Three Rainforest Defender Series stories of resistance and innovation in the Achuar Territory of the...
In a landscape of luminous clouds reflected in a mirror of water, a canoe silently slides upriver, powered by electricity. A team of Achuar youth is aboard. They're returning home after attending a training on the installation and use of solar panels that took place in Capahuari, a tributary of the Pastaza River in the Ecuadorian Amazon near the border with Perú.
The solar canoe barely vibrates. Voices can be heard from the bow to the stern, and where the rivers converge, a few freshwater dolphins emerge to breathe close to the boat because the soft humming doesn't scare them away. This scene seems like fiction, but it's reality. It is made possible by a group of courageous youth who are defending the forest and resisting the demand for oil, which has already caused so much damage to the Ecuadorian Amazon.
To read the full story in Spanish, visit El País.
