The Green Climate Fund, better known as GCF for its acronym in English, was created in 2010 by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), to help developing countries apply practices to adapt to climate change and the mitigate its effects.

GCF is one of the sources of financing for the Comprehensive Amazon Program for Forest Conservation and Sustainable Production, PROAmazonía, a program that was created in 2017, as a result of an inter-institutional partnership led by the Ministries of Environment and Water (MAAE) and of Agriculture and Livestock (MAG) and the United Nations Development Program (UNDP). The main objective of this cooperation is to work toward reducing deforestation and forest degradation through conservation and sustainable management.

Thanks to funding from its donors, including GCF, PROAmazonía is supporting the implementation of the REDD+ Action Plan “Forests for Good Living”, a state policy designed to meet the challenges of climate change and ensure sustainability and the responsible use of resources.

Along these lines and thinking about sustainability criteria, GCF presented a report on June 4, “Efforts to save the Amazon offer triple win: Improving human, environmental and economic health and wellbeing”, which presents important points about caring for ecosystems, especially in the current context of COVID-19, which has redefined the priorities of human beings and highlighted the importance of caring for nature.

This article presents the story of Hugo Vicente Ushpa, a farmer and community leader of the Shuar community, who has lived for 8 years in El Pangui Canton, located in the province of Zamora Chinchipe. He acknowledges that when he moved here, he had to cut down trees to plant cash crops and raise livestock. According to Hugo this made him sad, but he says that he did it out of necessity; now, however, thanks to the project funded by GCF, which is carried out through the Ecuadorian Government and UNDP, he has received the necessary information to treat the land differently.

PROAmazonía is a project financed by GCF that provides financial and technical assistance to help farmers improve their practices and protect forests, in order to move toward sustainable production that will diversify and increase the incomes of the inhabitants of the area. This shows that one of the best ways to protect ecosystems and therefore control global emissions, is to ensure the livelihood of the people and maintain a comprehensive vision.

It is estimated that the implementation of the GCF project will avoid the emission of 15 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent to the atmosphere, and 450,000 people will benefit, including the inhabitants of the Ecuadorian Amazon.

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