Conservation Soccer
Soccer, Livelihoods, and Conservation
In many parts of the world, as you pass through communities that live in and around Key Biodiversity Area (https://www.keybiodiversityareas.org/) you will see people enthusiastically and happily playing sport, mainly soccer.
Olajos Goslow Chair and Resilient Conservation founder Duan Biggs together with Yolanda Chavez has launched an initiative that harnesses the enthusiasm Indigenous Peoples and Rural Communities (https://www.iucn.org/news/commission-environmental-economic-and-social-policy/202106/state-indigenous-peoples-and-local-communities-lands-and-territories) have for soccer.
This initiative has started with a pilot in the biodiverse rich Ecuadorian Amazon with expansion planned to one of the world’s most threatened regions, East Africa’s Albertine Rift.
Pilot project in the Ecuadorian Amazon
NAU’s Professor Duan Biggs and Miss Yolanda Chávez recently launched a Soccer for Conservation initiative with the Shuar Center Kaputna indigenous community of the Cordillera del Cóndor of the Ecuadorian Amazon. This area has an approximate extension of 120,000 km2, corresponding to 43% of the continental and insular terrestrial surface. It is recognized for its high biological and cultural diversity. On February 20th, 2023, conservation scientists, Duan Biggs and Yolanda Chávez visited the "Centro Shuar Kaputna" community to hold a first meeting and discuss potential opportunities for collaboration.
The meeting consisted of a participatory open dialogue led by Kaputna's Síndico (Leader/President), Magno Narankas, and other community members representing different groups, such as women and men from the soccer team, community entrepreneurs from the group "Bioemprende Kaputna," young, elders and children. The Scientific Team encouraged proactive participation to design a community-based project under a bottom-up approach, which could best capture the community's interests and priorities for social development, human wellbeing, and sustainable natural resource management. The meeting also focused on how to link the energy and motivation invested in sports, mainly soccer, to empower community members and enhance collective actions for nature conservation. During the visit, the community manifested several ideas and concerns, and discussed strategies and potential activities with the Scientific Team.
Amazon pilot project update (2024)
On April 27th 2024 the Scoring for Community Conservation (SCC) team, M.Sc. Yolanda Chávez, SCC Co-founder, and MBA. Catalina Ontaneda, SCC Ecuador Project Manager, participated in a co-organized event led by the Community Síndico (Leader/President), Magno Narankas, where the Shuar Kaputna community, Catapulta, and NAU signed the second-year agreement for the project's implementation, with the support of Professor Duan Biggs, NAU´s Olajos Goslow Chair of Environmental Science and Policy and SCC Co-founder.
In this regard, we proudly announce Kaputna’s community commitment to continue strengthening the links between sports, ancestral wisdom, biodiversity monitoring and educational activities within a local environmental education and conservation program. Over the past year, the community's environmental knowledge, natural resource management, and ongoing conservation efforts have become integral parts of daily life for Kaputna’s different generations.
The event agenda was as follows:
a. Signature of the agreement for the second year of implementation.
b. Organic garden activity led by Rafael Chuim, Environmental Coordinator, and Pablo Chuim, Health Coordinator.
Kaputna’s children were happy and engaged during this activity. They demonstrated how to plant in two ways: the ancestral way and the modern Western way. Some elders were present, observing, supporting, and one even sang an ancestral planting song to accompany the activity.
c. Various interventions regarding the environmental education program and the community's specific needs.
The community requested more practical teaching tools like the organic garden or eBird apps to motivate them, in addition to theoretical conferences. Additionally, they repeatedly asked the project to help pay the salary of an elementary school teacher, as government budget cuts had led to the dismissal of a teacher in Kaputna.
d. Soccer practice with all the children in the program.
