the different actors from all the countries should work as one to achieve the final goal which is to protect the world and secure a future for the next generations.

Only half of the country is covered by the Amazon Rainforest. Your organization typically works on other parts where nature also needs protection.

AIDER works not only in the Amazon Forest, but  also in the conservation and restoration of the dry forest. In this sense, it’s important to highlight that Peru has a good percentage of dry forests in the Northern region with unique biodiversity that contributes to the balance of the ecosystem.

Unfortunately, it’s difficult to implement activities to protect the dry ecosystems because almost all the funding goes to the Amazon Rainforest. In this sense, we promote the partnership between public and private sector, academia, other civil society organizations, and local communities to join efforts and prioritize in some way the actions on these fragile ecosystems.

One of AIDER's focuses is gender equity. How can you involve it in sustainable land use?

Gender equity is a cross-cutting approach of AIDER established as an institutional policy and is inherent to all our actions in the different initiatives and/or projects that we develop.

In this sense, we have always considered that the work of the social team is very important, since in our experience, before implementing any action, it is important to understand how to work together with communities.

To include this gender equity approach, it is important to raise awareness to the role of women and men in the activities to be carried out to achieve joint objectives.

At AIDER, we seek the participation of men and women on equal terms, because we think that they both have knowledge and uses, differentiated and complementary, of the land. In this sense, capacities are strengthened in men and women for greater female participation in forest and community governance, because of the gaps that women have to face, and their involvement in productive economic activities is promoted and encouraged, as part of the sustainability criteria for good land use practices.

Do women have a special role in the sustainable way of landuse?

Women play an important role in the sustainable use of land, because the particular knowledge they have about the use of resources is closely linked to conservation. Culturally and traditionally, they have knowledge of issues that men do not pay attention to and don’t have as developed within their productive activity in the ecosystem.

In this sense, due to their role as family caregivers, they are closely linked to food security and human health, thus, they have important knowledge and needs to conserve the natural space where they live, use resources with sustainability criteria, collect and use seeds, sustain agriculture, among others; which sustain the livelihoods where they and their families develop.

Additionally, since women are the ones who teach and transmit culture to their children, they are educators as well as consumers of traditions. This aspect is important, because it represents in itself an aspect of conservation of the environment where their generations have historically grown.

What we have achieved over time is that women have taken on a greater role in their native communities, generating income from sustainable economic activities such as the production of handicrafts, management of agroforestry plots, among others. In addition, some women leaders can represent native communities and their enterprises at national and international events.

How can a European research project working on NBS contribute to your activities?

AIDER believes in the power of synergies, and collaboration among private-public institutions, academia, indigenous people, local communities, civil society with sustainable and inclusive perspective.

Research is an important component because it will provide the tools, data and information to create innovative and integral projects or initiatives that would improve the chances to raise funds to achieve more sustainable goals in an efficient way.

Coevolvers Project as a European research project working on NBS will provide us with the opportunity to show how Nature Based Solutions are applied in the ground working with people  living in and for the forest; increasing the attention of the international community and the options of scale the experiences in other places.

So, if there’s research activity in our area, it will allow the increase of scientific publications. And if more people and scientists come to the area to do research, the threats against the different ecosystems will not increase.

So we will be glad if specialists and researchers, for example from academia, come and promote research in the area. If somebody wants to elaborate and develop some new conservation project or initiative in the area, we would be able to provide our expertise and technical support in order to work together as partners.