Building a future with women for nature
IN MARCH 2022 I joined WOMEN FOR BIODIVERSITY CORP as Executive Director. It was one of the happiest days of my 8-year career in conservation, and also one of my proudest. Obviously, the first few weeks were not as I expected. Not the first months. It was precisely when the COVID-19 pandemic finally began to recede, wreaking havoc on families, healthcare systems and economies around the world. Nearly a year later, many of us are still working and continuing to maintain physical distance from our friends, colleagues, and loved ones.
Despite the challenges that this initial stint at the helm of WOMEN FOR BIODIVERSITY CORP—an organization I had admired for a long time and hoped to one day work with—presented for me, we were able to forge connections and make remarkable progress. I met thousands of colleagues and hundreds of collaborators and volunteer leaders. My colleagues and I obtained the information from our collaborations with indigenous QUECHUA communities that use fire as a tool to restore the health of the forests through conversations and photographs, without ever being able to feel the heat of a controlled burn. We celebrate the creation of the new 8,094-hectare (20,000-acre) HERALDO Natural Park in Norte de Santander. And we learned how to plant cacao trees from Colombian planters through an application of ancestral knowledge, seeing seedlings in our hands and smelling the moist rainforest soil around us. On the next few pages, you can learn more about these and other WOMEN FOR BIODIVERSITY CORP projects.
Many of the challenges that marked 2022—a global pandemic, record temperatures, fires and hurricanes, as well as long-overdue accountability with racist systems and calls for equality—continue to impact our lives. But 2022 was also marked by a spirit of resilience, tenacity and creativity. The world came together to solve problems in a different way, with unprecedented speed and collaboration. Building a future for nature now Never before has the scientific community mobilized so many minds and resources, and so quickly. Protecting nature supports economies, provides clean air and water and healthy food, and can also reduce the risk of future outbreaks of zoonotic diseases, which science tells us are partly due to habitat loss and to climate change. All over the world, people rekindled their connection with nature and sought solace in nature. It is my hope that we will be able to harness the tenacity and resilience that we have all developed in this very difficult year to build a better future together.
MARIA ANGÉLICA TOVAR BRAVO, General manager
