The Long Road to an Eco-Corridor
Written by:
Katerin Luquetta, BFA Student at AAU School of Landscape Architecture
The conservation of biodiversity is now a movement around the world, and even though it still passes unnoticed in some places in the world, it is Colombia, Brazil and Venezuela who wanted to act upon preservation.
As temperatures rise faster than species take to adapt to them, Colombia proposed to its neighboring countries, Venezuela and Brazil, the creation of a green corridor to diminish the effects of climate change.
It was in the works, but as I kept digging I realized this news was as far as they got with this project.
The reason? There was one aspect besides the plant species and the wildlife that the project was not considering fully:
The indigenous groups of these tropical lands did not feel included in the project proposal process.
The corridor plan is not taking into account the illegal mining, deforestation, and hunting in the area, and the indigenous people who have preserved this land for centuries are waiting for these issues to be included. The conquest of the land by Spain and Portugal, (as England did in North America) left behind a careless approach to preservation of habitats in South America. Ultimately, landscape architecture is chosen as a career based on the design of outdoor spaces and landmarks in order to obtain an environmental outcome, but we know society and culture plays an enormous influence in decisions to be made.
As of 2015, the last update on this project was to continue discussion in order to agree on the final goals for the whole project. Two years have passed since the concept was supposedly presented, but now that there are so many social, political, and economic factors, the ecological factors on the table have taken a back seat.
