Prince William pays emotional visit to NYC firehouse near 9/11 site after Earthshot Prize summit - a

Acción Andina, Peru is one of the finalists in the Protect and Restore Nature Prize category. The grassroots, community-based initiative works across South America to protect native high Andean forest ecosystems for their invaluable benefits to nature and millions of people in the region.

"Our program is to restore the highland ecosystems along all the Andes. At the moment, we are working in five countries, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Argentina and Chile. We are not just a "planting trees" program. We are working with many different activities and we are uniting many different kinds of local communities," Constantino Aucca tells HELLO! 

"We are trying to restore all this watershed with this highland forest, which is the highest forest in the world and practicing and reviving local knowledge from these local communities. That is the communal world."

He continues: ""We are not just planting 100 trees or 1000 trees. We are planting millions of trees and the only way to do it that is with the help of the local communities, the local communities are going to do it.

"In the other cases, they are going to be engaged. Our program is giving this possibility to these guys, giving leaders training, they are becoming part of the solution and we are providing jobs in that way.

"We are avoiding poverty. It is the reason why our program is so popular because people are actually seeing benefits from the conservation; in that way, this plan is still growing."

When asked what it means to have been recognised by Prince William's Earthshot Prize, Constantino said: "It is a huge opportunity, because this program has a lot of people around it. They have a lot of companies, even families with a heritage that can help us.

"This is the opportunity to tell them what's happening. Everybody talks more about Asia, Africa, but they don't talk about South America because people are not receiving the news.

"We are providing water to Amazonia. This is wonderful to be here. This is an opportunity. They're opening the doors, we need to open more doors for us especially."

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