The founder and director of Meli Bees Network on combining environmental and social positive impacts in her organization’s many partnerships with Indigenous and local-led projects in Brazil.

It’s impossible to discuss the global climate and biodiversity crisis without talking about the Amazon. Deforestation, illegal mining and logging have reached alarming levels in recent years, pushing crucial ecosystems to the brink. The Amazon bears the visible scars of our collective impact on the planet: pollution, overconsumption, inequality, alienation.

In Brazil, Indigenous communities continue to struggle for their right to inhabit and manage their land. Their lives are under constant threat, despite their globally recognized invaluable contribution to our environmental well-being. Colonization is far from over, and survival is on the line for many of these communities.

It’s a critical time to listen to people like Ana Rosa de Lima, the founder of Meli Bees Network, who works to protect Indigenous Peoples’ rights and self-determination. Drawing from her Indigenous ancestry and driven by the ecological, cultural, and social tragedy unfolding in the Amazon, Ana Rosa and a generation of Amazonian leaders established Meli Bees. Their goal is to strengthen land protection and regeneration through Indigenous and local-led projects. Ana Rosa is committed to amplifying the voices of the communities she works with and creating networks of knowledge, solidarity, and allyship to tackle the enormous challenges we face.

Play the video version below (English subtitles available), or scroll down for the podcast version and the transcript.

TRANSCRIPT

MARIANA MARQUES (PRESIDENT, AZIMUTH WORLD FOUNDATION)

Hello, Ana Rosa. Thank you for accepting our invitation to Connecting the Dots. I want to start by asking you to introduce yourself and briefly describe your organization, Meli Bees Network.

ANA ROSA DE LIMA

Hi, Mariana. Thank you very much for the invitation. I’m honored to be here with you. Meli is a nonprofit organization that engages a network of Indigenous and local communities in endangered areas.

Right now we are focused mostly in Brazil. We started in the Amazon area, and we grew up now for two others. We are also developing projects in two other biomes within the country. And we support them to develop their own projects, leading with their own vision of the future they want.

MARIANA MARQUES

Thank you. And Ana Rosa, before we delve into the solutions you’re working on, could you tell us about the context that led to the creation of Meli Bees? What is the “Arc of Deforestation,” and what have you witnessed regarding the Amazon’s deforestation and its impact on Indigenous communities?

ANA ROSA DE LIMA

The “Arc of Deforestation” is the area, that happens to be like an arc, in the Amazon, where most of the deforestation there has historically taken place. I grew up in a city called Marabá. And there I could see how much the crimes against the forest, the crimes against the environment, are deeply connected with crimes against Human Rights. That’s basically what moved me most.

Another crucial reason of why this project started is because when we first did a crowdfunding project to engage with the Kayapós, we raised the attention of many other Indigenous and local communities in the area. We saw the engagement, and we saw the need of support for Indigenous and local communities in the area. We saw that we could have partners, that there were many partners already on the ground, ready to develop regenerative projects.

And from there, the first year, we did a a bunch of separated projects. Kind of one project here, one project there, with different communities. And now we are trying to have a stronger ecosystem approach, because we see the need of a larger environment. And basically we are establishing this structure for them to connect, and to have this base where they can start the projects, and where they can have the support for the projects.

Another crucial thing is that we saw the big advantage of when one community is more active on the network. So we have monthly events, since they start. We always had update calls online, just for us to to get to know each other better. And we saw the importance of this participation, for them to interact. But at the same time, we also see the large amount of communities that don’t have access to a stable Internet connection. So we try to juggle with these two different situations, and engage the communities with events, and with workshops, and with simply calls or conversations, as long as we can.

MARIANA MARQUES

Your organization’s name is inspired by native stingless bees. Can you tell us about your work with the Meliponini and why they are an inspiration and guide for Meli Bees’ philosophy as an organization?

ANA ROSA DE LIMA

Great question. We are Melli Bees Network, so the idea of this network is very strong for us since the start. And Meli Bees is because we work with the Meliponini bees.

I mentioned that we did a crowdfunding in the very start of 2019. We did a crowdfunding to work with Meliponini bees, to support the Kayapós to do so. And the Meliponini are stingless bees, they are native. They are actually native to all tropical and subtropical regions across the globe. And even though there are more than 400 registered species of them, there’s very little information. Even in Brazil, many people don’t know about them.

The bees, they go to the forest, they go to the plants, to the flowers, to gather their food. So they primarily go for food. But when they do so, they do ecosystem services. We try to have the same vision. We want to develop activities that have both impacts, for the environment and for the community.

If we support Indigenous futures quite broadly, we do so. If we work with regenerative agriculture, we do so. If we work with native bees, we do so as well. And we work with activities that have both social and environmental positive impact.

When we first started, we started to hear also from other Indigenous communities. There were products from the stingless bees used to make arrows, some details on the arrows they use. So we also see, on this regard, just looking for this little species, a bunch of points that are related with culture, the environment, health, food, and so on.

