Amazonian forest gardens (chakras) for crisis resilience and cultural resistance in the Ecuadorian and Peruvian Amazon: Case for Support
1. Research questions or problems
Widely recognised as one of the most ecologically significant areas of the world, the Amazon region faces a ‘crisis nexus’ of multiple, interconnected socio-ecological crises. It is ravaged by largely unfettered resource extraction (oil, timber, gold), intensive agriculture and large infrastructural development, and concomitant pollution. It is increasingly threatened by extreme weather and growing wildfires, as well as highly vulnerable to pandemics. Historically, the region has been socio-politically marginalised due to its difficult terrain and extraordinary cultural diversity, which comes with a variety of traditional governance forms, territorial claims, and insistences on self-determination that are often disregarded or undermined by national governments. At the heart of many indigenous Amazonian societies lies the chakra – the traditional forest garden consisting of complex agroforestry systems, comprising a network of cultivated/enhanced ‘forest spaces’. Recently, the chakra has been presented as a solution to the dilemma between environmental and economic sustainability and initiatives are underway to revalorise the chakra as emblematic of sustainable production. This new market orientation tends to overlook the spiritual and cultural dimensions of the chakra in indigenous lifeways: as the basis for good health, a space where social bonds, community relations and ways of knowing are created and maintained across generations – often in mingas (collective work parties), through songs, as well as ‘speaking with the plants’ (Moeller 2018).
The overall research aim of the proposed project is to bring together a partnership of academic and indigenous researchers to understand and harness the potential of the chakra and associated ancestral practices for indigenous communities’ own strategic, self-organised responses to the challenges posed by multiple and interconnected crises in the Amazon region. Concomitantly, the project seeks to strengthen indigenous communities’ capacity for self-advocacy, to document, analyse and communicate the issues affecting their lives and potential solutions thereto. Working together with three Napo Runa communities (Kichwa of the Upper Napo River) in Ecuador, and three Urarina communities of the Chambira Basin in Peru, the project will explore the following research questions:
1. What role does the ancestral chakra play in different indigenous communities? Objective 1: To identify the variety of roles and cultural significance of the chakra, to compare these amongst differently situated communities – e.g. those more or less affected by extractive industries, road access, environmental contamination – genders, ages, social status, and to understand this variation according to Napo Runa and Urarina’s own cultural explanations and value frameworks.
2. What specific challenges to indigenous communities are posed by the ‘crisis nexus’ of the Amazon region and how are communities already responding to these? Objective 2: To understand the variegated impact of different crises in indigenous territories and on indigenous communities; and to evaluate current self-organised responses according to Napo Runa and Urarina’s own heterogeneous experience, cultural explanations and value frameworks.
3. How can the chakra and associated ancestral practices and knowledges contribute to the crisis resilience of indigenous communities? Objective 3: To assess the value of the chakra and associated ancestral practices in cultural resilience, community relations, equity and solidarity networks, and identify ways to harness this value.
4. How can collaborations between academic and indigenous researchers be co-designed and co-implemented to strengthen indigenous communities’ capacity for self-advocacy? Objective 4: To evaluate the design and implementation processes of the proposed project, as an example of a collaboration between academic and indigenous researchers, with respect to their contribution to indigenous self-advocacy, as experienced by differently socially situated Napo Runa and Urarina participants.
