Sponsored by
Brewing for Peru
Bettys is the quintessential bastion of Yorkshire cosiness. What has taken them out of their comfort zone of cream teas and conversation and into a distant realm?
They have conceived the idea of saving an area of the South American rainforest the size of the Yorkshire Dales.
The place in question is in Selvacentralm in Peru's Amazon basin and it needs help because it suffers from soil erosion and deforestation. It's typical of other places around the globe that need to be kept intact but are in the frontline as the modern world encroaches.
The scale of the destruction is immense. Since 1990, Peru has lost nearly two million hectares of its primary forest, with major but unquantifiable knock-on effects for climate change.
The more immediate and devastating effects, however, are on the people who live there. The activities of illegal loggers and others seeking to plunder the forest's resources have undermined traditional ways of living. The forest dwellers, who have existed in harmony with their environment for generations, relying on their surroundings for food, shelter, fuel, livelihoods and medicines, are under threat.
To get a grip on this distant situation, Bettys did not call for other people's reports. They sent one of their own, a young woman called Christina Talens, to investigate. The intrepid Christina, 36, made her way into the remote heart of Peru where she linked up with the Ashaninkas, a 10,000-strong community who live on the Ene and Tambo rivers, in the Junin region.
She spent two days travelling by road and eight hours by boat to get to Pangoa where there are no roads and no electricity either. Poor or non-existent communications were what used to protect the tribe. "The lack of infrastructure is to the advantage of the Ashaninka people," says Christina. "As soon as roads are built, the forest is cut down by loggers at a rapid rate."
Loggers and prospectors are not the only threat. There are plans for a huge hydroelectric dam on the Rio Ene which would supply neighbouring Brazil with electricity and flood the Ashaninka homelands. Other schemes for biofuel plantations and oil drilling have led to protests by forest communities.
Christina travelled up the Amazon with Simon Counsell, chair of the Rainforest Foundation, an organisation that Bettys and Taylors are working with. She also had an Ashaninka guide – "I wouldn't have lasted an hour without the guide," she says. The Ashaninka have had some traumatic encounters with the outside world and are very wary of outsiders.
At Pangoa, Christina met Ruth Buendia the elected president of the Ashaninka people. "Ruth told me about being captured by the Shining Path – Maoist insurgents in the 1980s. She was put in charge of looking after children from her tribe who had been abducted to fight as child soldiers."
The 'Sendero Luminoso' as they are known in Spanish were the most ruthless guerilla force in Latin America. They brought chaos to Peru through their violent determination, at whatever human cost, to defeat the government and set up a perfect communist state.
These are more settled times and the Ashaninka now have legal title to their land. They are guardians of the rainforest, but if that is to mean anything, they need some outside support.
The Rainforest Foundation is helping them to fight their corner and protect their rights by teaching them new skills. If they can learn to do maths and to speak Castillian Spanish, so the argument runs, they will be better placed to hold their own with illegal loggers and other exploiters.
A grasp of Spanish will also help them negotiate a fair price for the goods they have to sell. Spanish-speaking Christina's mission was to see how their coffee is harvested as part of a "social audit", just as she had done previously with coffee growers in Kenya, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua.
Christina threw herself into Ashaninka tribal life. She drank and helped to brew the local Masato, an alcoholic beer. It's made with boiled and pounded manioc, a woody shrub that is also known as cassava. Into the brew is added achiote, a root vegetable, which has been chewed.
She helped with the chewing and then the spitting of the achiote into the mixture. It's then left to ferment before a ceremonial drinking.
"Being offered a drink of Masato is a sign of acceptance by the tribe," says Christina. "You don't turn it down."
Her diet in the rainforest did not include anything on the cake stand at Bettys. But she now has a grasp of the most convenient way of eating a live caterpillar. "You bite the head off, squeeze the liquid out and then eat them. They're actually really nice, they taste like furry salad leaves."
The men of the tribe do the hunting. The womenfolk, who gather and prepare food, play an influential part in how the tribe is run. We may think that marriage and monogamy form the rock on which a stable society must be built. But not the Ashaninkas.
"As a single mother myself, I really loved the fact that marriage is not practised by them," says Christina. "It is normal for women to have different partners during their lifetime and to have children by different fathers.
"The women help each other with communal childcare and working arrangements. The children are
brought up by the community, not by individuals.
"The Ashaninka also want healthcare support," adds Christina.
"They have traditional healing methods, but they need to combat diseases such as TB and learn how to use western medicine properly."
The Ashaninka previously had no need of money, supporting themselves by trading the products of their small scale agriculture such as coffee and cocoa.
But they now recognise they must have it if, for example, they are to provide their children with secondary and college education. Christina hopes her employers will be able to work with the Ashaninka by harnessing this work to providing a cash crop.
But this is not about encouraging them to abandon their traditional ways and switch to large scale agriculture.
"This is an opportunity to do things differently, no forest clearing, no plantations." says Christina.
She made her first acquaintance with Bettys when her mother found a job there as a waitress in their Harrogate tea rooms. Christina and her sister followed her with part-time work beginning as tea cake toasters.
Her parents, both anglophiles from Valencia, had come to this country separately in the 1970s, as part of the first wave of migrant workers from Spain. At first they lived in Wales, which was where they met.
Once Christina and her sister were born, the family moved back to Spain and stayed for nine years before returning, this time to Yorkshire. They initially settled in Bradford, where they had family, and then moved to Harrogate when Christina's father became manager of the Bodega Spanish restaurant.
After studying international business at university in Leeds, Christina did some globe-trotting. She was working as a consultant researcher on a European project to assist victims of human trafficking and sexual exploitation when Bettys took her on a second time.
They decided she exactly fitted the bill for their new post of ethical trading manager.
How does Christina trekking into the remote heart of Peru actually help their bottom line? Because ethics and fair-trade now have to be a part of a trading business and Bettys is one company that is leading the way.
Jonathan Wild, chairman and CEO of Bettys and Taylors of Harrogate, calls his plan First Aid for rainforests. He has extended it by launching the United Bank of Carbon, an organisation that gives big business the opportunity to earn carbon credits through supporting similar rainforest protection projects.
The aim is to save large areas of rainforest as quickly as possible by matching organisations such as the Rainforest Foundation with large corporations.
For Christina, her trip up the Amazon was an extreme cultural experience she will never forget. What's more, she's looking forward to working with the tribe in the future.
"The most incredible thing was meeting the Ashaninka. I felt really honoured to have travelled to see them and to learn more about their way of life.
"The Ashaninka have a very unique perception of the world around them."
www.unitedbankofcarbon.comwww.yorkshirerainforestproject.co.uk
Email to a friend
Print this page- Exclusive: Grayson takes lower deal from Leeds to make quick return with Huddersfield - Have your say
- Toddler ‘killed by poison used for his mum’s cannabis’
- Video: Scargill wins £13,000 damages after NUM ‘tried to disown him’
- Boy of 7 accused of racism for asking classmate why he is brown
- Court told welfare fears for pupils led to sacking
Looking for...
Featured advertisers
Jobs
Search for a job
Motors
Search for a car
Property
Search for a house
Weather for Yorkshire
Thursday 23 February 2012
Today
Cloudy
Temperature: 11 C to 16 C
Wind Speed: 20 mph
Wind direction: South west
Tomorrow
Cloudy
Temperature: 3 C to 12 C
Wind Speed: 17 mph
Wind direction: West