MARIANA MARQUES

Thank you for sharing, Ana Rosa. Many of us might have come across the terms “Agroecology” or “Bioeconomy” before. Still, it will be great to learn from you what these regenerative practices mean, and why they are the basis for your work with Indigenous communities.

ANA ROSA DE LIMA

Sure. I do think there are many different views on regenerative agriculture, on regeneration, agroecology, and so on. And for us, the main point of it is to be led by the communities, and to be biodiverse, and to have a good care of the microbes and the soil, so the soil microbiology. So, healthy soil, healthy community, healthy biodiversity.

We see the long term need to have the real engagement of the community. That the community doesn’t simply accept that to be done with them. The community is actively involved on making that happen.

MARIANA MARQUES

Meli Bees Network already engages leaders from over 50 communities in endangered areas of the Brazilian Amazon, primarily in the states of Pará and Maranhão. How did you initiate connections with these Indigenous and local communities?

ANA ROSA DE LIMA

First of all, I connected with them because they were my friends. I went to university with Indigenous people. I grew up exactly in Maranhão, and Piauí, Pará. So that’s kind of the region I knew as home. But I have to say that this was the start. The first communities, I kind of knew directly. The second generation of communities, I didn’t know directly anymore. They knew each other, and they kind of brought more communities, and more and more. So, a network started to grow by itself.

We also grew to other states in Brazil, like Maranhão. Also, other biomes. We are in the Amazon, we are doing projects in Mata Atlântica, so Atlantic Forest, and in the Serrado, as well. We also work between the Serrado and the Amazon. These two biomes, they are next to each other, and there are Indigenous communities that have both biomes in the same area. Like the part of the Amazon that is close to Serrado, the same community lives in both. There are some communities that live only in the Serrado, like the Krahô. The Krahô live in the Serradão, kind of the very Serrado areas. The Guajajara live in both. We also work with the Tupinambá that live in the Atlantic Forest, and it’s a whole other context. Because they’re the first Indigenous that had contact with the non-Indigenous people, with the Europeans. We work with communities in which the parents were the first generation that had contact with the non-Indigenous. So that is quite different, but at the same time, we see many points that connect them, regardless of being in these different biomes, these different contexts. They anyways get connected, and can exchange many, many ideas, and help each other.

In the first years, we did a lot of projects with regenerative agriculture, agroecology. And native beekeeping, of course. We do have native beekeeping as one of our core projects. And we also did some storytelling activities, that were actually more story-listening, and basically engaged the communities to listen again to their own stories, to reflect on their own stories. So these were the first years. This year, we are very open to what the communities see that they need.

Right now we are focusing on food sovereignty. And we did a couple of different projects. We are working on a community kitchen with the Pataxó Hã-Ha-Hãe. At the same time, with the Guajajara, they’re doing seeds collection, seedlings production, native beekeeping, for the reforestation of their forest, to protect their forest. While with the Apurinã, they are doing some agroecology work with the schools. And that’s a common point that I saw very often. Many Indigenous communities engage the local schools. Regardless of the topics, all these projects want to engage somehow the local schools. With the Gaviões, the kids are painting their traditional patterns in their beehives, so they are involving the schools. The Pataxó Hã-Ha-Hãe are inviting the kids from the school to be a part of the process of working on the community kitchen, but also working on the regenerative agriculture they’re making to support the kitchen, as this meeting place to kind of reconnect through their traditional exchange.

MARIANA MARQUES

And Meli Bees’ team includes members of Indigenous communities, right?

ANA ROSA DE LIMA

We need that for the projects to engage locally. We need their help, their understanding, their support, to be sure that these projects will be successful locally. And we learn a lot with them, because they are the ones who actually have the local knowledge, who know which direction the project should take, or who they should engage more.

A point that maybe I didn’t talk so much about is the community science. Because we also engage a lot with universities, to help us answer questions raised by the communities. So sometimes the communities share, “Oh, this is happening. Why is that happening? How can I better work in a situation?” Or, “Look at this bee. Do you have information about this bee? Or this plant?” So we try to connect these two actors, and of course in non-colonizing ways.

MARIANA MARQUES

Yes, I was going to ask that, Ana Rosa. How do you involve Indigenous communities in research, without engaging in data extractivism, and prioritizing the communities’ desires?

ANA ROSA DE LIMA

I think a good start, a very good start, is to first wait for questions that are raised by the communities. Because we need to understand that Indigenous communities do pay attention and they do study in their own manner the local biodiversity.

I remember Jonas Guajajara, one of the team members, saying, “We have these, these and these bees. But these, these and these the non-Indigenous don’t know, because I have looked a for information about them, and I don’t think you are aware. I don’t know the name in Portuguese, and probably you are not aware of it.” And to try to connect these two different perspectives can maybe help to gather information about the species, and understanding. Of course they have the local understanding, the local wisdom of what happens. But sometimes they do also want to exchange, to try to raise their information about these plants, or these bees, or these species. And that can be either from another local community, or maybe a university. Practitioners or academics can maybe support. Sometimes other practitioners have even more knowledge than the local university. There’s not only one solution. But I think the start is to be guided by the communities, to answer questions raised by them.

