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Since América Futura was launched as a journalistic project in EL PAÍS, I have collaborated with different approaches, telling stories about the region that ask questions about the way we eat, dress, understand and consume travel. Having direct and immersive access to this expert information not only increased my sense of urgency, but also encouraged me to take action.
The question that always concerns me when I talk to experts and researchers is: Is there a real way to reverse the environmental debacle? While many tell me that the big changes do not come from individuals, but rather at the level of large companies and governments on a small scale, I have noticed in my daily life that there is a possible way to start shaping this desire. for change: Start with what matters to me, start with what steals my attention, start with what I know about.
When they talk to me about e-waste (according to Waste Atlas mapping, 1.9 billion tons are generated worldwide every year), it seems difficult for me to do something because I don't know anything about this industry, I don't know what I mean cell phone exists and what it can do with it if it breaks. I know I can keep my version of the phone for as long as possible, extend its lifespan, and maybe look for an art project that turns that waste into something more so it doesn't end up in regular trash, but I know I can I cannot ask my suppliers critical questions about technology as I can, for example, with fashion brands, a topic that resonates with me and in which I feel I am able to be more informed and actively engaged . So I started there, for what is important to me and what I know, without neglecting the urgency, to learn about new topics that will allow me to be active in other matters that concern me, such as nursing , the cultivation and reuse of water, to take more critical measures. making better use of the organic matter created in my kitchen and learning about ecology as a way to understand the world through its relationships.
What should I put attention on? What do I feel obligated to do? What do I have on hand that I can activate? Why not start there? I've decided to commit to five resolutions to try to make my 2024 a more coherent year with this journalistic exercise that tells and exposes the harshest truths of environmental reality and the climate crisis. What would be your five environmental goals?
1. I will decolonize my palate
Our tables and our palates have been dominated for decades by market regulations that force us to eat blueberries and Hass avocados all year round, ignoring the seasons and whether the country we live in produces these foods or not. These actions, which we do not usually question, have devastated the territories and made the food industry one of the most polluting (the United Nations Environment Program states that in 2019 alone, 931 million tons of food were wasted, 61% of which is produced) . at home) and has resulted in locals having fewer opportunities to fight. What we eat, what we cook every morning, has the ability to reshape the producers' relationships with the land, it can, as Puerto Rican chef Crystal Díaz, head of the PRoduce project, told América Futura, “a symbol” his of resistance.”
“In nature there is an incredible diversity of every kind, but the food industry always offers us the same thing and we consume it without knowing where it comes from or when it is harvested. “More and more, we no longer know where our food comes from,” Verónica Botero, founder of Cocina Intuitiva and urban botanical tours to help people learn more about what is produced in their area, told me.
Decolonizing the palate and ending the craving for imported foods that are responsible for plastic use and carbon emissions, as well as reconnecting to local production, is an act that, according to chef Crystal Díaz, has an impact on many levels. For example, in your country almost 90% of your food is imported. This choice also has health implications as it allows us to consume fresher products; in the food security of the territories by supporting fair payments to farmers resisting external competition; in the economy, even as attempts are made to revive the agricultural sector. Furthermore, it is a way to defend culinary identity and ensure that there are fewer forgotten and underestimated contributions and that local cuisines with their knowledge endure over time.
2. I will consume less clothing
The fashion industry is the second largest polluter after the automobile industry and accounts for 10% of global carbon emissions as it uses energy in production, manufacturing and transportation. Although many brands brag about their sustainability efforts in their advertising, this recent report from Stand Earth shows that this industry has failed miserably in its promise to reduce its carbon footprint. Only Nike and Inditex (Zara), two of the brands analyzed and recognized as the most polluting, had CO2 emissions of almost 10 million tons in 2022. Given these numbers, it seems that the best way to combat this insatiable industry is to curb clothing consumption. Use what is already there, what we already have in the closet and what others no longer use, to create something new.
Buy less clothes, buy fewer dresses under the pretense of taking trends into account, so that when we buy a new item of clothing we can ensure that it will last a long time and be useful in the wardrobe for years. Buy less clothes and exchange used clothes better with friends or in second-hand stores. Repair damaged tennis shoes or sandals whose soles have come off, because it's a crime not to appreciate everything it took the planet to create items that are designed to break soon. And refute any aesthetic mandate that makes us ashamed to repeat clothing on IG, at an event or in the office. Inheriting used clothing and normalizing second-hand gift-giving, even making our own clothes like in the do-it-yourself era of punk, are some actions we can take to begin to undermine a system that undermines our dominant aesthetic and physical dissatisfaction needs to continue
3. I will practice responsible tourism
In 2019, tourism emitted a total of 665 million tons of CO2 into the atmosphere. 8% of total greenhouse gas emissions. I know that we cannot continue to be a naive tourist, unaware of the environmental impact that each of our trips brings, starting with the emissions from transatlantic flights. As activist Pipe Q-ida, guardian of the Chiribiquete Natural Park in Colombia, proudly reminded América Futura, there are many destinations that it is better not to know: “This is a paradise that I really know.” I invite you NOT to visit.” know “You cannot visit Chiribiquete, you can only breathe it in because its power is in the air.”
