Alianza Wichí: Scaling the Gran Chaco Regenerative Network
Alianza Wichí is a grassroots-led initiative bridging ancestral wisdom and cutting-edge tools to protect the Argentine Gran Chaco—the second-largest forest biome in South America. We co-design autonomous ecosystems alongside Indigenous communities to drive climate resilience, food sovereignty, and biodiversity regeneration from the ground up. Our methodology merges millenary Indigenous knowledge with scientific, legal, and decentralized technological tools. By empowering local leadership, we scale high-impact solutions: native forest restoration, decentralized water access, agroforestry, and the legal defense of ancestral lands.
Alianza Wichi is a non-profit organisation based in Spain and Argentina that works in partnership with Indigenous communities in the South American Gran Chaco region, supporting regenerative development, the protection and enhancement of biodiversity, the preservation of ancestral knowledge, and the strengthening of cultural identity.
Project story
The Gran Chaco: A Biocultural Frontier Under Threat
The Gran Chaco in northern Argentina is one of South America's most threatened forest ecosystems. Around Tartagal, Salta Province, a vital ecological transition zone connects Argentina, Bolivia, and Paraguay. This region is a critical biological corridor and a cultural crossroads—home to diverse Indigenous nations (Wichí, Chorote, Weenhayek, Tapiete, and others) whose lives, languages, and territories face aggressive deforestation and climate vulnerability.
For these communities, the forest is survival itself: food, medicine, and identity. However, as illegal deforesters advance, communities lose far more than timber. They lose their living medicine and traditional hunting grounds. Faced with land degradation, the communities are demanding new paths for resilience: the urgent need to restore the soil and adapt their ancestral gathering practices to active food sovereignty.
How the Alliance Was Born: Scaling a Systemic Model for Regeneration
Alianza Wichí emerged from years of active field operations and deep listening in the territory. It was forged as a strategic partnership uniting Indigenous community councils, frontline youth leaders, and an experienced team of field coordinators and environmental strategists. Today, it operates as an international non-profit organization based in Spain and Argentina, established to co-design scalable, community-led solutions alongside Indigenous nations in the Gran Chaco. Our mission is to strengthen a decentralized network of interconnected cultural and natural sanctuaries, integrating traditional Indigenous knowledge with scientific, legal, and technological tools to drive long-term autonomous development.
Our model is born directly from the urgent demands of the territory. The aggressive advance of illegal deforestation, water scarcity, and land degradation required a unified governance structure capable of delivering systemic solutions. To date, our network has successfully planted over 18,500 native trees, protected more than 600 hectares of forest through strategic legal defense, and developed critical water storage infrastructure for multiple communities.
Scaling Indigenous-Led Restoration: A Systemic Approach
Alianza Wichí addresses food insecurity and land degradation by restoring the ecological foundations of food: water, living soils, native forests, seeds, biodiversity, and Indigenous knowledge.
Our solution is an Indigenous-led regenerative food landscape model. Rather than replacing native forests with destructive monocultures, we create diversified agroforestry systems that restore ecological functions while expanding access to nutritious foods, medicinal plants, shade, and biomass.
Over the next 18 months, we are scaling this proven, decentralized model across Tartagal by combining ancestral ecological wisdom with regenerative design, georeferenced planning, and appropriate technology.
What Your Support Funds
By backing this campaign on Ma Earth, you are providing the direct capital needed to expand our mapped rainwater-retention systems, solar irrigation, native forest restoration, and youth-led monitoring. Our targets are precise and highly integrated:
2 Community Nurseries: Expanding our existing network of 4 nurseries to further propagate threatened native tree and medicine species.
10 Ancestral Seed Banks: Locally governed banks to rescue, store, and preserve biodiversity against climate vulnerability, utilizing applied ethnobiological research.
8 Agroforestry Systems: Developing diversified food-production landscapes with over 45 species, combining traditional knowledge with low-pressure drip irrigation and solar pumping to restore soil health.
45 Young Indigenous Technicians: Intensive training for the next generation of community leaders in agroecology, biocultural research, and georeferenced territorial monitoring, ensuring long-term autonomy.
450+ Families Impacted: Scaling our proven track record—which already includes 18,500+ trees planted, 120,000+ liters of water storage installed, and 600+ hectares legally protected—to bring climate resilience, clean water access, and food security to a wider network of communities in northern Argentina.
