Adventures In The Amazon

Jan 31. 14

 

The Brazil Nut tree grows in pristine rainforest environments. By working with Brazil Nut farmers, traders and exporters as well as companies that buy Brazil Nuts we are working to ensure that communities are more resilient and the environment is protected in one of the most biodiverse areas on the planet.

 

This project is in collaboration with one of the largest retailers in North America on their brazil nut value chain, an innovative company that is frankly and deeply concerned with the fact that certain global issues will put at risk their supply chains. They contracted One Sky to work with members of the entire value chain (from local producers in native communities through to exporters in Lima) in a program that will support them to protect their supply through greater sustainability.  They were interested to work with one sky primiarly because of our theory of change and the innovative methods we take to engage in change. Though we can indeed finetune this collaboration, there are a lot of insights we can derive from it, namely: that CSOs and private sector have a lot to share and can create powerful synergies.

 

While private sector is in the business of large scale finance; CSOs are in the business of social change. We know most intimately and sophisticatedly how change happens across a society, and so are well situated to carry out this change process. And, climate change requires nothing short of a transformative change across multiple sectors in society, which is simply something better carried out by CSOs than directly by business. While, at the same time, the private sector is increasingly seeing their own need for this change to occur.

 

The program has held the objective of laying emergent ground for transformation of this value change, towards an intrinsic sustainabilty and community resilience. It has included five leadership and sustainability retreats in Peru and Bolivia, with the last one to occur this October 2014.