However, since it is very likely that I will continue to travel in 2024, there are a few measures I can commit to. I promise not to hug, hold, or interact with wild animals in the places I visit to get likes on Instagram. According to a report by World Animal Protection, “Between 2014 and 2017, 54% of plans offered online in the Amazon cities of Manaus, Brazil, and Puerto Alegrías, Peru, offered direct contact with wildlife for photos or selfies.”
This doesn't just happen in the jungle. Amado Wallat, a marine life conservation activist in Belize, echoes this call: “Tourists are unaware of the damage they are causing. People want everything to be entertained, so they don't care if the tour operator has to throw rice, bread or fish at the sharks and rays to attract them. When this happens every day and is reinforced by hundreds of tour operators in the area, the animals stop behaving naturally. “They learn that they have to go to a place every day because they know that's where they're going to get food, so they stop doing their job, they stop cleaning the reef, they stop moving into others looking for breath Territories.”
Additionally, when selecting a hotel through reservation systems, I make a more informed decision by understanding what water use and wastewater management policies they have (all hotels should have this information on hand to understand the impact it has on the places built) . . As Juan Pablo Carricart Ganivet, researcher at the Institute of Marine Sciences and Limnology of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), warned me, the responsibility for the catastrophe that corals are experiencing in the world today does not lie only in climate warming. It is also due to the authorities and their lack of control over the development of hotels and large resorts. “The increase in concentrations of nitrogen 15, a stable form of nitrogen in coral skeletons, is proportional to the increase in the number of hotel rooms and tourists in this area of the Caribbean, and nitrogen 15 is an indicator of contamination” by “black water.”
4. I will hack the aesthetic specifications of the landscape
As city dwellers, we think we are separated from nature. We have forgotten that we are part of it. This separation has left us largely ignorant of the plants that surround us and the native vegetation in the places where we live. If you see the potato or lentil flower growing between a sidewalk, could you identify it? Could you identify the jackfruit forests in Medellín, the avocado trees in Argentina, or the fruit trees that flood Mexico City?
This vegetation, which exists long before our presence, has a raison d'être: it creates an ecological connection that we could safely break. In our homes, on city sidewalks, in the country houses that surround urban centers, reforestation with endemic species should be strongly encouraged to also bring back pollinators and biodiversity.
As Carlos David Montoya and Carlos Betancur from the Opus architectural firm told América Futura: “Aesthetic discourse has an ethics, there are ready-made models of beauty that we have to change because the introduction of alien vegetation has an impact on ecological connectivity.” The architects recalled the experiment carried out by the artist Roberto Burle Marx in Brazil: “This naturalist took the plants from the forests of his country to place them in urban contexts, giving a different value to the vegetation that was considered weeds, bushes, the and what is now, after his efforts to reconfigure taste, is what is understood as tropical vegetation and which is chosen by many as a place of residence.”
5. I will support women-led projects that restore social fabric and the land
Consumption has political power. The decisions we make, to buy a certain type of coffee or chocolate, or to buy our clothes from one brand or another, have powerful effects. “The situation in the countryside will only change because of consumer power,” Felipe Roa-Clavijo, a doctor of international development at the University of Oxford, told me, for example, as he analyzed why Latin America, the pantry of the country, is starving, according to a recent FAO report World population. According to experts, any efforts to revive and resist the local economy and social fabric depend on people betting on it.
For example, the decision to eat the yam chips of the women of the Montes de María means not only supporting the restoration of the social fabric of a territory devastated by the war in Colombia, but also contributing to the restoration of humidity in the forest. By choosing garments made from dilapidated umbrellas by Romina Palma from Cazaparaguas, Argentina, she is supporting a place dedicated to community environmental education through textile crafts. Wearing Laura Laurens designs means that tons of fabric used for military accessories and wasted every year in Colombia can be reused (only organizations like the police had to throw away 360,000 uniforms annually that they had to collect to high maintaining quality standards). uniformity of its members). The designer sums it up like this: “This is the challenge we are increasingly facing: breathing new life into what we have and transforming the ordinary into something extraordinary.”
Continue to choose products from China that are almost impossible to trace for our daily consumption, and empty the products we consume of any history because we feel they are innocent of the harm they cause when we they like, and turn away from alternative initiatives dissidents is to continue to communicate with a system that is devouring the planet.