2. Research context
AMAZON CRISES: Crisis in the Amazon spells crisis for the rest of the world: highly ecologically significant with a pivotal role in the regulation of global climate patterns, maintaining the Amazon rainforest’s ecological dynamics is a crucial aspect of halting runaway global heating. Central to this is the safeguarding of rainforest biodiversity, to ensure ecological resilience to climate shocks. Yet this is all under threat by what we call the Amazonian ‘crisis nexus’. Having actively maintained and enhanced Amazonian biodiversity over millennia before the European invasion (Maezumi et al 2018), indigenous communities excel as stewards of biodiversity, yet they are still marginalised and discriminated against. Approaches to overcoming marginalisation and discrimination are aimed at improved inclusion into the national political, economic, education and health systems. Few of these approaches are indigenous-led and often erode indigenous languages and lifeways, ancestral practices, and the very cosmovisions which have supported indigenous relationships with the forest and its more-than-human inhabitants. At the same time, indigenous communities are not static relics of the past, nor passive victims of current affairs, but active participants in local to global development processes – both resisting and contributing to such processes, including to extractive industries. As such, pressures on community cohesion and collective vision can be intense. Indigenous organisations and federations have long sought to build solidarity and unity and bring ancestral knowledges into conversation with the contemporary world. Conducting collaborative research with indigenous organisations to support their self-organised strategies of resilience and ‘survivance’, i.e. their vital and self-directed cultural survival (Vizenor 1999), is not only a matter of social justice, but constitutes an active safeguarding of the Amazon’s biocultural diversity in a time when the whole world needs them most. The chakra, as central constituent of many Amazonian lifeways, as sphere of interaction between human and forest beings, ‘culture’ and ‘nature’, is central to cultural evolution historically, and an ideal entry point into exploring indigenous cultural resilience to and overcoming of crises through a revitalisation of ancestral knowledges and practices. Strengthening chakra practices has been a priority of the indigenous Amazonian project partners FOIN (Ecuador) and AIDESEP (Peru) for years, yet support for this has so far only come via development agencies aiming to build productive capacity and market access. Our relationships of trust and collaboration with these federations have led to the present proposal to investigate the chakra through a process centring indigenous ‘cosmovision’ and methodologies.
STATE OF THE ART: Indigenous knowledge is increasingly integrated into research on natural resource management (Jessen et al 2021), though the means and ends are often defined by others. And while indigenous peoples are often considered vulnerable, there is also growing evidence of their resilience, where relationships with place are particularly important by informing the way in which crises are understood and responded to (Ford et al 2020). The chakra is a crucial element of place in the Amazonian context – constituting an interplay between the rain forest as place and the human place within it. The Amazonian chakra appears sporadically in the anthropological, palaeoecological and sustainable development literatures (Perreault 2005; Torres et al 2014; Coq-Huelva et al 2017; Heredia-R et al 2020), yet few systematic treatments exist. No research on the chakra or resilience to crisis has so far been undertaken under the leadership of indigenous communities or organisations themselves, which is a key reason for proposing this collaboration: this project will contribute to the scientific literature, and, more importantly, fulfil the objective of generating equitable engagement between indigenous peoples, researchers and methodologies by producing and mobilising knowledge that has been elaborated by indigenous communities themselves, according to their own values and understandings, yet which carries significance beyond their particular lives. Furthermore, through its focus on audio-visual skills for self-advocacy and communications, the project complements recent research and development initiatives in the Ecuadorian and Peruvian Amazon regions, such as community media projects funded by UNSDN, DWA and PROCIENCIA. Using participatory and indigenous methodologies, the proposed project will for the first time explore the chakra in an integrated way: as territorial element and material source of food and medicinal sovereignty, as space of cultural continuity and creativity, and above all as living repository of ancestral knowledge, ethical guidelines and as connection with earth beings and nature spirits – all often expressed in song and ritual. The aim is understanding, communicating – and ultimately harnessing – the chakra’s potential to facilitate and strengthen community resilience during times of crisis. As such it moves beyond the existing academic literature, but also beyond the existing state of the art in civil society and development initiatives – especially in its decolonial epistemology and mainstreaming of indigenous knowledge and value systems. Furthermore, the project will integrate existing research methodologies into an innovative approach, and thereby co-develop with indigenous partner organisations a novel, partially remote, participatory visual ethnography, replicable in other contexts.
