While the global peace index reports a 2% deterioration in the global level of peace in the past decade with historically high numbers of people killed in terrorist incidents overgrowing inequality, military dominance, and  widespread terrorism, Leydy Pech, an indigenous Mayan beekeeper, wins de 2020 Goldman Environmental Prize for successfully halting Monsanto’s project to plant genetically modified soybeans in southern Mexico.

So while Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, South Sudan, Somalia, and Yemen are reported to be the least peaceful countries in its rankings for 2020, a proud Mayan woman of 55, Lady Pech makes her living keeping rare native bees alive, in rural Mayan communities from Hopelchén, in Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula.

Her practice goes back centuries in deep-seated Mayan culture, being the livelihood 25,000 families from indigenous Mayan communities in Campeche. That’s why Mexico is the world’s sixth largest producer of honey.

So, while Iran , the United States and Israel fight over nuclear agreements; Sudan and Ethiopia are having lethal ethnic clashes at the Tigray border; religious schism stirs war between Saudi Sunni Arabs, against the Yemen Houthis, backed militarily by Iranian Shiites; and while Myanmar heads towards a civil war of unprecedented scale, back in Mexico’s tropical forest, indigenous communities strive to save the bees. Through organic farming and agroforestry upheld solely by Mayan women, Leydy Pech defends beekeeping as an integral part of Mayan culture, key for the protection of Campeche’s forests.

No wonder she has been honored with the Goldman Environmental Prize, gaining international recognition and worldwide visibility, for stopping Monsanto (previously Bayer) from using herbicides with glyphosate, a carcinogen linked to miscarriages and birth defects on their soybean production.

So it is, I find in today’s lesson, the wisdom of local traditions and the importance of keeping life simple.