Betty’s & Taylors of Harrogate saving an area of rainforest in Peru (From York Press)

Betty’s & Taylors of Harrogate saving an area of rainforest in Peru

9:47am Wednesday 3rd February 2010 in

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CRISTINA Talens knew she had been accepted by the Ashaninka people when she was invited to drink spit beer. It is the tipple of choice for the rainforest people of the Ene River region of Peru.

“It is made by pounding steamed manioc [a type of root vegetable] and then chewing and spitting sweet potato and achiote [similar to beetroot] into the mixture and leaving it to ferment for several days,” says Cristina, the ethical trading manager with Harrogate-based Betty’s & Taylors.

And was it good? Cristina smiles diplomatically. It turns your lips red, she says. “But it is apparently very tasty!”

That “apparently” speaks volumes. But spit beer certainly beat the other local delicacy Cristina was invited to try: fresh grubs. The trick is to bite off the head – which is full of teeth – before swallowing the body, which is very nutritious, she says.

H’mm. The Ashaninka clearly know what they are doing, however. They have lived in the rainforests along the River Ene, in the uppermost reaches of the Amazon basin, for as long as they can remember. And they have done so sustainably. They live with the forest, a part of it, rather than exploiting it, Cristina explains.

For protein, they rely on fish from the river and hunted meat – along with grubs, caterpillars and snails. Each Ashaninka family has its own ‘chakra’ – a one- or two-acre plot, where they grow crops such as yucca, sesame, coffee and cocoa.

Instead of farming the soil to exhaustion, however, they change plots every five years or so, allowing their old plot to return to the forest. “Then they might come back to it years and years later,” Cristina says. “They don’t exploit the land. They just take what they need.”

Now, however, that traditional way of life is under threat: from illegal loggers, oil companies, cocaine barons, and even Peru’s own government, which wants to build a hydro-electric dam. “If that does get built, it would flood 17 of the 33 Ashaninka communities,” Cristina says.

Which is why Cristina found herself journeying to this remote corner where the Amazon meets the Andes.

Her boss, Betty’s & Taylor’s chief executive Jonathan Wild – who is the great nephew of the family firm’s founder Frederick Belmont – is passionate about trees.

It all started 20 years ago when his children, Chloe and Daniel, then aged seven and five, watched a clip on Blue Peter about the destruction of rainforests.

“I came home from work early, and the children were very upset,” Jonathan recalls.

The children told him about how the programme had shown rainforests being burned. Like any father, he wanted to offer comfort.

“I said ‘don’t worry, we will replace all those trees! If you plant one, I will find a way of planting 999,999 more’.”

His children planted that first tree, in Harrogate, 20 years go this month. Since then, Jonathan has more than lived up to his pledge to plant a million more. Over the past two decades, Betty’s & Taylors have planted more than three million trees on four continents.

Trees are often described as the lungs of the planet, Jonathan says. Actually, technically speaking they are just the opposite. Lungs breathe in oxygen and breathe out carbon dioxide. Trees do just the reverse: absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, and producing lots of fresh, clean oxygen.

The trouble is, when we start chopping down and burning forests, the carbon dioxide the trees have absorbed is released back into the atmosphere, he says.

“Deforestation produces about 20 per cent of all global carbon emissions,” Jonathan says. “That is more than the whole of the world’s transport put together.”

If we stopped the wholesale destruction of the world’s rainforests, in other words, we could – more or less – fly and drive to our hearts’ content and the world would still be a healthier place.

But rainforest destruction is continuing at a relentless pace. “In my lifetime, the amount of the earth which is covered by rainforest has dropped from 10 per cent to five per cent,” Jonathan says. “In my lifetime, it has halved.”

That is a frightening thought – which is why, when Jonathan was looking round for a project to follow up the planting of three million trees, he had the idea of trying to save existing rainforests.

And, since his company is a Yorkshire one, he hit on the idea of trying to save an area of rainforest the size of Yorkshire. There is a neat symmetry to it, he says. Yorkshire, with its coal and steel industries, was one of the heartlands of the Industrial Revolution – and so was one of the first big carbon polluters. “So I thought wouldn’t it be wonderful if we led the carbon conservation revolution too?”

