Amazon's people help themselves with ecotourism: see the photos

“The forest gives us life. Because the forest for us is full of medicine; it’s our pharmacy. It has everything,” says Tomas Grefa, an elder and shaman of San Victoriano, an Initiative for the Conservation of the Andean Amazon (ICAA) partner community. Photograph: Jungwon Kim/Rainforest Alliance

The Rainforest Alliance’s Jungwon Kim penned a compelling report about how people from some of the Amazon’s most remote communities are saving their homes thanks to their savvy ecotourism and conservation programs.

Seventeen indigenous forest communities across Ecuador, Peru and Colombia have been working with the Rainforest Alliance’s Sustainable Landscapes project. Below are photographs of Kim’s visit to Ecuador.

Rebecca Gualinga and a colleague from the Sani Warmi artisans group prepare a traditional meal for ecotourists, including maito, or fish wrapped and grilled in leaves, with plantains, cassava and beetle larvae. Photograph: Jungwon Kim/Rainforest Alliance

Josué Avila, a nature guide from the Sani Kichwa community, takes Jungwon Kim into the jungle. “Look closely at the vines in your path because there are pythons and boa constrictors here,” he warns. Photograph: Jungwon Kim/Rainforest Alliance

“Our culture, from the very beginning, has been to protect the forest,” says Orlando Gualinga, a fourth-generation shaman and former oil worker who envisioned the ecotourism possibilities – now reality – for his community. Photograph: Jungwon Kim/Rainforest Alliance

Jungwon Kim is the Rainforest Alliance senior editorial manager and is based in New York City.

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