Nehemias Pino – Whitten Research Fund 2024-25
The political dispute over the conceptualisation of Kichwa Forest Gardens in Ecuadorian Amazonia.
Programs and projects on conservation, production and development have been part of the contemporary social dynamics in the Upper Amazonia in Ecuador (Erazo 2008). In the political context of Global Climate change, the emphasis of these programs is on Indigenous ancestral knowledge, organic production, and sustainable lifestyle within their small-scale agricultural plots, the forest gardens. Forest gardens, called chagra in the kichwa language, are small areas (half of a hectare) Napo Runa families cultivate their food and maintain interaction with more than human beings. In 2023, UNESCO recognised these chagras as Global Indigenous Agricultural Heritage Systems (GIAHS), highlighting their potential for bio-trade and food sovereignty. However, Indigenous political federations remained critical to the process, sustaining that what has been said about the chagra does not represent the actual chagra but one suitable for the market.
This differing approach to the chagra had put it in a public debate in which its legitimacy, along with its conceptualization, had become the object of a conceptual dispute. In that sense, this research proposal aims to explore processes of adaptation and transformation motivated by ecological dynamics that generate a political dispute on the concept of forest gardens. Supported by Amazonian multi-nature theory, relying on the Amazonian Historicities, and considering the Amazon Forest Political Cosmology, this project is about contemporary indigenous approaches to conservation and ancestral mechanisms for adaptations to global climate scenarios and bio-trade demands.
