The concept of Birthright Earth sprouted from Richard Devane’s work in eco-tourism. Along with his son Tim Devane, Wesleyan ’10, and Eli Bronner, Wesleyan ’10, the three began discussing the crisis of global warming and the effects that it started having on the planet. After realizing that younger generations would begin shouldering an environmental burden for years to come, they decided to create a program that would encourage young people to take a more active role within the cause. The idea is for Birthright Earth to operate on direct exposure. Tim Devane believes that in order for individuals to become passionate about a cause, they need to have a connection to it.

Founded by Tim Devane and Eli Bronner, Birthright Earth was developed in May 2008 as a rather vague concept. Crafted from the overwhelmingly successful Taglit-Birthright Israel program, which focuses on bringing young people of Hebrew decent to Israel free of charge, Birthright Earth hopes to develop similar success by bringing young people to the world’s rainforests. “I believe that this model could work for an entire country or world. We want to give everyone the opportunity to see these exotic and fragile eco-systems as we believe it is the only way that young people will become seriously passionate about saving them,” Devane elaborated.

The program is currently being funded through events and private donations. With the constant support of their fraternity brothers, Devane and Bronner have an astounding amount of assistance with the program. Bronner said that the idea is to have sponsorships with banks and public companies that will help provide substantial funding in the future.

The Reasoning

A generation consumed by media and technology, Generation Z (defined as those born between 1982 and sometime after 2000) has the ability to take a stand for the environment and come out victorious. Today, 20 percent of global warming can be directly linked to tropical deforestation with that number potentially sky-rocketing in years to come. “In today’s mile-a-minute cultures, it is extremely hard to grab anyone’s attention for more than a second and even harder to mold that attention into a motivation to act,” Devane stressed.

A common misconception the general public has is that many of them believe that travel emissions from cars and airplanes are the main factors of carbon releases into the atmosphere. In regards to carbon dioxide release, the 20 percent annual rate created by rainforest deforestation would be the equivalent of eight million passengers flying from New York to London.

Rain forests work as “carbon sinks” that trap and store carbon monoxide for a period of time, taking it out of the atmosphere. “In rain forests, photosynthesis causes this carbon re-uptake and it is at its strongest in the richly fertile rain forests of our world. Without forests like the Amazon, global warming would increase at alarming rates,” Devane lectured. So how do you stop something with such momentum?

Birthright Earth forces its participants to turn off the television sets and journey into the illustrious rain forests. The foundation is profoundly unique and offers something that a theme park, zoo or the Discovery Channel cannot. The hope of the organization is to show participants the phenomenal flora and fauna of these eco-systems, as well as the horrible effects of deforestation. Devane mentions that the overall goal is to create a generational shift in the way young people think, act and care for the environment.

The Experience

Participants travel to one of 10 lodges in Brazil, Peru, Bolivia or Ecuador. Students take part in a variety of daily and nightly activities with ecologists, guides and researchers in the lodges. The trips are offered to anyone between the ages of 18 to 26, with trips initially being presented during the month of June.  Activities include planting saplings in destroyed areas, nocturnal jaguar treks, bird watching trips through rain forest canopies and evening round table discussions with trip leaders. The lodges will serve as their home-base during the trip, which lasts a total of 10 days, ending with a biologists’ reflection before returning to North America.

An important facet of the trip is indigenous community interaction. Birthright Earth not only wants its students to see the eco-systems, but also for them to interact with the people who live in these environments. These individuals most certainly have the greatest impact on the system’s preservation. By spending days in these communities, participants will learn more about the conservation issues from a different side of the planet. “They will be able to see how easy it is for subsistence-farmers to cut down acres of rain forests or simply just burn it to make more room for the cattle to graze,” Davane said. The experience also offers potential environmental employment, both within and outside of the organization, to participants after completing the trip.

The After Effect

Birthright Earth does not end once the trip has concluded. In fact, it is the exact opposite. The true experience begins once participants
have completed their journey south. “We hope to produce a generation of people who are much more environmentally conscious and active than they previously were,” Devane stated. The reforestation projects will begin the process of combating the deforestation, global warming and environmental destruction.

Upon from returning from their trips, travelers will be given mediums to become more environmentally conscious. Participants are expected to take a more active role in their communities to help alleviate environmental stresses.

If the program can help produce a more earth-friendly generation, then it will be a success. The end result is that people will take away an appreciation for what they have seen, but also have a definite understanding that they are responsible for saving it. — A. Hammel