Isabel Alarcon: In the Amazon, a new way to live off nature
"More than 20 years ago, Nantu Canelos had a vision. The Indigenous leader saw in dreams how the wooden huts in this secluded Amazonian community glowed from within as night enveloped the lush, surrounding jungle.
This village of 100 people is enclosed by some of Ecuador’s biggest oil reserves. For more than 40 years, the local Indigenous people, the Achuar, have been advocating to stop oil development, which has ravaged large swaths of the Ecuadorian Amazon. But even as they fought against fossil fuels, gasoline was their only option to light their homes & power the boats tied to their livelihood. This area has the thinnest electric coverage in the country.
But now a smattering of solar panels across 12 villages in a couple of Ecuador’s deeply forested eastern provinces are making Canelos’s vision materialize. …"
#ClimateChange #solar #fossilfuels #Ecuador #amazonrainforest #nativeamerican #achuar
https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solutions/interactive/2024/amazon-solar-panels-ecuador