'Together we are always going to do our part': IUCN's Anita Tzec on working with Indigenous Peoples on conservation

As we mark the International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples, IUCN again stands alongside Indigenous Peoples around the world in recognising the immense role they play in conserving nature. Expanding our work with Indigenous Peoples is a priority for IUCN, and one that is led by Dr Tzec, a Maya Yucatec Indigenous leader and activist from Belize who now serves as a Senior Programme Officer on Indigenous Peoples and Conservation.

Dr Tzec was born and raised in the small Yucatec village of Bullet Tree Falls on the west of Belize along the border with Guatemala. She went to primary school in her village, which she then had to leave at the young age of 12 for high school in the nearest town of San Ignacio and then off to Costa Rica for university at the tender age of 15, where she graduated from EARTH University as an agronomist.

She then continued her academic path, attaining a Master’s degree in Rural Development in Taiwan and a Ph.D. in social and political sciences from FLACSO in Guatemala, culminating with a post-doctorate on Indigenous rights and cultural heritage from the University of Leiden in The Netherlands. Encouraged and enlightened by her parents from a very young age, Dr Tzec knew that despite her humble origins education was key to understanding and learning to navigate the outside world and to her becoming a bridge for that world to understand her people.

As Ramiro Batzin, a Kakchiquel Maya leader from Guatemala and vice-president of the IUCN Council, has shared: “Anita is a Mayan woman with a doctorate in social sciences with a specialty in Indigenous Peoples' rights and governance who was born and lived in her community, and has maintained those strong ties despite her formal academic education. This is what gives her the ability to combine modernity and technological advances with Indigenous science and traditional knowledge. She is an inspiration to other young Indigenous persons to continue advancing in formal education, while keeping and strengthening their Indigenous roots”.

We asked Dr Tzec about her childhood, her path into conservation, and the work she does with Indigenous Peoples around the world.

When did you join IUCN?

I joined IUCN almost five years ago in September 2019. I first joined as a Program Officer on Indigenous Peoples and Conservation, and in 2023 I was promoted to Senior Program Manager on Indigenous Peoples and Conservation.

What do you at IUCN?

I’m the first Indigenous woman to be the lead on coordinating, facilitating, and convening the IUCN Indigenous Peoples’ Organizations Members (IUCN IPOs) within the Union and on a global level. I’ve carried this new position and process since IPOs were given their own membership category and distinct voting card as members of the IUCN.

I am also  responsible for guiding IUCN’s overall conservation work related to Indigenous Peoples, and have been central with the coordination of IPOs in the development of the first Indigenous-led Global Agenda for the Governance of Indigenous Lands, Territories, Waters, Coastal Seas and Natural Resources within IUCN. This is a new and critical step for the IUCN and can only be led by Indigenous Peoples.

Since 2019, I have also spearheaded the Inclusive Conservation Initiative (ICI), which is operational in five regions and 12 countries worldwide championing Indigenous Peoples as the best stewards of Mother Earth by supporting the scaling up of their conservation actions in their communities and territories.

As a Maya woman, my unwavering commitment and life mission revolve around advocating for the recognition, respect, and upholding of Indigenous Peoples' rights. I strive to create inclusive spaces where Indigenous Peoples can be at the decision-making table, share their ancestral knowledge, and contribute to transformative changes essential for a real people-centred inclusive conservation that can re-shape the conservation work led by IUCN worldwide.

What did you do before?

© Anita Tzec

Anita Tzec at the age of four on her first day of primary school with her young brother.

My life has always been intense and filled with many moving parts at the same time. Before IUCN I engaged in many things including working at our family farm harvesting crops with my father and selling our produce at the local market, especially honey, corn, beans, plantains, root crops, and mangoes. I was in charge of the marketing of our crops.

After my father was diagnosed with cancer caused by pesticides and plastic, I began organising yearly environmental camps for children and youth in my community, raising awareness and nationally advocating against single-use plastic, Styrofoam, and pesticides. This advocacy campaign gave rise to the now national law against single-use plastic and styrofoam in Belize. I am very proud of this. My community may not be able to solve all the environmental problems in the world, but united we set the example in Belize, which had an important impact.

At the same time, I was intensely involved in the Indigenous movement at the national, regional, and international level. At the national level, I was part of the team preparing and mobilising Maya Q’eqchi’ and Mopan communities in their lawsuit against the government of Belize since it had issued an oil exploration license to an oil company for exploration on Maya lands without the free, prior, and informed consent of the communities. At the regional level, I was the only young female on the board of directors of the Central American Indigenous Council (CICA), at the time working on a regional Indigenous Peoples Integrated Ecosystems Management Project funded by the World Bank. I was also the Belize and CICA Indigenous representative to the Organisation of American States (OAS), where from 2004 to 2016 (alongside my academic studies) I was involved in the drafting of the American Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. This declaration was adopted by OAS Member States in 2016. Similarly, I was the Belize Indigenous representative involved in advocating for the rights and priorities of Indigenous Peoples at the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous issues and in the final years of the drafting of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP). My last project before joining IUCN as a staff member was being an Indigenous consultant for IUCN's Regional Office on Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean (ORMACC), where I led the mapping of Indigenous lands in Belize for the Map on Indigenous Territories, Protected Areas and Ecosystems in Central America.

