A Letter from our President and CEO, Matt Clark

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Brazil

Dear friend,

Nature and Culture International has always taken a holistic approach to our work. It’s embodied in our very name - nature and culture - two equal parts so intertwined as to always be mentioned in the same breath. It’s why we partner with rural and Indigenous communities. To try to conserve nature without them makes no sense. It wouldn’t work. To drive this point home, note the accomplishments we’ve highlighted in this report, almost all of which depended as much on strong Indigenous partners as on our very capable staff. This isn’t a coincidence. In aggregate, Indigenous territories in the Amazon show lower rates of deforestation, and have lost less carbon to deforestation, even than protected areas.

Indigenous peoples are very successful conservationists and have been for centuries.

We focus on whole ecosystems for the same reason: we believe in an integrated approach. In our Five-Year Strategic Plan written in 2019, we selected 13 landscape mosaics as our areas of geographic focus.

It is through the thoughtful placement of individual pieces - thinking about their relationship to each other and to the whole - that a meaningful pattern emerges in a tile mosaic. It is the same with a landscape mosaic.

It is in their relationship to each other that the component parts combine into a functioning whole.

That’s true whether the individual pieces are national parks, Indigenous territories, protected municipal watersheds, or some combination of all.

So, what does this mean for Nature and Culture International looking forward? Well, we have big dreams.

We continue to look for smart ways to put the pieces together in order to protect even larger landscapes.

That’s why we are creating the framework for an Andean Corridor, stretching almost 3.3 million acres, from the Andes of central Ecuador to northern Peru that will be managed as connected habitat within a single mountain ecosystem. And that’s why we are supporting an Amazonian Platform to coordinate the management of three massive provincial protected areas of lowland Amazon rainforest in southeastern Ecuador. The challenge will be to scale up without losing our local roots, which, to return to my initial point, is why our community partnerships are so important.

While reading the impact report, I hope you enjoy learning how we track the health of protected areas through vital signs. Ensuring the long-term viability of existing conservation areas is as important as establishing new ones. In our 25 years, we haven’t had a single protected area reversed. That’s because we are committed to holistic management. When you support Nature and Culture, you are supporting the long-term protection of ecosystems. Our conservation areas are here to stay.

Sincerely,

Matt Clark

President and CEO