La Fundacion Espavé
(Articulo en espanol)
Trip to 7 communities of the Atrato river with Sergio Arango, shareholder and founder of Espavé, Rodolfo Paredes, Nemecio Palacios and Nicomedes Corrales
Choco, Colombia
Abstract :
The Colombian department of Chocó is one of the richest regions in the world in terms of biodiversity but at the same time it is one of the poorest of the country. Fundación Espavé, co-founded by Sergio Arango, Ashoka fellow, looks for invisible products of the forest- excluding wood – that could represent economic alternatives for the communities. The association discovered the presence of a fruit called naïdi or açaï, unknown in Colombia, but used in Brazil and in the USA. The harvest is starting soon! I visited some communities of Atrato River and met partners of the association.
The problem:
Chocó is a Colombian region suffering from a huge paradox: it is one of the richest regions in the world in terms of forest resources – containing the rainiest place in the world – but it is one of the poorest regions of the country. Why? There are several explanations.
First reason: the soil is barely farmable. The diet is mostly based on fish and plantain banana. The native people from the forest have been living in harmony with nature before the arrival of timber and extractive industries. Today, wood, legal or illegal, is almost the unique source of some revenues. The average monthly income of a household is 86 000 Colombian pesos, which represents less than $2 per day for a family with 3 or more children. Half of the region’s inhabitants don’t have access to healthcare. In the community of La Boba, where 35 families live, the school has no library, no restrooms, no electric plant and the healthcare center is collapsing.
The mining part of the region is falling into decline. Extractive multinational companies have brought alcoholism, prostitution and school drop-out.
The isolation of these communities is another factor that contributes to their poverty. This zone lacks of roads. You need hours of boat, with or without engine, to reach Quibdó, the capital of the department. From Medellin, we had to take a light aircraft and a boat.
Finally, Chocó has also experienced conflicts between the FARC and the paramilitaries. Lots of communities are formed by displaced people. There took place the massacre of Bellavista in 2002. As we landed, we could see the location of the massacre on the other side of the river. These days, part of the region is controlled by the army. During the conflicts, the region had been invaded by international NGOs. Today they are all gone.
The region is particularly complex: assisted for years of conflict, it is now abandoned. Economic alternatives are necessary.
Sergio Arango, who studied animal husbandry and achieved an MBA, helped 25 years ago with the entitlement of the forest. But then he asked himself: now that people own their land, what will they do with it? How could this land be given value?
Sergio co-founded the Fundación Espavé in 1994. Their goal was to find and develop economic alternatives of sustainable use of the Colombian Pacific forest resources. The inhabitants of this region are 80% Afro-Colombian and 20% Indigenous communities.
The innovative solution:
Fundación Espavé created the social enterprise Bosque Humedo Biodiverso S.A.S, with the objective of developing small chains of forest products, so far invisible and unknown, that could represent new opportunities. Several projects were initiated. The last one – the largest until now – is the harvest and the sale of naïdi, the last invisible product of the forest identified!
You don’t know what a naïdi is? Maybe the name açaï rings a bell? It is a fruit extracted from a palm mostly consumed in Brazil and in the US. It is also given a third name here: murrapo, not to be mixed up with an homologous small plantain!
The association has identified more than 120 000 hectares of this palm which was unknown by the population and the country! In the forest, they did not know that they could climb the tree and eat the fruit!
Bosque Humedo trains those who are interested by the harvest of the fruit and the palm heart in 22 communities (to begin with), organizes transport logistics to reach the plant and buys the fruit and the palm heart. Each family is paid for each kilo of fruit and heart palm delivered. The objective would be for each family to earn between 400 000 and 500 000 Colombian pesos a month (i.e $216 to $270). A floating group collects the products from community to community and brings them to a processing plant in the city of Vigia del Fuerte. Another company called Naïdi S.A., founded by businessmen from the neighboring department of Antioquia, builds the plant, processes the fruit and exports the products to the US. Bosque Humedo owning 10% of Naïdi S.A.
This project is a dance between three partners : Espavé, Cocomacia and the communities. Cocomacia – “Consejo Comunitario Mayor de la Asociacion Campesina Integral del Atrato” – is the landlord of the territory and defends the interests of the communities.