3. Research methods
METHODS: The project is oriented by indigenous and decolonising methodologies. Our primary research method will be participatory video (PV), complemented by other community-based, participatory action research and ethnography tools, including discussion groups and “walk in the woods” method (Phillips & Gentry 1993). Per community, two indigenous community researchers (CRs) -one woman, one man- will be trained in these methods by the investigators team. Working with both women and men is pivotal in being able to access the domains of both genders, which are often clearly demarcated. Training will begin at the 2-week project launch event, at which the detailed project implementation plan will be co-developed with all project partners (academic and indigenous). Additional training for PV will be provided to CRs by Peruvian project partner Cuyay Wasi. This will consist of two 7-day courses and additional online and in-person accompaniment.
Six main communities have been selected for participation, in conversation with indigenous leaders of the representative organisations of the two peoples: Avila, Yutzupino and San Pablo (Napo Runa); Nueva Unión, San Lorenzo and Santa Marta (Urarina). They represent a spectrum of community circumstances along different axes: from those with little market integration and wide access to primary forest to those with high market integration and little access to primary forest areas; easy or difficult accessibility (road/canoe, close to or remote from urban centres); intensity of extractive activities (gold mining, oil extraction, timber) and size of remaining communal territory. Research will be conducted primarily if not exclusively in these communities. Investigators will accompany the six CR pairs through regular field visits and online meetings to conduct participatory research in their respective communities and beyond.Research unfolds in four consecutive phases each lasting 5-6 months. Phases 1-3 address research questions 1-3, with the final phase completing analysis and addressing gaps and arising questions. Analysis and evaluation workshops are scheduled at the end of each phase. Research question 4 will be addressed throughout and especially in the workshops. Each pair will produce a ‘basket of knowledges’ (a data portfolio consisting of video clips, audio recordings, images and/or textual documentation) during each research phase, using PV and other participatory methods (e.g. recording a conversation during a walk in the wood), as appropriate and in conversation with the academic investigators. The project will provide iPad-like devices and where possible promote Open Source software to enable this work. These ‘baskets’ will be collectively discussed, analysed, and evaluated in the workshops where the three pairs come together with their respective country’s Co-I, generating answers to the research questions as well as iteratively building capacity in research and communication skills. The baskets’ contents will feed back to communities in subsequent research phases: as kindling for discussion groups, to elicit deepened reflection and capture reactions, thus facilitating an iterative conversation amongst the entire community. Two larger knowledge exchange events will bring together the entire project team, across both countries, and with indigenous leaders, community members and other collaborators and project partners. This will cross-fertilise the work in Napo Runa and Urarina territories, allowing inter-ethnic networking and experience sharing, regarding the chakra as element of resilience as well as regarding the research process per se.
CO-DESIGN: This proposal results from an iterative dialogue with partner organisations, which began in 2019. Participatory methodologies have been chosen to build an equitable collaboration and even out the power differentials between researchers and participants, thus empowering indigenous communities to generate their own knowledge and research. However, while we consider this project proposal to be co-designed, additional elements of co-design and collective decision-making have been built into the project process: (1) research launch is preceded by a phase of ‘research agreement and preparation’ , in which a set of ‘ground rules’ and the process for the recruitment of the indigenous researchers will be collectively determined; (2) the research phase begins with a project launch and opening ceremony which includes PV and methodological training for the six CR pairs and collective definition of detailed research questions and plan, including how to pay attention to the experience of different genders and ages; (3) the research phase is iterative in several stages, each concluding with collective review and evaluation; (4) the mid-project knowledge exchange event includes project review permitting project implementation changes to be agreed; (5) the final knowledge exchange event and closing ceremony includes an impact review and legacy planning process with focus on assessing impact to date and identification of further steps to enhance impact beyond project period. In reflection of the centralisation of the indigenous researchers to this project, full and appropriate collaboration agreements will be signed in English and Spanish by all partners prior to launching to ensure copyright of video, images and audio generated will remain with the indigenous communities, while academic organisations involved retain the ability to publish findings. To this end, partners will explore commons-based solutions, such as Creative Commons licensing.
