Jaime Pena Lopez, Ashaninkan tribal leader in the village of Tinkereni

Jaime Pena Lopez is an Ashaninkan tribal leader in the village of Tinkereni in the Peruvian Amazon. He's married to Albertina and they have four children. He spoke to Sky News Environment Correspondent, Catherine Jacob about the threats to his people's survival.

My name is Jaime and I'm 36 years old. I've lived in Tinkereni all my life. Life here in the middle of the forest is idyllic. The selva provides for all our needs. But despite the calm, we face many threats to our existence. A few years ago, it was from the Shining Path terrorists, and thousands of my people died fighting them. Now, there's a new threat: the illegal loggers and oil companies who all want to cut down our trees.

Recently I found out about one man in our community in the Cutivereni Valley, he wanted to sell part of our forest to a logging company. So I contacted Dilwyn Jenkins, an anthropologist who I have known since I was a child, and asked him to help us. It was a close run thing.

I felt very sad at the thought of my children not having the same forest to grow up in as I have done. What if they said, in the future: "Some big companies came and chopped down our trees and my father stood by and did nothing." That's when I knew I had to act.

Now we're working with Cool Earth to make sure nobody in our community tries to sell up to the loggers. But it takes time to educate the people here. Many people in my village they don't realise the impact on the environment and on our health. Especially when companies pour chemicals into our River Ene and the water gets toxic and fish die from contamination.

At a worldwide level, I understand there's more to stopping deforestation than the survival of the Ashaninka, but it's hard for people here in the village to understand the concept that we live on a planet and the rainforest is so important to other people too.

We're happy Cool Earth is helping us. They've given us money to build a school and buy canoes. All we want to live like our ancestors here in peace in our forest.

We're happy to protect it if we're allowed to, as we have done for thousands of years.

Otherwise, when the petrol is finished, how will we survive? How will we feed our children when the forest is gone?