MARIANA MARQUES

It’s good that the science community is also embracing, and being more open to receive Indigenous knowledge. Science in different fields can still be very conservative, but we’re starting to see some research being more open and more in sync with Indigenous ways.

ANA ROSA DE LIMA

And we are lucky, because we actually have been approached by the universities, more than the other way around. Normally, the university partners that we have contact with, are the ones who are already open to that. So we never had problems with university partners. The ones that come to us normally have an aligned vision with us.

MARIANA MARQUES

The methodology employed by Meli Bees involves engaging community members, a contributors’ team, hubs and partners for each project. How important is it for projects developed with Indigenous communities to become Indigenous-led and managed by Indigenous Peoples?

ANA ROSA DE LIMA

I’m right now writing a blog post that’s probably going to be released before this interview comes out, and it is on something that I saw happening last week. Three communities came up to us, to share progress on the projects we developed with them.

So, with the storytelling workshop, the local community started an elder group in the community. And this group is now doing another project with us, this semester, on native bees. And that was very beautiful to see, how one project developed to the other.

Then, there was the project of the school, with the Gaviões. We did the project last year, for them to have this beehive area. It’s circa 50%-60% bigger now, the area, because they multiplied the beehives, and all the multiplied beehives are being kept in the little houses that were painted by the school students. It’s a project that was finished. Our part, of Meli, is over. But they continued, because they had this motivation, they had this clear vision, they wanted to continue.

And I was impressed, because it was really within two weeks, all three messages. The third message was from Francisco Guajajara. Last year, he took part in an agroecology workshop in another community, in Pará. He’s from Maranhão, from the Arariboia Indigenous area. And this year he shared some photos from his work, based on what he learned last year. He’s working in his community, doing an agroforestry system, using local ingredients to make the fertilizers.

We are trying to establish a culture of every year doing a regenerative agriculture workshop with the communities. And this year, the regenerative agriculture workshop is going to be exactly in Francisco’s village. So for me, to see that, that Francisco already with his knowledge from last year, he’s already putting it in practice in his community, and to just imagine how much more he will learn with the workshop going exactly to his community… And this workshop this year is very special, because we are bringing a teacher with a lot of experience with other Indigenous communities, like the Guarani in São Paulo, who are doing really Indigenous-based regenerative agriculture. Great examples, that show the other Indigenous communities how they can support their own food security when they start to work with their soil, with their biodiversity. It’s very nice.

For me, these were exactly three examples that show how the communities, being autonomous, can continue these projects, or these events. I was very touched. And of course, we do wonder very often, “OK, how can I make the communities really autonomous?” It’s about being a partner in the journey. And I do think there is also this misconception. Autonomy is not only about having financial support for the community. Autonomy is to have the support, and there are many different capitals for that. There is the environmental capital, the social capital. There are heaps of capitals that communities need, to be autonomous.

MARIANA MARQUES

And how does international visibility contribute to the success of these projects?

ANA ROSA DE LIMA

With the international visibility, I was able to raise the funds for Meli to start. Even though I grew up in the Amazon, I’ve a migrant for a few years in Germany, in the European continent. With my social background in Brazil, I wouldn’t be able to simply take a year off to do volunteer work to open a nonprofit organization, it would not be possible.

And here I have a found a few partners that could support us in doing that. Basically the international visibility is to raise support, to raise funds, to do the projects on the ground. Of course we also work with the global awareness, here. We see a lot of people here interested on getting to know more about these communities. And our aim is that very soon we can also bring Indigenous knowledge here. To exchange this knowledge actually on both ways would be the ideal.

And of course the culture is a super big topic. There are many Indigenous film makers. There’s of course the awareness, the political awareness. The international visibility. I think all of that can play a role, together, to make a world that respects Indigenous traditions, local traditions, viewed together. A work that really connects us with each other.

MARIANA MARQUES

Going a little bit into the political awareness. Lula da Silva’s presidency has brought hope for halting deforestation, particularly compared to Jair Bolsonaro’s policies. But, Ana Rosa, what is your experience on the ground so far, beyond these headlines? Is there genuine optimism among the Indigenous communities you work with?

ANA ROSA DE LIMA

There’s the optimism, of course, of having Bolsonaro behind. And there was a strong optimism after Lula came. At the same time, I’m always very careful, because the first round of Lula’s Presidency, a while ago, he didn’t do everything super good for the Indigenous communities. Not for the Amazon. He did some big constructions that were not environmentally sustainable at all.

So we do need to be careful. At the same time, there is an optimism, because it’s after Bolsonaro, and we had a very bad experience. It’s kind of, “Yes, we can breathe again.” But of course we need to be careful at the same time.

MARIANA MARQUES

Ana Rosa, thank you so much for joining us today. We appreciate your dedication to protecting Indigenous rights and fostering regenerative practices in the Amazon.

Credits: Meli Bees Network