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Sustainability is a discussion that needs to be conducted more intensively. We need to understand the reasons why whole countries continue to deny phenomena like global warming and see where the collective effort to preserve the planet’s well-being is coming from. When we talk about sustainable development, we sometimes omit an essential conversation that has relevant and enduring consequences in our societies: overexploitation and extractivism of natural resources are dynamics inherited from colonialism and perfected by late capitalism. In contrast to these models of intensified consumption, Black and Indigenous communities have kept ancient environmental protection techniques alive. Ecological discussions about the rights of nature can be heavily mediated by a Western scientism that forgets to tell how Afro and Indigenous communities have always attempted to maintain a balance with nature. The Global South, home to many of these communities, continues to struggle to maintain this balance, now more than ever.
In the Colombian Pacific one can see this desire for preservation, this search for reciprocity that is part of the ancestral knowledge of Afro-diasporic communities. Colombia is the country with the most hummingbirds in the world (these birds are pollinators), one of the countries with the Amazon (lungs of the earth) and home to humpback whales from May to December, where they complete their mating cycle, thanks to the temperature of the Pacific waters. Humpback whales maintain marine ecosystems by fertilizing them. These are just a few of the thousands of cases that exist in this biologically diverse area with global conservation implications. This is why it is so important to see what this region can teach the world about caring for the areas and in turn the people who live in them.
Muntú Bantú, Colombia’s Afrodiasporic Memorial Center, calls for more conversations that tell the story of black peoples with active listening to the environment, thus understanding the importance of maintaining harmony with nature to take care of the environmental emergencies, who are challenging us right now . We must recognize the resilience of black people in Latin America who have tenaciously preserved ancestral traditions for caring for nature.
For this reason, knowledge, like techno-environmental knowledge, is itself also a record of the struggles of Afro-diasporic communities. Let’s go back to the moment when the transatlantic slave trade took place: the enslaved people had to travel long distances to reach the Americas; These voyages were not without knowledge, as Africans were characterized by having many forms of expertise among themselves, such as: B. Knowledge of plants, both medicinal and food. According to academic director and history teacher Sergio Antonio Mosquera, there are so-called roofs in Chocó, on which different types of plants are grown, which, in his own words, are “like living pharmacies”.
During the global crisis caused by Covid-19, many impoverished black communities have had to resort to their own resources to care for those infected. The crisis that the pandemic brought about not only affected health, but was also a window to see the failings in the global South’s health systems, so plagued by corruption and government neglect. Afro-Colombian communities have not been exempt from this oblivion. Thanks to the knowledge inherited from Afrodiasporic resources such as living pharmacies, many people have managed to cope with, even defeat, the symptoms of Covid-19. It is undeniable that state centralism is a real problem for people living in the so-called periphery. During the peak of the pandemic, shortages of food and other resources were also evident.
Technological environmental knowledge developed on rooftops in Chocó points to food sovereignty, but food sovereignty in the Colombian Pacific does not only refer to pro-friendly agricultural techniques. In order to make these traditions come true, it is necessary to listen to the territory as a whole. Sergio Antonio Mosquera and María Fernanda Parra, Managing Director of Muntú Bantú, maintain a space at the Afrodiasporic Center dedicated exclusively to the impact that nature has on human life and vice versa. For them, it is crucial to respect the crop cycles in their region, as they determine what economic activities people engage in, and not the other way around.
“There are certain times of the year when the fish harvest comes. In the subiendas (as the times are called in Colombia when the fish go up the river) people come from where their crops are and set up ranches on the banks of the rivers where they fish. Meanwhile, the sowing of corn, plantains and cocoa is growing; When the Subienda passes, people are already engaging in farming activities, but when farming activities are not at their best, they are also engaging in mining activities. These traditional technologies are compatible with the environment because they do not degrade it and create sustainability.”
Economic activities vary with what the area offers. Thus, María Fernanda Parra says that in the Quibdó market squares during the subienda season you can find women dedicated to selling fish, since it is the most important thing at the moment; However, at other times they may sell chontaduro or plantain. Given that overproduction is one of the immediate threats we must address to avoid deepening the ecological crisis, such traditional dynamics are unmistakable proof that environmental damage does not require purely scientific conversations; We need to see that there is also a social element as the world economy moves on. The human factor is fundamental when it comes to stopping global warming and understanding the history behind ancestral knowledge, which is sometimes underestimated by science with a capital C. In fact, as we can see thanks to efforts like those in Muntú Bantú, this knowledge is key to saving the planet while preserving human welfare.