Resilience Dispatch #12: The Long View: A Conversation with Céline Cousteau

Celebrating Our Partners This Holiday Season

Michael Jenkins

Dear Friends,

As this year comes to a close, I have been reflecting on the partnerships it takes to do the work we do and support each other during difficult times. If 2020 has taught us anything, it is that we are stronger together. I am feeling grateful for our staff and partners and optimistic about the coming year.

In this spirit, please enjoy our recent conversation with Céline Cousteau, environmental activist, filmmaker, and cofounder of the Javari Project in Brazil. She stresses the importance of “the long view” approach to conservation and community wellness, which she has learned from indigenous friends and partners in the Amazon. I couldn’t agree with her more. The work we are doing in the Amazon to support strong indigenous territories, with leaders in a position to protect their communities and their forests, takes time and steady work. In 2020, we’ve had to find ways to balance that “long view” work with the emergency response also needed, as deforestation reached near-record levels and indigenous communities suffered from the COVID-19 pandemic and related food shortages.

We are also celebrating the grassroots work of Paul Sein Twa in Myanmar, winner of the Goldman Prize this year, for his work on the Salween Peace Park, a place where Karen peoples are rebuilding peaceful and traditional ways of life after decades of displacement from armed conflict.

Partners like Céline and Paul inspire us, and are key to strengthening the work we do. We hope their stories bring you a bit of end of year cheer as well. Happy Holidays and a Happy New Year from all of us at Forest Trends!

As ever, be well,

Michael

The Long View: A Conversation with Céline Cousteau

Beto Borges: Thank you for being here, Céline. You’ve recently created a film, Tribes on the Edge, about the struggles of indigenous peoples in the Javari Valley, Brazil, and you’ve founded the Javari Project, an impact campaign born of the film.  I think both you and the Javari Project have a beautiful story that people feel drawn to. Could you tell us how your journey with filming Tribes on the Edge started?

Céline Cousteau: The Javari territory in Brazil is the second largest in the country, about the size of Austria or Portugal. As far as I know, there are six contacted tribes. There are also the largest number of uncontacted peoples in the entire Amazon living in this region. Which makes them very vulnerable to outsiders. And this is a region that has been declared irreplaceable in terms of biodiversity by the IUCN.

I first went to the Javari in 2007. That’s when I met Beto Marubo of the Marubo people. He is the reason I created the film. In 2010, Beto [Marubo] wrote me an email asking me to tell their story, telling me they trusted me with it.

So I returned to the Javari in 2013 to begin filming. Tribes on the Edge has become much bigger than I ever thought it would. Back then, I imagined it would be an 8 to 10-minute film. It’s now a 78-minute film and we’ve done numerous grassroots screenings with a big focus on educational outreach. I really believe in order to do some good, I have to honor my promise to them to tell their story, and I’ve chosen to do more. Thus, the film has become a catalyst for the Javari Project.

Beto Borges: What’s the situation there now? What is threatening the people of the Javari?

Céline Cousteau: The threats are very much like the ones elsewhere in the Amazon: illegal deforestation, illegal gold mining, which pollutes the rivers, natural resource depletion, illegal fishing and hunting.  There are aggressive interactions between illegal trespassers and the indigenous peoples themselves.

On top of that, there is an administration in Brazil that’s not very friendly towards indigenous rights and the environment. Even though Javari peoples have land that has been designated as their territory, there’s not much defense or support from the government.

It’s also the age-old story of outsiders coming in and bringing their disesases, which is even more evident now with COVID-19. The message I get from them is: we’ve seen this before. And it’s because they saw malaria come in, tuberculosis, hepatitis.

The less obvious threat to people in the Javari is that when some indigenous people leave the territory, they don’t really have a good support system. There are not a lot of resources and opportunities available to them. So they go to the border town of Atalaia do Norte, which is a challenging place, to say the least, and unfortunately, some of them fall into illegal activities as sources of income because there is no alternative. This is detrimental to their own land. If provided with other options and solutions for economic self-determination, they would be more ready for alternatives.

Beto Borges: We connected earlier this year and have discussed the future of the Javari Project and an evolving partnership between your team and Forest Trends’ Communities and Territorial Governance Initiative. It would be great to hear your thoughts on what we are building together.

Céline Cousteau: We have come to understand that helping bring economic value to the Javari through the people that are there will be one of the ways to support their cause and contribute to conserve their forest homelands. One of the best ways to do that is to help people in the Javari strengthen sovereignty over their territories.

That’s why we came to Forest Trends, to learn about territorial governance and how to have the right conversations that will lead to actionable plans for indigenous communities.

Partnerships are essential to us getting this work done. To me, the authenticity with which people do what they do is more important than the resources they might have. Much like my team and I have built trust and credibility with people in the Javari, investors, and other collaborators, we recognized that Forest Trends has done the same where it works and has the expertise we need in a partner on the Javari Project.

Read the full conversation on our Viewpoints blog

Congratulations to Paul Sein Twa!

We are delighted to share that Paul Sein Twa was just awarded the Goldman Environmental Prize for his work creating a 1.3 million acre indigenous “Peace Park” on ancestral Karen lands in Myanmar. The Salween Peace Park is a ground-breaking indigenous nature reserve anchored in customary land/resource rights.

Yet the Peace Park is actually still not legally recognized by the Union Government of Myanmar or Myanmar law – precisely because the Park is affirming ethnic minority groups’ self-determination and rights to their ancestral lands. Myanmar’s peace process has been stalled for years over the issue of Union Government versus ethnic minority-led regional control over natural resources.

We have worked closely with Paul and his partners for years helping build out this vision. We celebrate him and the recognition of his tireless work.

In Case You Missed It: Expert Panel on Climate Funding and Indigenous Communities

We convened a panel of experts and community representatives last week to discuss in depth how international climate funding is falling short when it comes to supporting indigenous forest guardians in the Amazon and elsewhere around the world. For ideas on the pathway forward and key takeaways, access the video recording here.