The best people to protect rainforests, however, are those who have been living sustainably in them for generations.

In partnership with the Rainforest Foundation, the search began for regions of the world where it was felt that, with a bit of international help, local people would stand the best chance of protecting their forests.

Which is why, early last year, Cristina Talens found herself journeying with Simon Counsell of the Rainforest Foundation to visit the Ashaninka of Peru, and the rainforests of the River Ene. “The forest is only standing because the Ashaninka are there,” Cristina says. “If they weren’t, it would have been cleared long ago. They are in the frontline.”

Her journey began with a flight to the Peruvian capital, Lima. From there, a nine-hour bus journey took her up over the roof of the Andes and dipping down the other side to the town of Satipo.

There followed a further five-hour bus journey to reach the town of Puerto Ocopa on the River Ene – and then an eight-hour journey down the river by boat to the Ashaninka heartlands.

The journey was a real eye-opener, she admits. It was the first time she had seen for herself the way the rainforest generates its own climate of clouds and rain. “I saw the mist gathering over the trees – the trees actually generating the clouds that would then produce rain.”

She was amazed, too, when she got to Puerto Ocopa, at how many people suddenly appeared out of the surrounding forests to take the boat.

The boat travels up the Ene only every two weeks, she says. “The Ashaninka community remained isolated from outside influences until very recently.”

That should be Ashaninka communities. There are more than 30 of them – each typically consisting of 50 families or so, living in villages on the banks of the Ene.

But more than 10,000 people have now rallied together under the leadership of local woman Ruth Buendia to form CARE (Ashaninka Communities of the River Ene) in an attempt to resist the threats to their way of life.

They have already secured legal rights to the land on which they live. What they need now is the support to enable them to make use of those rights to protect their way of life.

The civil war with the Maoist Shining Path guerrillas in the 1980s and 1990s took a terrible toll, Cristina says. More than half of those now living in Ashaninka communities are aged under 15.

“But they are coming back to their villages. They do not want to move away. They have a very clear vision of what it is to live like an Ashaninka.”

Over the next three years, Betty’s & Taylors, through the Yorkshire Rainforest Project, will be spending £750,000 helping them to do that.

Think of it as Yorkshire’s payback for helping to launch the Industrial Revolution, if you like. If the project works, it will certainly be a project we can all be proud of.

• To find out more about the Yorkshire Rainforest project, visit yorkshirerainforestproject.co.uk

Many threats face traditional ways

THERE are many threats to the traditional Ashaninka way of life, and so to the rainforest in which they live. They include:

• Peruvian government attempts to develop a hydro-electric dam. “If that happened, it would flood 17 of the 33 Ashaninka communities,” says Cristina Talens.

• Illegal logging. The Ashaninka people have land rights, and should be able to turn illegal loggers away. But the vast majority of them do not speak Spanish, so cannot negotiate or challenge legal-looking papers.

• Coca growing to produce cocaine. Local Ashaninka communities have armed themselves and mount 24-hour patrols through the forest to try to deter coca growers. But it is a dangerous business, Cristina says.

• Oil companies keen to take geological samples to search for oil and other minerals deep beneath the rainforest. “The Ashaninka have land rights, but these companies often say they have government consent to explore the area,” Cristina says.

The Yorkshire rainforest project has three aims:

• To help the Ashaninka develop sustainable forest management plans

• To identify local resources that would enable the Ashaninka to continue to live sustainable lives in their forest

• To develop potential sources of income, that would enable the Ashaninka to pay for medicines, and for their children’s education

The Yorkshire Rainforest Project aims to fund a CARE team, which will include lawyers and experts on local resources, to develop a forest management plan.

Ashaninka people are being consulted about what resources there are in the rainforest that would enable them to generate income.

They will then be given help to develop some of these ideas into sustainable ways of making a living in the forest.

Funding has initially been granted for three years – starting from July last year – at £250,000 a year. The scheme will be reviewed once that time is up, says Cristina.

Jonathan Wild hopes the Ashaninka project will ultimately be just one of several around the world that will save an area of rainforest the size of Yorkshire.