On February 19, 2021, Tuntiak Shuar, regional technical coordinator of the Coordinator of Indigenous Organizations of the Amazon Basin (COICA), visited our CAEMBA Ecological Bamboo Production Farm, located at kilometer 32 on the Santo Domingo – La Concordia road.
Also present were Manuel Pallares, President of CAEMBA; Cristina Latorre, Director of CAEMBA; and Pablo Yépez, our Executive Director.
The purpose of the visit was to learn about the technical processes of bamboo treatment on the farm and the construction process of CAEMBA houses, as a preliminary step to the signing of a strategic alliance between CAEMBA and COICA. The aim is to coordinate the planting, management, and utilization of kenku (guadua cane in the Shuar language, as bamboo is not native), for building bamboo houses in the Amazon of Ecuador. We will train five young people from the Amazon to specialize in bamboo engineering and architecture, considered as vegetal steel.
This initiative will help reduce CO2 emissions and capture this gas, which contributes to global warming. Likewise, we will be able to build eco-communities in the Amazon, a territory that demands efforts towards environmental conservation and social development and requires more initiatives like this.
We thank COICA, with whom we were able to manage the signing of this strategic alliance. From CAEMBA, we invite more indigenous organizations to join our mission: the eradication of precarious housing in Ecuador.
