community & ecology

Mapping Sacred Sites on the Kathita River, Kenya

Kathita River, KenyaIn Spring 2011, an eco-cultural mapping workshop took place in the Tharaka district of Kenya, north east of the Mount Kenya National Park.

Transforming Landscapes in Ethiopia

Community Ecological Governance in Action

Photograph by Damian Prestidge

An Interview with Fassil Gebeyehu, Ethiopia

Fassil Gebeyehu has been working for the Institute for Sustainable Development (ISD) in Ethiopia for over a decade.

Eco-Cultural Maps and Calendars

Human communities have used chanting, gestures, inscriptions on papyrus, stone, wood or caves, even tattoos, to understand and communicate the meaning of their surroundings for most of human history.

Indigenous Knowledge

"All the knowledge of our people is based on a permanent relationship with the places in which we live. The Indian territories are not only physically but also culturally located. We live here with a magical perspective. The people who live in a valley see rivers and mountains in a very different way from a geologist or a biologist. A mountain for us has a name, has children, has loves. It has a history, a story to tell because it has witnessed life passing." .... Ailton Krenak, Brazil - from a Gaia interview, 1989

Food Sovereignty

The basic idea of food sovereignty is that the aspirations and needs of those who produce, distribute and consume food should be at the heart of our food systems, rather than the demands of transnational corporations. It prioritises local food production, based on agro-ecology and family farming, and local markets. It keeps seeds and biodiversity in the hands of farming communities, and GMO free. It nurtures and builds on indigenous knowledge of soils, seeds and farming systems. It recognizes the crucial and central role of women.

Forest Protection

Tropical rainforests sustain an abundance of life. Not only do millions of species of plants and animals live in tropical forest regions, but they have also long been home to local and indigenous peoples who have shaped their cultures based on the natural environment in which they live.

Climate Change Resilience

As we now know, global climate change has been triggered by human activity over less than one century. This is as a result of the exponential growth of the industrial system across the planet.

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