The international volunteer organization TiME — short for This is My Earth — purchases valuable natural areas in order to protect them. Its members were stunned recently to encounter a video posted by a Mexican social media influencer who made false and entirely fabricated anti-Israel claims about the organization. The influencer, Brenda Zavala, claimed that TiME is in fact an Israeli organization whose goal is to take land from local communities around the world and exploit its resources for Israel’s benefit.
Uri Shanas, a professor of zoology and conservation and the founder of TiME, spoke to ynet’s studio to refute the claims and explain the organization’s work.
“The organization was established about 10 years ago with the goal of protecting the world’s most important natural areas, what we call biodiversity hotspots,” he said. “We do this through crowdfunding. We essentially allow anyone in the world, of any age and regardless of religion, race or gender, to donate just $1 and become a partner with us in saving the most important areas in the world. One hundred percent of the donations go toward purchasing these natural areas and protecting them.”
“We also allow anyone who joins and becomes a member for a dollar or more to vote on our organization’s website on where they want us to buy the next area,” Shanas added. “Once the areas reach the financial target that allows us to go ahead with the purchase, we actually sign a contract with a local organization or local people and transfer the money to them so they can buy the land and preserve it. The Pearl Cohen law firm in New York supports us. We work with local populations, sometimes Indigenous communities, and the locals continue to report to us every year, or whenever we want, on the condition of the areas. Essentially, anyone in the world can partner with us in protecting the world’s most important natural areas, and we are an entirely volunteer organization.”
You are Israeli, but this is an international organization in every sense. Over the past week, you were exposed to a video by a Mexican influencer making various false claims. What exactly is she saying there, and when did you realize the incident was getting out of control, going viral and reaching hundreds of thousands of viewers?
“The organization really is international — our bank is in New York, we have an international board of directors and an international scientific committee. Over the past week, we became aware that some influencer from Mexico simply decided to target us and claim that this is an Israeli organization whose goal is to seize land around the world for the State of Israel and extract resources from it. She says absurd things, like taking water from Peru and bringing it to Israel, or profiting from carbon credits and making millions that way, and dispossessing local Indigenous people. All of those things are, of course, complete lies — exactly the opposite of what we do.”
The influencer’s false video:
Did you look at some of the responses within the post? I assume there were other people who are quite quick to hate Israel, joining in and getting swept up in those claims.
“Of course, of course. From what I saw on TikTok when I checked, it had reached more than 150,000 people, with tens of thousands of shares, both on TikTok and Facebook. I looked at some of the comments, and most of the people responding were indeed writing things like that this was wrong or, ‘Thank you for exposing this activity to us.’ She ended her remarks by saying, ‘Fortunately, this organization has not yet reached Mexico.’ I hope we do reach Mexico as well and help save its natural areas.
“So far, we have purchased land in 12 locations around the world, in South America, Central America, Africa and Asia. We are now in the process of buying another area and saving it, essentially handing it over to Indigenous people in Colombia. That is happening right now. I also hope that eventually there will be more places, but of course that depends on how many people join us and how much money we are able to raise.”
I assume your partners abroad also saw the video. Did they say anything? Were they offended by the claims made there?
“Yes, certainly. In fact, that is how it reached me. It came to me through the organization through which we bought our first area, in the upper Amazon in Peru, an amazing rainforest area. They were shocked. I wasn’t aware of it at all. They decided not to respond, and we too decided, at this stage, not to respond as an organization.
“For that area in Peru, we raised money from around the world, from people in more than 50 countries. We raised the money and transferred it to two local farmers, Isidoro and Donatila, who bought the land. They are responsible for the land, they are its legal owners, and they preserve it for us. In return, we gave them a small section of the land for agriculture. They benefited, they received a livelihood for life; we and the world received permanent protection for the area.”
How do you deal with an international shaming campaign like this, when such lies are spread about your organization, an organization that does good? Do you have any lesson from this about what to do if you encounter such cases in the future? After all, you may now be identified a little more as an Israeli organization. What will you do next time if something like this happens again?
“We still don’t know. We are still examining it. We want to see whether our strategy right now is really to let it go and see if it actually develops further. There is an international conservation conference that I had thought of attending in Mexico next year, so it will be interesting to go and present our work there.
Amazon rainforest
(Photo: Shutterstock)
“We really don’t yet know how to deal with it. We hope it will pass, but on the other hand, the truth is that she also gave us a bit of publicity, because at the beginning of her post she gives a very nice and accurate description of what TiME does. I really enjoyed watching the beginning of her post — until she got to the lies.”
According to Shanas: “Every dollar donated to the organization buys and saves about 20 square meters of forest and prevents the emission of about 700 kilograms of carbon into the atmosphere. The areas presented for selection by members of the organization are screened from dozens of applications from around the world by an international scientific committee. Local people or organizations that purchase the areas through us report to us continuously about conditions on the ground.
“The organization has managed in a relatively short time to save natural areas in the Amazon, the Caribbean, Colombia, Brazil, Ecuador, Kenya and the Philippines. Contrary to the Mexican influencer’s claim, it is absolutely impossible for anyone to extract water or minerals from the areas, because the local parties sign a contract with us stating that the land will be preserved as it is.”