RATIONALE: The choice of our methodologies is guided by an activist impetus to reconfigure scientific research in order to better serve indigenous communities. As such, we align ourselves with Indigenous Scholarship: from the study of the injustices perpetuated by colonial science and technology (Tallbear 2013) to the reassertion of indigenous knowledges on their own terms (Simpson 2017; Whyte 2017), Indigenous Scholars expose cognitive violence in two ways (1) invoking distinct bodies of Indigenous knowledges that counter, interrupt, and make visible the coloniality of power in the academic practice (Smith 2012; Simpson 2017; Smith, Tuck, and Young 2018), and (2) producing knowledge with rather than producing knowledge about, i.e., co-creating knowledge with the very communities being studied (Grosfoguel 2007; Speed et al. 2009). While we are motivated by (1), the proposed project espouses (2) as its main methodological orientation. Through our adopted approach, we can ensure that rather than extracting information from indigenous communities, to be subsequently analysed and evaluated by others, we focus on creating and curating information in a collaborative process, in which analysis and evaluation happen simultaneously and iteratively, and in which intra-community difference is considered. PV in particular lends itself to an in-depth exploration of the chakra, ancestral knowledges, and the crises affecting indigenous territories, not least because it allows participation in both data gathering and evaluation amongst everyone, regardless of gender, age or literacy skills. Our research questions and objectives have been developed in conversation with indigenous organisations and communities over several years. Tailored to lived concerns and pressing issues in indigenous territories, they lend themselves to treatment through participatory methods, to develop shared solutions that carry relevance for action in parallel to academic interest.
ROLES: As academic researchers with long-standing research experience in the region, including Co-I Dr Fredy Grefa who is himself an indigenous (Napo Runa) researcher, we are uniquely placed to enable, facilitate, and analyse the findings of this participatory approach. We will deliver training, supervision and guidance to the CRs, and bring methodological and analytic skills to the project, as well as experience in facilitation of participatory research initiatives. Moreover, we hold nuanced understanding of the predicament of indigenous Amazonia in Ecuador and Peru, and will be able to ask relevant questions as the project progresses, in order to keep the inquiry attuned to both the particular situations of individual communities and the wider realities in the region. The academic team will also conduct reviews of academic literature and relevant policies to ensure robust scientific contextualisation of the project and its results. The 12 indigenous CRs, six women and six men, will play a central role in the project. They will be recruited through a culturally appropriate process, collectively defined with our partner organisations upon project launch. Fluency in both native language and Spanish will be a requirement, as well as a minimum of literacy and internet skills, interest in the subject matter and availability over the entire project period.
4. Project management
MANAGEMENT: PI and Co-Is are accountable to the funders and responsible for the day-to-day management and the project will have a steering committee (SC), consisting of PI and Co-Is with a representative of each indigenous partner organisation. It will meet in person at the major project events (see below), quarterly online and ad hoc to manage the project collectively. The SC will also ensure engagement with potential research users and other actors. To facilitate this, monitoring and enhancing impact will be a standing item on the SC’s agenda. PI and Co-Is will meet online biweekly, or as needed, to ensure smooth progress and address any potential issues, problems or conflicts through proposals to the SC. The project will have dedicated project management support from Coventry’s Research Delivery Support team, complemented by research development and grant management teams at USFQ and PUCP. Nina Moeller, PI, will take overall responsibility for the leadership and management of the project. Fredy Grefa, Ecuadorian Co-I, will primarily be responsible for smooth progress of research and communication in Ecuador. Emanuele Fabiano, Peruvian Co-I, will be responsible for the same in Peru. Both will travel regularly (once a month during research phases) into Napo Runa and Urarina territories respectively to facilitate progress on the ground through active participation in the research process and provision of guidance to CRs. The PI will travel to Ecuador twice, at the beginning and the end of the project, to coordinate project launch and final knowledge exchange event and closure. She will travel to Peru once mid-project to coordinate the mid-term knowledge exchange event. Each trip will be appx 6 weeks, incl. visits to participating communities. Supervision and guidance to CRs will be provided primarily through the respective countries’ Co-Is in regular meetings (in person/remote), weekly for the first two months and reducing to biweekly and then monthly as capacity builds.
