Long-term Gaia Associate, Martín von Hildebrand, has been named the new Secretary-General of the Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization: an intergovernmental alliance formed by eight Amazonian countries.
Photo courtesy of Gaia Amazonas
A Colombian anthropologist and Right Livelihood Laureate, Martín has been central to the conservation of Amazon culture and biodiversity for more than five decades. Over that time he has been a close friend of The Gaia Foundation, setting up the Colombian NGO Gaia Amazonas and working together on the innovative Consolidation of the Amazon programme, protecting tropical forest and the rights of its best stewards, Indigenous peoples.
It is precisely Martín’s experience at the intersection of policy, forest governance and indigenous rights that makes him such a great candidate for this position. His commitment to dialogue, partnership and regional collaboration across the Amazon is key protecting the future of this planet as we know it.
A LIFE’S WORK BEGINS IN THE FOREST
Back in the 1970s Martín embarked on the mission of a lifetime, to safeguard the Amazon’s biocultural diversity. With an academic background in anthropology, he began living and working with Indigenous communities along the Caquetá, Apaporis and Mirití Rivers. Bearing witness to the social justice issues suffered by local people, and the environmental devastation from rubber extraction, gold mining and coca production, he made it his life’s work to anchor national policies in a commitment to Indigenous rights and rainforest protection.
THE POLITICAL STAGE
His advisory role to President Virgilio Barco Vargas was credited as guiding innovative policy on ethno-education, and the return of more than 18 million hectares of Amazon territory to Indigenous communities; an area that has since increased to some 27 million hectares. Martín also backed the approval of a legally binding agreement on the rights of Indigenous and Tribal Peoples (ILO Convention 169), which was ratified by the Colombian Congress in 1990 and embedded in the 1991 Colombian Constitution.
OUR SHARED ORIGINS IN GAIA
When he left government in the early 1990s, The Gaia Foundation worked alongside Martín to create a civil society organization, Fundación Gaia Amazonas, to work more directly on empowering local communities. The aim was to support Indigenous people in exercising their newfound constitutional and legal rights to territory, health and education, accompanying them in reviving their traditions and building their skills and confidence for local governance. He shared our passion for the name ‘Gaia’, in reverence to the Greek goddess of the Earth and how everything in life is connected: especially relevant within the context of the wonderous Amazon rainforest.
Together with Martín and handful of Indigenous organisations and civil society groups, a collaborative and long-term programme was launched, known as COAMA (Consolidación de la region Amazónica). It took a pragmatic approach to tropical forest conservation across the Amazon Basin, based on the strengthening of Indigenous rights and traditions, and was soon applauded as “the most compelling example in the world today of the contribution to a sustainable future” (Right Livelihood Award, 1999).
San Miguel, Vaupes, by Sergio Bartelsman
RISING TO NEW OPPORTUNITIES
Martín has been called ‘one of the most extraordinary conservation leaders’, and his dedication to the Amazon has been honoured by a dozen national and international awards, such as The Right Livelihood Award, the Tallberg Foundation Global Leadership Prize, the Skoll Foundation Prize to Social Entrepreneurs, and the Colombian National Environmental Award.
Now, as head of the The Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organisation (ACTO), formed by eight Amazonian countries, he will lead efforts to address the many interconnected challenges threatening the world’s largest rainforest and its rich cultural and biological diversity. The appointment was announced during the 16th Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (COP16) in Cali, Colombia.
INTERDEPENDENCE, ALWAYS
ACTO was founded in 1978 when Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Peru, Suriname, and Venezuela signed The Amazon Cooperation Treaty to promote joint action for achieving the sustainable development. During the 2023 Amazon Summit in Brazil, state leaders agreed to give ACTO a new impulse: they opened participation to Indigenous peoples, local communities, scientists, and civil society. “It is fundamental because the possible answers to the Amazon’s problems can’t be handled by governments alone”, Martín said of this evolution. “It is the people who are on the ground in the jungle, so it is only with them that we can protect the forest.”
Martín has shared that his focus in this new post will be preventing reaching a “point of no return” for this critical ecosystem. “My role is to create spaces for dialogue and try to get people to agree. There is one Amazon where eight or nine countries are present. But we need to start looking at the Amazon as that large ecosystem with interdependent parts.” His role is fundamental not only to promote policies that protect the Amazon, but also to ensure that the ecological interconnections between this vast ecosystem and Andean cities are properly understood and valued. “The Indigenous people are the true stewards of the Amazon” he reminds us, as true now as it ever was.
