Stingless Bees from the Amazon Granted Legal Rights in World First
An Anonymous Coward writes:
Planet's oldest bee species and primary pollinators were under threat from deforestation and competition from 'killer bees'
Stingless bees from the Amazon have become the first insects to be granted legal rights anywhere in the world, in a breakthrough supporters hope will be a catalyst for similar moves to protect bees elsewhere.
It means that across a broad swathe of the Peruvian Amazon, the rainforest's long-overlooked native bees - which, unlike their cousins the European honeybees, have no sting - now have the right to exist and to flourish.
Cultivated by Indigenous peoples since pre-Columbian times, stingless bees are thought to be key rainforest pollinators, sustaining biodiversity and ecosystem health.
But they are faced with a deadly confluence of climate change, deforestation and pesticides, as well as competition from European bees, and scientists and campaigners have been racing against time to get stingless bees on international conservation red lists.
Constanza Prieto, Latin American director at the Earth Law Center, who was part of the campaign, said: "This ordinance marks a turning point in our relationship with nature: it makes stingless bees visible, recognises them as rights-bearing subjects, and affirms their essential role in preserving ecosystems."
The world-first ordinances, passed in two Peruvian regions in the past few months, follow a campaign of research and advocacy spearheaded by Rosa Vasquez Espinoza, founder of Amazon Research Internacional, who has spent the past few years travelling into the Amazon to work with Indigenous people to document the bees.
Espinoza, a chemical biologist, first started researching the bees in 2020, after a colleague asked her to conduct an analysis of their honey, which was being used during the pandemic in Indigenous communities where treatments for Covid were in short supply. She was stunned by the findings.
"I was seeing hundreds of medicinal molecules, like molecules that are known to have some sort of biological medicinal property," Espinoza recalled. "And the variety was also really wild - these molecules have been known to have antiinflammatory effects or antiviral, antibacterial, antioxidant, even anti-cancer."
Espinoza, who has written a book, The Spirit of the Rainforest, about her work in the Amazon, began leading expeditions to learn more about stingless bees, working with Indigenous people to document the traditional methods of finding and cultivating the insects, and harvesting their honey.
Found in tropical regions across the world, stingless bees, a class that encompasses a number of varieties, are the oldest bee species on the planet. About half of the world's 500 known species live in the Amazon, where they are responsible for pollinating more than 80% of the flora, including such crops as cacao, coffee and avocados.
They also hold deep cultural and spiritual meaning for the forest's Indigenous Ashaninka and Kukama-Kukamiria peoples. "Within the stingless bee lives Indigenous traditional knowledge, passed down since the time of our grandparents," said Apu Cesar Ramos, president of EcoAshaninka of the Ashaninka Communal Reserve. "The stingless bee has existed since time immemorial and reflects our coexistence with the rainforest."
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