DEVELOPMENT OPPORTUNITIES: Project partners have strongly requested raining and research opportunities for CRs, for the ethical and methodological benefits of embedding CRs within this project. Such opportunities are rare in the Amazon, constituting added value. Similarly, the project will allow investigators to build on prior management experience, strengthen existing relationships in the area and build new ones.
TIMETABLE: The project will run for a total of 36 months, divided into different phases (see table).
| Month | Project phase | Activities | Participants |
| 1-3 | Pre-launch | Research agreements & preparation; selection of community-based researchers; online and in-person meetings | All |
| 4 | Project launch | Launch event & starting ceremony (in Ecuador); Participatory methodologies and PV training; collective definition of detailed research questions, interview guide and methodological tools | All |
| 5-10 | Research phase 1 | Main focus on RQ1; data collection by research teams in six communities; parallel literature review regarding the chakra and other socio-ecological systems of subsistence in the Amazon | AR, CR |
| 10 | Evaluation of phase 1 | Analysis and evaluation workshops; one per country | AR, CR |
| 11-16 | Research phase 2 | Main focus on RQ2; data collection by research teams in six communities; parallel literature review regarding indigenous responses to multiple crises | AR, CR |
| 16 | Evaluation of phase 2 | Analysis and evaluation workshops; one per country | AR, CR |
| 17-18 | Mid-term organisation | Data organisation and curation (including video editing); preparation for mid-term knowledge exchange event | AR, CR |
| 18 | Knowledge Exchange1 | Mid-term knowledge exchange event and celebration (in Peru); PV upskill; mid-term project evaluation | All+ invitees |
| 19-24 | Research phase 3 | Main focus on RQ3; data collection by research teams in six communities | AR, CR |
| 24 | Evaluation of phase 3 | Analysis and evaluation workshops; one per country | AR, CR |
| 25-28 | Research phase 4 | Addressing remaining gaps from phases 1-3; data collection by research teams in six communities | AR, CR |
| 28 | Evaluation of phase 4 | Analysis and evaluation workshops; one per country | AR, CR |
| 29-32 | Final organisation | Data organisation and curation (including video editing); preparation for final knowledge exchange event | AR, CR |
| 33 | Knowledge Exchange2 | Final knowledge exchange event and closing ceremony (in Ecuador); final project evaluation | All+ invitees |
| 34-36 | Wrap-up | Implementation of legacy plans; finalisation of publications | All |
| Key: AR Academic Researchers, SC Steering Committee, CR Community Researchers, All AR+SC+CR | |||
OUTPUT MANAGEMENT: To ensure that project outputs (listed in next section below) are relevant to and meet the needs of their intended audiences, they will be co-produced with respective stakeholders. Outputs for indigenous audiences will be co-developed with our community-based researchers and indigenous project partners. The methodological toolkit will be co-designed in collaboration with Cuyay Wasi who have many years of experience as civil society organisation working in community settings. The policy brief will be developed through discussions with Grupo Chakra, the multistakeholder platform working to build an enabling policy environment for chakra production in the Napo region and beyond. For project milestones and the schedule of deliverables, please see Work Plan in attachment.
DATA MANAGEMENT, RISK & CONSENT: CRs will use encrypted devices to collect video, audio and image data and will receive training in data management by the investigators team at the project launch event. Data will be stored on encrypted hard drives and transferred daily to the secure research data repository of Coventry University. As described in Ethics section, the project will proceed via culturally established protocols of gaining access to and consent of indigenous communities. The project will undergo full ethical review at CU, USFQ and PUCP, before research actively begins. Loss of data and conflict around consent risks will be mitigated by explicit training of community researchers, regular data transfer, and iterative oral consent procedures.A data management plan is attached and will be reviewed annually by PI.
COSTS: The project counts with dedicated finance support at CU, USFQ, PUCP and provides excellent value for money as described in the Justification of Resources attached to this application. Costs are all based on long-standing fieldwork experience, including previous organisation of large events in the Amazon region.
