ICEERS ( The International Center for Ethnobotanical Education, Research, and Service) Is 15 Years Old

On the occasion of ICEERS’ 15th anniversary, we asked its founder, Benjamin De Loenen, to take stock of the foundation’s trajectory. In addition, we delve into the current and future challenges facing the historical process of globalization of master plants and their ceremonial practices.

ICEERS turns fifteen in 2024, can you remind us what was its founding moment?

The founding moment was in May 2009. At that time, plants for traditional use — and specifically iboga — were very stigmatized, there was a lot of rejection, judgment and persecution. The initial idea was to do educational work around the plants, but the whole thing really began to take its own shape, developing from the needs of the communities and people involved in these practices at a global level.

How did these initial needs evolve?

Requests began to arrive, at first for the issue of legal defense, because there were people in prison, many of them for ayahuasca, especially from 2010 onwards. And, on the other hand, there were people who had done ceremonies with plants, were unwell and did not know where to go. So, we began to respond to these needs and we positioned ourselves very much in the trenches. In this complex globalization process, plants inevitably generate challenges, damages and problems: the clash with the drug control system, the clash between cultures… Also the bad practices of people who are not sufficiently prepared.

What has been the scope of your legal defense work?

We have assisted more than 350 cases in 45 countries. This experience has allowed us to connect the lessons learned from the different cases, and thus be able to work with local lawyers and, at the very least, try to avoid legal prejudice. And also to generate a climate that does not start from prohibition. In fact, in my opinion, it is very difficult to do anything constructive for all the communities involved.

How has the foundation’s approach evolved?

At the beginning it seemed simpler than it turned out to be in reality. Then the complexity of this process of globalization of plants was revealed. That’s where we increasingly tried to move from a place that was very reactive to these needs to building something more proactive to improve the future. The team was joined by people with expertise in legal advocacy, researchers… A multidisciplinary team that has tried to approach things from different points of view, as well as help pave the way to a future where harms are minimized and the well-being of individuals, communities and the Earth as a whole is maximized. ICEERS has woven a network of international alliances — interdisciplinary and intercultural — from which we try to generate paths and processes.

What advice would the Ben of 2024 give to the Ben of 2009?

I would say to him: “you have not understood anything”. For me, the most remarkable thing is the discovery of the complexity of the process. When you meet other ways of understanding the world, with ancestral knowledge, where plants have been part of their culture for a long time, learning from these encounters and really transforming it into your role is very difficult. And this is something very evolutionary: in our culture we are used to making linear plans, looking for funds because we have these very defined results, when what is needed is more of an emergent process.

What other lessons would you highlight from this journey?

Although at the beginning it seemed to me that plants were the great promise to change the world, with time I have begun to see that the real opportunity for transformation lies in the alliance of knowledge that globalization can bring together. The challenge is to learn how to work together and how to complement from true complementarity and not from domination and homogenization. Instead of doing that, we must come together in the service of a common cause, which is life on Earth.

What have you learned from working with Indigenous communities?

The more I have been working with Indigenous organizations, and wise men and women, the more I have realized that these are cultures with very sophisticated knowledge. And it turns out that historically, even today, there is no real recognition of this knowledge. We must make this recognition. Do it well, and do it differently, and open up the possibility of weaving a new kind of relationship with these cultures.

How do master plants participate in this intercultural dialogue?

Ancestral knowledge is knowledge of how to live in relationship with these plant intelligences. How to listen to the Earth as a living being, how to understand the natural order, to help sustain this order instead of misrepresenting it, how to enter into a relationship with master plants, so that it translates into a positive social process.

I think linking it only to the subject of plants is more Western, but it is only a part of it. All this ancestral knowledge is based on the study of the environment, of different layers of existence, of the territory, of the Earth… How everything is interrelated, how it is not all material, how there are energetic and spiritual dimensions that in our culture are put in the bag of beliefs.

What role do partnerships play in ICEERS’ work?

We have been moving forward, we have been learning during all these years, we have accompanied people in prison, collaborating with other people who want to generate policies to improve regulations and guarantee more security and integrity of people. We have accompanied from the United Nations and different governmental bodies to the grassroots.

More and more, I have begun to see the importance of creating spaces where we can reflect from the grassroots. If there is a disorder, why is it? We have our idea, but from another knowledge system the diagnosis is different. It is something very difficult, and I think this is what this time is asking for: to connect the institutions with the grassroots, but also the indigenous world with the non-indigenous, so that this knowledge, historically excluded, judged and stigmatized, can lead the change. Likewise, we want to put ourselves at the service of indigenous leaderships for their process of encounter with the context of globalization of ancestral medicines.

Do you think that social and political changes in the last fifteen years are going in the right direction and at the right pace?

On the one hand, progress is made, and on the other, collateral damage appears. For example, right now, with the issue of psychedelics, a very big force has entered, which is commercialization, reducing plants to drugs, market logic, patents and biomedicalization. The logic of these companies is to seal a space and dominate it commercially. This direction has started to generate many alarms, because these are forces with a lot of money behind them.

What challenges does the current legal situation involve?

With the issue of legality there are advances and setbacks. There are countries, such as Italy, that recently banned ayahuasca, and it also happens that there is a lot of disorder, and generally the most visible groups are the most commercial and problematic. ICEERS’ position is that, in order to move in the right direction, placing plants in a context of prohibition is counterproductive, because everything is hidden, even if there is a problem, help is not asked for fear of repercussions.

Is there a schism between the scientific and the holistic vision of the world?

There is a hegemony of knowledge from which everything that does not fall within its parameters is labeled pseudoscience. It is a term that is derogatory to millenarian systems of knowledge. There is also a great division in our culture between spirituality and science. In the scientific realm everything is material, real and objective, while the spiritual realm falls under the domain of religion. This divide does not exist in the ancient sciences.

How does this division affect problem solving?

In philanthropy everything is focused on projects: you finance a project that starts on one date and ends on another date, you have to define the objectives and you do the analysis with matrices to see if the project has been successful. However, what is important are the processes, and this is very clear in the indigenous world. In the indigenous world, the process is defined but not the results: they are emergent processes in which the process itself clarifies in which direction to evolve.

What message would you like to receive from your 2040 version?

Well, maybe it would be the same message: you have everything to learn and that’s good, and you also have to trust the processes. These last few years have been disruptive. When we turned ten, we analyzed how the world had changed. At that time we also started to weave alliances with the indigenous world and all this has led to a continuous reorientation. I believe that this is the way forward: to find a certain stability within this emerging paradigm. This is the challenge. I hope that the Ben of 2040 will tell us that we are on the right track.