Prof Yunus visits social businesses in Colombian Amazon

Nobel laureate Professor Muhammad Yunus has recently visited social businesses working in the Amazon region of Colombia in the southwest of the country, not far from the Ecuador border.

The Yunus Environment Hub, founded by Professor Yunus, has incubated and supported thirty social businesses in different parts of Colombia, of which ten social businesses are set up in the Amazonian region---  dedicated to afforestation of continuously deforested parts of the Amazonia, and building circularity, reads a press release.

The Amazon rainforest covers nearly half of Colombia's land mass.

The area Yunus visited was Caqueta which used to be the headquarters of the FARC rebels. After the peace accord, the area does not have a clear governance structure and deforestation activities have actually intensified greatly, compared to before the accord.

Small holder farmers deforest or farm in unsustainable ways for their survival, and companies go deeper into the forest to exploit and extract without concern about sustainability.

Amazonia Emprendre (AE), a social business, is located an hour away from Florencia, a  deep forest area in the hills of the rainforest. Their social businesses built nurseries which planted 18,000 trees and saplings—-  47 species so far of 1,285 native to the area.
 
AE runs a forest school to train and do boot camps for individuals and entrepreneurs on nature based solutions to restore the forest as a social business. AE took Professor Yunus and his team through the processes and showed some of their nature based solutions.

At the end of the visit Professor Yunus  planted cacao saplings in three different spots as a mark of his commitment to advocate for the restoration of the Amazonia, on which the survival of not only Colombia or Latin America but the whole world depends.