| Symbiotic
Relationship :
How Technology
is Saving the Rainforest
To some, the technological prowess of our culture is seen as the
ultimate destructive mechanization – responsible for everything
from our current global ecological crisis to the general feelings
of isolation and loneliness afflicting the modern world.
But is this
necessarily the case?
Enter Mark Plotkin,
founder of the Amazon Conservation Team (ACT). Plotkin is a renowned
ethno-botanist and author with a passion for preserving the shamanic
and pharmacological knowledge of indigenous people. He’s
spent the past 20 years living among the most isolated tribes
on the planet. Today, he’s spearheading a comprehensive
rainforest mapping initiative that teaches Amazonian Indians to
use Google Earth, Global Positioning System (GPS) mapping, and
computers in order to prevent their land and culture from being
lost forever.
PRESERVING BIODIVERSITY
The Amazon is
under constant threat from loggers, miners, farmers, and bio-prospectors
out to make a buck off the newest miracle cure. Equally threatened
are its human inhabitants who depend on the forest for their livelihood.
But now, thanks to ACT and the help of local governments, Amazonian
Indians can be seen clad in their traditional garb toting GPS
units or accessing Google Earth on laptops to monitor deforestation
and report illegal mining.
Since the early
1990’s, tens of thousands of informal gold miners have descended
on the region like ants on honey, often sneaking illegally onto
Indian reserves and national parks. These mines have wreaked havoc
on the rainforest ecosystem – causing deforestation, mercury
pollution, and sedimentation of rivers. Historically, such small-scale
mining has been almost impossible to detect and prevent. That’s
where Google Earth’s high resolution imagery comes in.
“Google
Earth is used primarily for vigilance,” said Vasco van Roosmalen,
ACT’s Brazil program director. “Indians log on to
Google Earth and study images, inch by inch, looking to see where
new goldmines are popping up or where invasions are occurring.
They are able to use these images to find even the smallest gold
mine.”
Once the Indians’
suspicions are piqued, they note the coordinates of a disturbance
and go on foot patrol with government officials to investigate
further. Plotkin feels the best shot at preserving the Amazon
comes from empowering the indigenous people who live there.
“It’s
our strong belief that the people who best know, use and protect
biodiversity are the indigenous people who live in these forests,”
he said.
SECURING LAND
RIGHTS
Besides preventing
environmental destruction, ACT is also helping Indians generate
maps to document their land use, which helps prevent its acquisition
by developers. By using GPS units to record the locations of materials
for houses, supplies for building canoes, food, and any other
geographical areas essential to survival, they are able to generate
meticulously detailed maps. These maps help illustrate to politicians
and business men why so few Indians need so much land, thereby
cementing their claims to it.
The program’s
largest success is the mapping of ten million acres in the Tumucumaque
Indigenous Park and the Rio Paru d’Este Indigenous Land
– a territory the size of the Netherlands. The Tumucumaque
map has 2,000 indigenous place names that had never been recorded,
and each of those names is a story tied to the land.
“When
we did one of the first mapping projects,” said Plotkin,
“Indians went into villages and forests to get the names
of the places. When they returned, they said it was taking longer
than expected because the elders spent half an hour telling them
the story behind the name, before they revealed the name.”
In addition
to marking locations for resources, the Indians mark areas plentiful
with game animals and mythological animals with deep spiritual
meanings. Often the homes of these spiritual animals – such
as two-headed jaguars – are strict no-hunting zones and
contain the sources of watersheds and areas of high biodiversity
the Indians don’t want disturbed.
PROTECTING CULTURE
Perhaps the
most exciting aspect to this fusion of traditional know-how and
technology is the Indians’ newfound ability to document
their history. The allure of Western life often causes younger
generations to move to cities, severely threatening the continuation
of indigenous culture. But now the technology-thirsty youth have
regained an interest in protecting the forest and bonding with
their parents and grandparents.
In the process
of creating the maps, Indians began tape-recording the stories
of their elders and used the recordings to make their own educational
materials. To the Indians this is very important, because it makes
their culture relevant to the new generation and provides an easy
way for older generations to pass on their knowledge which would
have otherwise been permanently lost. The maps have completely
revitalized cultures on the verge of extinction.
“The White
men have the Bible and other books to teach their kids about their
ancestors. We now have our map to teach our children our history,”
Apalai chief Joao Arana was quoted as saying in an ACT report
on the project.
THE WAY OF THE
FUTURE
The most important
thing about ACT’s efforts is that the decision to make the
maps was made by Indians – the nonprofit group merely provides
the methodology. Currently, ACT has ambitious plans to map at
least 100 million acres of rainforest and they’re making
headway. One of their chief cartographers, Wuta of the Trio tribe
in the northeast Amazon, has personally been in charge of mapping
20-million acres. He joined the project after a failed attempt
to live in the city that ended with him back in the forest picking
up his former life more ambitiously than ever.
There is hope
that this model of empowering indigenous people to have the wherewithal
to protect their land and preserve their culture will spread to
other conservation efforts as well. Plotkin’s Amazon Conservation
Team is just one example of a way that technology and nature may
coexist. Across the globe, advances in biomimicry – that
is, using nature as a model for technology – and green chemistry
demonstrate that technology is simply a tool. When put to good
use, it can heal just as well as it destroys.
By
Jason Glover
|
