Vision: To lead the largest and most impressive movement of humans toward the restoration and conservation of the planet's ecosystems and their biodiversity.
Mission: Inspire people to restore and conserve the planet's ecosystems and biodiversity by taking small actions that together have a large-scale positive impact.
Our Story: Humans For Abundance was born out of a dream to heal humanity’s relationship with the earth. While touring the Ecuadorian corner of the Amazon Rainforest, Chochi, our founder, was captivated by the vibrant lives of the beings that deem her country one of the richest biodiversity and cultural hotspots in the world.
However, she came to terms with a dark, hidden reality: the homes of local Indigenous communities -- and Ecuador’s most vital ecosystems -- continue to be devastated by extractive oil industries whose design of global oil dependency deems their operations powerfully unending.
Today, visitors can observe methane-emitting gas flares in place of native Guayacan and Copal trees, and barren land where there was once abundant flora and fauna. When she learned that her forefathers played a role in absolving said industries of their financial responsibility to Amazonian Indigenous communities, her dream quickly became a personal duty.
Chochi and her siblings set out to address this injustice.
In learning about the extent of the environmental and cultural harm rampant in the Amazon, they soon saw that changing the conditions of injustice in affected communities is not as simple as planting native trees and removing oil pools.
In fact, environmental injustice in the Ecuadorian Amazon is much greater than oil extraction; it also manifests as industrial monoculture and precious metal exploitation, which occur on the backs of underpaid Indigenous labor and native land.
What’s worse, the scope of environmental damage actually goes beyond the immediate affected Amazonian communities, as deforestation removes the world’s precious carbon sinks and gas flares dissipate into the global atmosphere.
The case of the Ecuadorian Amazon is in fact a reflection of a broader historical pattern of environmental degradation across the world. With this realization it became clear: wicked problems require mass movements of change.
Humans For Abundance was then founded with the vision of leading the largest and most impressive movement of humans to restore and conserve the planet's ecosystems.
Our Process: We recognize that sentiments of hopelessness about our planet’s fate are being felt across the world. We also recognize that Indigenous people have been faithfully protecting the world’s most biodiverse spaces for centuries.
The tension between these truths pushes us to ask: how do we bring those that dream of a healthier world together with those that have the knowledge and tools to create this world?
We begin by building relationships with Indigenous Amazonian people in Ecuador. We enter these communities by deeply honoring and centering their cultural histories and ways of life, so that we can support their process of reconnecting to ancestral ways of being with the earth.
Our partnerships have illuminated how Western modes of being have left Indigenous communities underserved, thus pushing people to clear cut land to make a living. In order to shift these conditions, Humans for Abundance offers alternatives for income generation.
Our Model: Humans For Abundance operates as a platform through which co-restorers from the Global North can pay restorers in the Global South for the ecoservices they offer.
Upon identifying individuals and families who are motivated to restore vital ecosystems on their lands, we create partnerships with people all over the world who are able to pay for their service and labor.
Because payment for ecoservices is at the core of our theory of change, we operate as a social enterprise, with the goal of becoming a B-Corporation. Though we seek to generate profit to provide income for our restorers and fund operating costs, our end goal is not to accumulate wealth.
Instead, we aim to invest in our movement with the intention of restoring ecosystems on a global scale.