5. Outputs, dissemination, and impact
OUTPUTS: The project delivers: Three video documentaries (~20 mins each): 1: on Napo Runa; 2: on Urarina; and 3: Combining/comparing experiences across countries and indigenous contexts (to be completed month 36); Two video libraries (short video clips, thematically organised with reference to the research questions as well as questions arising, from materials of ‘baskets of knowledges’, throughout the project (finalised month 36); Two scientific journal articles: 1: on the role of the chakra in crisis resilience; 2: PV as revitalisation of ancestral knowledge and practices (ready for submission month 36); Methodological Tool Kit, a guide for replication of similar research in other contexts (to be completed month 36); Accessible review of findings for indigenous organisations, in print and online (month 36); Policy brief on the relevance of traditional agroforestry for community resilience beyond market production (month 36); Website: multimedia content progressively organised as accessible review of findings forall audiences (launch month 3, developed on an ongoing basis); Special Issue in academic journal on the role of traditional subsistence practices to cultural resilience and survivance (call disseminated in month 30 – publication of SI foreseen after project end).
ENGAGEMENT OF BENEFICIARIES: The project’s agile engagement with stakeholders will be facilitated by the steering committee. The steering committee will have a standing item on impact under which it will discuss, quarterly, new potential users and beneficiaries. Social media engagement and new relationships on the ground in Ecuador and Peru will be evaluated to discuss opportunities arising. Envisaged beneficiaries: (1) Participating indigenous communities and organisation: Communities will be engaged through the research process itself, participation in the steering committee and knowledge exchange events. Participation in the research process is itself a benefit in terms of capacity building, knowledge exchange opportunities, valorisation of ancestral knowledges, strengthened indigenous networks. A further important benefit is the enhanced ability to use this indigenous knowledge in crisis contexts. By working with communities to jointly develop new resilience strategies, the project will strengthen community capacity in multiple ways, beyond the project’s central aim of increasing the potential for resilience to crises. Geographical, technological and linguistic barriers often confine indigenous knowledge to a local level. Through video and other project activities, indigenous participants will hone their skills in presenting the value of their ancestral knowledges to broader audiences, and identify pathways to support knowledge sharing. Moreover, the network built through a participatory intra- and inter-community process will place our partners in a stronger position to respond to new indigenous needs. (2) Indigenous organisations elsewhere in the Amazon & the global indigenous movement: The research will allow indigenous organisations globally to strengthen their evidence base on the importance of safeguarding traditional practices, as advocacy tool and for strategy development. Project partners will disseminate audio-visual products and the methodological toolkit through social media and intra-organisational communications. Final videos will be widely shared with global indigenous movements, including the Permanent Indigenous Forum at the United Nations with whom the project team have existing connections. This will also make PV a more widely known tool for decolonial, non-extractive and self-determined research processes within this audience, which is increasingly gaining voice in international political processes (e.g. at UN level). (3) Policy-makers, especially multistakeholder platform Grupo Chakra and similar initiatives elsewhere: The project will deepen understanding of the multidimensional nature of the chakra and facilitate project partner Grupo Chakra and similar initiatives in articulating a more indigenous-led perspective on the importance of the chakra. Policy-making audiences often understand indigenous agroforestry practices in conservation and market production terms only, ignoring their value in terms of community cultural resilience. Project partners will co-create a multi-dimensional perspective through engagement with Grupo Chakra and co-authoring a policy brief. This enhances the initiative’s ethical import and its adoption and promotion by indigenous communities, a key requirement for its long-term success. Grupo Chakra will participate in the project pre-launch phase, opening and closing ceremonies, and remain involved through tailored communication (personal/email/meetings). Local government officials will participate in the mid-project knowledge exchange event (in Peru) and the final knowledge share (in Ecuador) to encourage continued engagement beyond project end. (4) NGOs and civil society organisations working as allies with indigenous peoples across the globe: Project results, especially scientific outputs, will constitute a strengthened evidence base on the importance of maintaining traditional practices. This will strongly support the advocacy goals of NGOs and CSOs supporting indigenous rights with many of whom PI, Co-Is and project partners have existing work relations and whose communications teams they can access. (5) Academics / wider public: This audience will be engaged as stated in the academic beneficiary section.
