News
 Award-winning project buzzes with innovation for bees and women11.04.2024The Mountain Partnership's 2023 training course "GROW – Agrobiodiversity in a changing climate" featured an innovation contest on the importance of biodiversity for creating jobs in agriculture. Participant Ysa Calderón from Peru won the contest with project to address threats to pollinators and empower women. In this interview, Ysa describes how her award-winning project is saving native stingless bees in the mountains of Peru through research, ecosystem restoration and gender equity. My name is Ysabel A. Calderón Carlos, but most people know me as Ysa. I'm a Quechua-speaking descendant of InKawasi, a Quechua-speaking community in the northern Andes of Lambayeque, Peru. I am a chemical engineer, an ecopreneur, a beekeeper and a farmer with experience in formulating value propositions, sustainable food systems and ecosystem restoration. Bees are the most important pollinators on the planet. However, bee colonies are in decline according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations' report The State of the World´s Biodiversity for Food and Agriculture (2019). This is the main reason why my team and I are working together to save pollinators in the mountains through research, ecosystem restoration and gender equity. In 2017, I founded Sumak Kawsay, a Quechua word meaning "good life, in harmony with nature". Sumak Kawsay is an environmental enterprise based in the mountain village of El Higuerón that promotes the conservation of native bees and other pollinators. We focus on producing honey using agroecological practices from native stingless bees as well as from the honeybee Apis mellifera. We also offer women-run agritourism experiences through La Ruta de la Miel de Abeja ("The Honey Route"). This opportunity allows tourists to connect with our bees, honey and nature while simultaneously generating income for the women, improving their quality of life. The income we generate through honey production and agritourism activities helps fund our mountain ecosystem restoration project to reforest the area with native plants, conserve native bee species and conduct research for conservation purposes. To date, we have reforested more than 2 000 trees and are preserving three species of native stingless bees. We are highly concerned with protecting the vital ecosystem service that is pollination. No more pollinators would mean no more food because more than 80 percent of the world's flowering plants rely on pollinators (mainly insects) to reproduce. Currently, the number of bee species is declining. Solitary bees, for example, are very sensitive to sudden changes in temperature. The climate crisis combined with deforestation and the use of pesticides is causing them to rapidly disappear. We promote the protection of native stingless bees because they pollinate our native plant species. Because of this, when we protect these bees, we are also protecting our native forests. Native stingless bees' honey is also said to have special medicinal properties. Women are key to protecting biodiversity and forests. In my community, many women depend on forest resources for subsistence and income. However, as in many rural communities, women continue to be marginalized in policy- and decision-making processes as well as in the distribution of resources. Therefore, they are among the poorest. This is the main reason we developed agritourism services run by women, so they could build their economic autonomy. We currently work with five women and hope to engage others and increase our impact in the next months. Our goal is to continue being a light to empower and inspire other similar initiatives around the world. We will continue working to promote and safeguard the rights of women and Indigenous Peoples and local communities though our work with Sumak Kawsay, and we hope to expand our impact to other regions and countries to protect pollinators. To complement our initiatives, our next project "Women Guardians of the Native Bees" will involve women from 11 local villages, empowering them to manage native stingless bees and generate income through medicinal honey production. We are currently seeking funding to make this project possible. Being part of the 2023 GROW Agrobiodiversity in a Changing Climate programme was a great experience. It complemented the knowledge I already had about agroecology and agrobiodiversity conservation as key to climate change adaptation. In our restoration project, jointly carried out by Sumak Kawsay and local farmers, we emphasize the importance of planting a variety of species. We recover seeds that have gone extinct in the community and collect others from native trees while learning about their multiple ecological functions, such as controlling soil erosion and attracting pollinators. The concepts we discussed in the course inspired me and gave me new ideas to implement. Ready the full story on Exposure |
Mountain Partnership
| Our work
| Focus areas
| Follow Us
Subscribe to Peak to Peak Newsletter
|