In sum, I’m a Mayan woman who follows in the footsteps of my father, a renown Indigenous leader of Belize and Central America who instilled in me the values of community work, respect, recognition, and promotion of Indigenous rights, which are fundamental to living in harmony with nature. I also follow in the footsteps of my mother, an educator dedicated to educating Indigenous children and youth from an intercultural, multilingual model.

What first inspired a career in conservation?

As a Maya woman, I was born from nature. Following a career that is related to my people and to living in harmony with nature is something I was born into and born to do. When you are born into the Tzec clan, you are born into the community of people who care for Mother Earth. As a kid, I saw archeologists from the USA come to my village to excavate our sacred sites and, in the name of research, they looted our Mayan temples, leading the government of Belize to convert those areas into a protected area without any consultation or free, prior, and informed consent of my community.

Following the footsteps of my father and mother – who were community leaders at different times in my village, advocating and defending the rights of our community – whichever career path I chose would be for the betterment of my community and my people all over the world. My elders taught me that together we are always going to do our part where and when because it is our part to do, and it is our time to do it. We might feel small sometimes in comparison to the whole conservation community, but our knowledge and energy is what speaks, transfers, and helps to change things. Belief, trust, and faith from my elders and community is what has kept me going through my conservation career and making sure that the impacts of it lasts a lifetime for the wellbeing for Mother Earth and our people. 

What's your favourite thing about your job?

The connection with my people all over the world and the opportunity to channel their rights, priorities, and knowledge to influence the conservation work we do through IUCN. It is very rewarding when I go to different Indigenous communities around the world and work with our Indigenous partners and see the immeasurable impact that our work is having. For example, identifying, mapping, demarcating, and titling communal lands and achieving land tenure security for Indigenous communities. It is very powerful to achieve this through IUCN. Also, doing my work with the guidance, knowledge, and blessings of Indigenous leaders from around the world is also part of my favourite thing about my job. There is no greater wisdom and blessing than that of my elders and leaders.

What are you and your team working on at the moment? 

© Anita Tzec

Anita Tzec visiting the Simanjiro Massai Community in Tanzania where ICI is being implemented, 2023.

I am currently part of the Human Rights in Conservation Team and I have been focusing on fundraising for The Podong Initiative, ICI, ACT30, and other initiatives to be able to create a team of experienced Indigenous persons to support the growth and further development of IUCN’s work on Indigenous Peoples and Conservation.

What do you like to do when you're not at IUCN? 

When I am not at IUCN and I get to take time off to go on leave, I usually go off the grid at my forest farm in Belize, where I go immerse myself in nature and go jaguar-, tapir-, and bird-watching as this revitalises, re-energises, and inspires me to write poems. I also get very valuable time to join my elders for evening chats over a hot atole (corn porridge) and a hot corn tortillas with cohune oil, listening to their childhood stories and immersing in their wisdom. I am grateful that I still have this.

What's a 'surprising fact' people might not know about you? 

I have been chased by a tapir under the thick tropical jungle in Belize. As kids, every summer break from school we would go up to our forest farm for two months – July and August. Once there, my younger siblings and I would be responsible for fetching water for family use. This meant walking through the thick jungle, on small trails, for nearly a mile to fill our gallons and then carry them back to the farmhouse. When I was 10 years old and on one of those water-fetching trips, while filling our gallons my seven-year-old brother heard a rumbling noise coming through the forest and alerted my four-year-old sister and I. When we looked up, a tapir was running towards us. By then, my siblings were frozen, so I had to drop the gallons of water, grab two of them and run. Later that evening my father went to the creek to check out the area and found that the tapir was a mother and had a baby, so she had probably felt threatened by three kids fetching water. These are very exciting childhood memories in nature which I cherish.

Is there anything else you'd like colleagues to know about you or your work? 

I get very close advice and guidance from Indigenous leaders from around the world to carry out my work in a highly inclusive manner. My work is guided by the IUCN IPOs self-determined strategy and the IUCN IPOs Global Indigenous Agenda. These two tools were fully developed by IUCN IPO Members and with their constant guidance, support and knowledge, we have been able to advance the implementation of these through IUCN.

Also, I want my IUCN colleagues to know that the changes caused by the impact of all the work with Indigenous Peoples is already being seen and felt by Indigenous leaders and their communities, as well as the wider conservation community. For example, on influencing IUCN’s wider staff to become aware of and understand the importance and sensitivities around working with Indigenous Peoples, Lucy Mulenkei, Massai leader from Africa, shares that: “Anita has been important and her work with Indigenous Peoples is visible. What impresses me most is that she will always consult and ask for ideas and ways forward on any initiative she starts or thinks of.  She makes sure the voices are included in any agenda she initiates for example Podong Indigenous Initiative, and discussions on 30 by 30 which we quickly and collectively came up with ACT30. This makes everyone involved and it makes us feel we own the process because she has made us feel like we are part of it. That is the work – she has put in her life in it, making sure she links us as Indigenous Peoples to work collectively with each other and with our Partners. I want to say her work is important because she has worked with her colleagues in IUCN, now, they try as much as possible to understand Indigenous Peoples”.