Project updates
Team
Alianza Wichí: Scaling the Gran Chaco Regenerative Network
Alianza Wichí is a grassroots-led initiative bridging ancestral wisdom and cutting-edge tools to protect the Argentine Gran Chaco—the second-largest forest biome in South America. We co-design autonomous ecosystems alongside Indigenous communities to drive climate resilience, food sovereignty, and biodiversity regeneration from the ground up. Our methodology merges millenary Indigenous knowledge with scientific, legal, and decentralized technological tools. By empowering local leadership, we scale high-impact solutions: native forest restoration, decentralized water access, agroforestry, and the legal defense of ancestral lands.
Alianza Wichi is a non-profit organisation based in Spain and Argentina that works in partnership with Indigenous communities in the South American Gran Chaco region, supporting regenerative development, the protection and enhancement of biodiversity, the preservation of ancestral knowledge, and the strengthening of cultural identity.
Project story
The Gran Chaco: A Biocultural Frontier Under Threat
The Gran Chaco in northern Argentina is one of South America's most threatened forest ecosystems. Around Tartagal, Salta Province, a vital ecological transition zone connects Argentina, Bolivia, and Paraguay. This region is a critical biological corridor and a cultural crossroads—home to diverse Indigenous nations (Wichí, Chorote, Weenhayek, Tapiete, and others) whose lives, languages, and territories face aggressive deforestation and climate vulnerability.
For these communities, the forest is survival itself: food, medicine, and identity. However, as illegal deforesters advance, communities lose far more than timber. They lose their living medicine and traditional hunting grounds. Faced with land degradation, the communities are demanding new paths for resilience: the urgent need to restore the soil and adapt their ancestral gathering practices to active food sovereignty.
How the Alliance Was Born: Scaling a Systemic Model for Regeneration
Alianza Wichí emerged from years of active field operations and deep listening in the territory. It was forged as a strategic partnership uniting Indigenous community councils, frontline youth leaders, and an experienced team of field coordinators and environmental strategists. Today, it operates as an international non-profit organization based in Spain and Argentina, established to co-design scalable, community-led solutions alongside Indigenous nations in the Gran Chaco. Our mission is to strengthen a decentralized network of interconnected cultural and natural sanctuaries, integrating traditional Indigenous knowledge with scientific, legal, and technological tools to drive long-term autonomous development.
Our model is born directly from the urgent demands of the territory. The aggressive advance of illegal deforestation, water scarcity, and land degradation required a unified governance structure capable of delivering systemic solutions. To date, our network has successfully planted over 18,500 native trees, protected more than 600 hectares of forest through strategic legal defense, and developed critical water storage infrastructure for multiple communities.
Scaling Indigenous-Led Restoration: A Systemic Approach
Alianza Wichí addresses food insecurity and land degradation by restoring the ecological foundations of food: water, living soils, native forests, seeds, biodiversity, and Indigenous knowledge.
Our solution is an Indigenous-led regenerative food landscape model. Rather than replacing native forests with destructive monocultures, we create diversified agroforestry systems that restore ecological functions while expanding access to nutritious foods, medicinal plants, shade, and biomass.
Over the next 18 months, we are scaling this proven, decentralized model across Tartagal by combining ancestral ecological wisdom with regenerative design, georeferenced planning, and appropriate technology.
What Your Support Funds
By backing this campaign on Ma Earth, you are providing the direct capital needed to expand our mapped rainwater-retention systems, solar irrigation, native forest restoration, and youth-led monitoring. Our targets are precise and highly integrated:
2 Community Nurseries: Expanding our existing network of 4 nurseries to further propagate threatened native tree and medicine species.
10 Ancestral Seed Banks: Locally governed banks to rescue, store, and preserve biodiversity against climate vulnerability, utilizing applied ethnobiological research.
8 Agroforestry Systems: Developing diversified food-production landscapes with over 45 species, combining traditional knowledge with low-pressure drip irrigation and solar pumping to restore soil health.
45 Young Indigenous Technicians: Intensive training for the next generation of community leaders in agroecology, biocultural research, and georeferenced territorial monitoring, ensuring long-term autonomy.
450+ Families Impacted: Scaling our proven track record—which already includes 18,500+ trees planted, 120,000+ liters of water storage installed, and 600+ hectares legally protected—to bring climate resilience, clean water access, and food security to a wider network of communities in northern Argentina.
Project updates
Team
Location
Argentina
Round 3
Jul 1-21, 2026
Supporting community-led nature projects around the world.
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