The community owns a quarter of Bosque Humedo, the three other quarters belong to Espavé, Cocomacia and local businessmen. Bosque Humedo is currently financially supported by the Grupo Empresarial Antioqueno (group of companies from Antioquia) and WWF.
The strategy and the trip across the communities:
How does Espavé find those “invisible” products? First, Sergio’s 25 years of experience help a lot. These last 8 years, he has been helped by a local team in Vigia del Fuerte. They studied what was sold in local markets and then looked for information and inspiration in other regions (here, Brazil).
Once a product is selected, they have to estimate the market and needed technique and resources. Thus, the communities are trained by a Brazilian producer.
The next challenge consists in changing families into producers. For that, they need to organize themselves and distribute the land. This is what we came for: meet the communities to explain all the process again and, next to Cocomacia, part the delimited hectares.
The local dynamic of land allocation is :”the land I have been working on is mine”. This way, if a family owns 50 hectares but only has been working 10 of them in the last generations, the remaining 40 go to the community. All the collective land is to everybody…meaning to no one. To make use of the resources of the land, it has to be fairly shared and attributed to new owners. It is the first time in the region that collective land is about to be individualized. Communities are the ones who asked for that. They prefer to work for their own family and be paid for their individual work. So, the family structure of the harvest was born in the community itself.
This work with the community is one of the most difficult parts of the process. Each community has a community council and a legal representative. Nevertheless, this authority does not avoid the tensions between families, distrust and greed. It is a tough exercise, swigging between individual interest and collective solidarity, but it is happening, partly thanks to the charisma and engagement of local teams of Espavé and Cocomacia.
For Espavé and Cocomacia, giving people opportunities to raise their revenues is not enough, they have to care about how those revenues are spent. In the mining zones, the increase of revenues led to an increase of alcoholism, prostitution and violence. Cocomacia and Espavé insist on the issue in each meeting, on how those revenues have to improve the quality of life. Alcohol is a plague in the region which is already suffering from a sexist culture.
It is ordinary that a man has more than two wifes and with each of them many kids. And, as Octavio Rojas (representative of Cocomacia) says, “when you have spent all your money, you start looking for other’s money”. The other very important expense is…la rumba (the party)! The holy rumba. In each community, you can find a sound system, similar to those in clubs, to listen and dance salsa, vallenato and reggaeton all day.
There is another project in progress with another invisible product called jaguar, from which ink used in cosmetics and food is extracted . But the entry of this product on the market is slower. The jagua as the naïdi are abundant fruits in the Pacific Forest. Sergio says “if you want a productive alternative, the alternative has to be abundant”.
The future and the needs:
The plant in Vigia del Fuerte is starting operations in October and will be ready to receive 3.5 tons of fruit each day. Until October, they will prepare the hectares, build paths, and clean the forest and the trees. In 5 years, the company plans to sow naïdi to increase its production and productivity.
In a meeting with the community, a man remarked that they were all very motivated and engaged in the process but that they needed some food to have the strength to work and guarantee a meal to the family. An idea came out from this meeting, Espavé is working on it.
The association is also looking for more funding to increase their capital share in Naïdi S.A., expand the project to more communities, devote more resources to coaching and be able to sow soon.
Learnings and replication:
Fundación Espavé is 16 years old. Years of discreet work, especially during conflicts. Sergio insists on the importance of being transparent with the partners and with the communities. In the meetings, he was not only sharing information but also sharing his worries and hopes. Of course, there is a latent risk to rise over expectations but they take responsibility for it.
One of the learnings of this trip is the need to conduct a political and social analysis of each community before estimating the land, delimiting hectares and implement a harvest structure.
Chocó is a region with a very specific environment but this search of invisibles products and the allocation process of the land could inspire other regions of the world with such biodiversity.
You can help Fundación Espavé? You are interested by this model? Contact Sergio Arango fespave@espave.org.co
From a personal point of view, I have to say that the isolation, the abandon and the political context of this region increase the poverty and make it one of the hardest situations I have met. It is time for the country and its citizens to pay attention to it.
More information:
Fundacion Espavé : http://www.espave.org.co/
Sergio Arango Ashoka’s profile : http://www.ashoka.org/sarango
Bosque Humedo S.A. : http://www.espave.org.co/web-bosque/
Cocomacia : http://www.cocomacia.org.co/
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| 4 dias con la fundacion Espave – Choco, Colombia |
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