6. Opportunity-specific statement of eligibility
As described, indigenous communities are central protagonists of the research. The proposal arises from dialogue with indigenous partner organisations, based on long-standing collaborations and relationships of trust developed since 2005. Partners will be fully integrated via the steering committee (SC). The project is designed as an iterative research process with community check points and opportunity for revisions throughout. Outputs are community-centred, and, where possible and appropriate, ownership of deliverables will be held by the communities. The PI and Co-Is partnership combines non-indigenous and indigenous academics with relevant expertise. Nina Moeller has worked with indigenous communities in the Ecuadorian and Peruvian Amazon since 2005, bringing a wealth of regional knowledge. She is a trained PV facilitator and will contribute expertise in indigenous knowledge systems and associated legal regimes, the history of indigenous social movements, and development dynamics. Fredy R. Grefa is an indigenous (Napo Runa) cultural geographer, using Amazonian concepts and values. He has researched territorial claims (including those of his own community) for more than 15 years, working with indigenous confederations and using indigenous methodologies. Emanuele Fabiano has conducted extensive ethnographic fieldwork among Urarina communities since 2011, leading participatory research projects with project partner FEPIURCHA since 2016 to establish how indigenous Amazonians can use their knowledge to support resilience. The Federation of Indian Organizations of the Napo (FOIN) represents the interests of approximately 25,000 Napo Runa, and will coordinate community relations in Napo Runa territory, and sit on SC. The Association of Kichwa Women Midwives of Napo (AMUPAKIN) unites indigenous women healers who have worked for over 20 years to safeguard Napo Runa knowledge and practices, especially regarding indigenous medicinal plants. Their presence on the SC will ensure a strong connection to lived practice. The Decentralised Autonomous Government of San Pablo de Ushpayacu (GAD San Pablo) represents 21 indigenous Napo Runa communities and constitutes one of our governmental partners, bridging policy-makers and indigenous organisations. The Corporation of Associations of the Amazonian Chakra (Corporación Chakra) brings together 5 indigenous producer organisations, representing approximately 2,200 families. The Corporation Chakra is at the forefront of establishing a “chakra certification” to strengthen recognition and respect for indigenous agroforestry practices and will contribute to steering this research. The Grupo Chakra is a multi-sectoral platform under the auspices of the Government of the Province of Napo and is our key policy-making interlocutor. It consists of members of indigenous organisations, local government, academia and development cooperation, and aims to generate a policy mechanism to strengthen chakra production. The Interethnic Development Association of the Peruvian Rainforest (AIDESEP) represents 109 indigenous federations which in turn represent 1,809 communities of 19 linguistic groups. AIDESEP’s support is fundamental to the elaboration of research agreements and the overseeing of the prior informed consent consultations in Peru. Federation of Urarina Indigenous People of the Chambira River (FEIURCHA) is the coordinating body of all Urarina teachers and works to recover the Urarina culture and language, and brings relevant expertise to the SC. The Federation of Urarina Indigenous Peoples of the Chambira River – FEPIURCHA – represents thirteen Urarina communities of the Chambira River Basin and plays an active role in the indigenous response to oil spills in the region. They will coordinate community relations and sit on SC. Cuyay Wasi is a Peruvian association dedicated to creative and participatory audio-visual processes with indigenous communities since 2009. The association has supported several international projects, including the Andean Program on Food Sovereignty, and will bring extensive PV expertise and community engagement experience. All partners have either been part of a long-standing dialogue, actively contributed to the project design, or expressed keen interest in participating once funding is secured. The communities have indicated permission to carry out the proposed research project, some having provided Letters of Support (see attachments). Community members will be trained as CRs and accompanied to lead a participatory process involving their entire communities in generation and analysis of data (see methods section above).