Defending the Amazon: How indigenous culture protects Colombia's rainforest
by Anastasia Moloney | @anastasiabogota | Thomson Reuters Foundation
Thursday, 3 February 2022 14:30 GMT
Indigenous communities are widely considered the best guardians of vanishing rainforests. From using farm plots later regrown as forest to looking at nature as having its own rights, here’s why that’s the case
By Anastasia Moloney
MIRITI-PARANA, Colombia Feb 3 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Using a machete, Norma Souza Matapi slices a pineapple from its roots and places it into a woven bag slung across her forehead as she tends a family food plot deep in Colombia's Amazon rainforest.
Indigenous communities in this remote corner of southeastern Amazonas province have preserved largely pristine tracts of forest for millennia based on ancient belief systems and a culture interwoven with nature.
"Women take care of the seeds and guarantee that each family and the community has enough to eat, and that food for our dances and meetings is available," said Souza, surrounded by dense jungle in the small riverside community of Bella Vista.
Based on age-old fallow farming techniques, Souza will cultivate this plot for five to seven years and then, using controlled slash-and-burn clearing, switch to a nearby patch, allowing soil to regenerate and trees to regrow.
More:
https://news.trust.org/item/20220203143018-7txrh/
Norma Souza Matapi collecting crops at her family food plot in the Bella Vista riverside community, Amazonas province, Miriti- Parana, Colombia, December 16, 2021. Thomson Reuters Foundation/Fabio Cuttica
