Love Tropics, an annual Minecraft charity livestream event, has chosen to support Sustainable Harvest International and the partnering community of Santa Martha, Belize, for this year’s event.
From November 3rd to 5th, Love Tropics will host content creators, gamers, and donors for 48 hours of playtime on a custom modded Minecraft multiplayer server. The unique 3D world, designed and built by a team of passionate Minecraft- and planet-loving volunteers, is based on the people, animals, plants, landscapes, and culture of Santa Martha.
“Climate change affects us all, but some more than others. Many of us have a strong desire to do something about it, but we just don’t know how, or we feel like we can’t do it alone. Love Tropics gives us the opportunity to combine our passions for gaming and the environment to come together and make a difference.”
Why Santa Martha, Belize?
Santa Martha is one of SHI’s newest partnering communities. It sits alongside the Belize Northeastern Biological Corridor, which connects various ecological reserves and allows for safe passage of wildlife like jaguars and pumas. The ecological farming practices SHI partner farmers use provide even more habitat for wildlife and contribute to national conservation efforts. This area of Belize has suffered a deforestation rate of approximately 2.5% annually, but SHI farmers in Santa Martha are reversing this trend with agroforestry practices that integrate trees with agricultural crops.
Sugarcane, long a backbone of the Belizean economy, is grown on land cleared of forests, taking habitat from local wildlife. Wild animals living in this area are extremely diverse: Baird’s tapir (the national animal of Belize), peccaries, curassows, and the keel-billed toucan are a few. Conventional sugarcane production uses high levels of pesticides and other agrochemicals, which are harmful to local wildlife and local communities. SHI-Belize trains sugarcane producers in sustainable production and land management that restores healthy ecosystems and protects endangered species, including medicinal plants and timber trees.
Aside from the environmental effects of sugarcane production, the grand reach of the industry takes agency and opportunity away from smallholder farmers. For this reason, many SHI farmers are transitioning away from sugarcane to a more diversified, organic, and sustainable way of farming.
Sugarcane cultivation (left) and natural ecosystem (right) in Santa Martha
Transforming Agriculture
SHI partnering farms utilize organic farming practices that help to restore the soil and other local ecosystems. After years of intensive sugarcane cultivation, the soil needs lots of organic matter in order to heal. Thankfully, planting diverse crops and organic methods instead of chemicals restore the soil needed to produce nutritious food. In Santa Martha, agroforestry systems, where food-producing plants grow under the canopy of trees such as mahogany, transforms the landscape from a scorched wasteland to a bountiful oasis. Because of SHI’s focus on building up soil organic matter and emphasizing trees in the diversification of farm products, each SHI farm annually sequesters 16 tons of CO2, a potent greenhouse gas. If all 500 million of the world’s smallholder farmers could get technical assistance such as SHI provides, they could achieve 54% of the UN’s goal for net greenhouse gas reductions!
SHI x Love Tropics
Every year, Love Tropics selects a charity based on three criteria:
They focus on issues affecting people living in the Earth's tropics
They empower locals instead of assuming they know best
The cause fights climate change
The cause educates our community about something they may not know much about
We are honored to be chosen for this year’s fun(draiser). Join us this weekend and participate in exciting minigames, group activities, and an education center developed by the SHI team. You can also follow the journey online, and be sure to tune in to our Interim Executive Director’s interview on November 4th at 9am EST!
All proceeds from the event will go to SHI’s work with partnering communities as they transition to agroecology practices that nourish people and the planet.
